ICONIC Leadership Begins at the Table - Maven Musings Newsletter #61

That’s me with my grandparents, Dorothy and Edwin Wirgowski, sitting in their garage in Bay City, Michigan.

Just inside the door was the yellow Formica kitchen table.

To anyone else, it might have looked like an ordinary table in an ordinary house.

To me, it meant midnight meals, stories, safety, and belonging. My family moved often, but my grandparents’ house was my fixed point. No matter how late we arrived, the lights came on. My grandfather would open the door and say, “You made it again, didn’t you? Come in. Come out of the dark.”

There was always a place for us at that table.

The house is gone now. The photographs remain.

Technology can preserve this image. AI can identify the people in it, restore the colors, catalogue it, and store it indefinitely.

But it cannot know what that yellow Formica table meant to the little girl sitting beside them.

That is ours to preserve.

And that is where my chapter in ICONIC Leadership begins.

Because women need to be at the tables where decisions are made, resources are distributed, technology is designed, and our collective future is shaped.

But getting there requires more than waiting to be invited.

In my chapter, I write about giving ourselves permission to enter the room, creating cultures where more people can belong, expanding our circles, and building the boundaries and armor necessary to protect ourselves once we arrive.

It is about claiming our own seats and pulling out chairs for the people coming behind us.

My grandparents’ kitchen table was the first place I understood what belonging felt like. Leadership, at its most human, creates that same feeling for others:

The lights are on.

Come in.

There is a place for you here.

So much of the conversation about AI focuses on what technology can produce, automate, or replace. I wanted to ask a different question:

What does this moment ask us to protect?

AI can preserve the artifacts. Humans preserve the meaning.

Leadership in the Intelligence Era cannot only be about moving faster or becoming more efficient. It must also be about preserving our humanity, creating opportunity, and making sure women are not merely discussed at the table, but seated at it, heard at it, AND building them, funding them, and helping determine what happens next surrounding them.

I am super jazzed that I get to explore these ideas alongside the other authors in this book. They have built companies and movements, led global organizations, shaped policy, strengthened economies, and created change on some of the world’s most influential stages.

What moves me most is what they are doing with that experience now. They are sharing it, opening doors, pulling out chairs, and helping more people enter the rooms where our future is being shaped.

Huge kudos to co-authors Dee Dee Walsh and Chaitra Vedullapalli for bringing another book into the world, right on the heels of the Microsoft 50th anniversary book, Opulis. Chaitra's ability to gather people around a big idea and turn that idea into a movement is extraordinary.

And now for my full fan-girl moment...

Reshma Saujani is writing the foreword!

Last week, she wrote about the devastating job losses women experienced in July. She continues to push, question, and insist that women are not left behind as the world of work changes around us.

Reshma is a leading activist, the founder of Girls Who Code, the founder and CEO of Moms First, and the executive producer of the documentary No Country for Mothers. Named one of TIME’s Women of the Year in 2026, she has spent more than a decade building movements for the economic empowerment of women and girls, closing the gender gap in technology, and fighting for the structural changes mothers deserve: affordable childcare, paid leave, and equal pay.

She is also the New York Times bestselling author of Pay Up and Brave, Not Perfect, as well as the Girls Who Code book series. Her TED Talk has been viewed more than 54 million times globally.

There is no one better to open this book.

I believe that when women in 2080 tell the story of how they came to have the opportunities, influence, and place they hold, Reshma will be one of the women they name. One of the people who insisted they belonged at the table and fought to make room for them.

I hope to be one of those women too.

One of those humans.

And we have something wonderful to celebrate: the ICONIC Leadership Kickstarter is officially funded! 🎉📚👑

But the movement is just getting started.

We are building a community of 10,000 Founding Members who want to help shape leadership in the Intelligence Era and create more ways in for the people coming behind us.

The table is getting bigger.

Come meet the authors, explore the book, and take your place in what we are building:

📖 Pre-order on Kickstarter by September 14 → https://lnkd.in/gAj8K5t3

I cannot wait for you to read it.

#ICONICLeadership #Leadership #ArtificialIntelligence #Humanity #WomenInLeadership #FutureOfLeadership

This piece was originally posted to Heather's LinkedIn Newsletter, Maven Musings on August 20, 2026 - Subscribe on LinkedIn.

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