v19 Executive Presence & Narrative: The Modern Female Executive Edition

I started my career in power tools and accessories. Yes, drills and torque specs. It was a world dominated by men, where leadership had a certain look, a certain sound, a certain swagger.

The women who rose to the top in that environment? They were sharp, respected, and often the only one of their kind in the room. I admired them deeply. They carried the weight of expectations with strength and grace, and they knew how to play the game to win. But the game wasn’t built for them. The world they led in demanded choices: Be strong or be soft. Lead with your head or your heart. Blend in or stand out. There was little room for nuance, for duality, for the kind of leadership that holds complexity instead of collapsing it.

Even early in my career, I knew I didn’t want to lead in a world of either/or. I wanted to be both/and. Strategic and empathetic. Assertive and inclusive. Visionary and grounded. I just didn’t know yet how to do that, or if it was even allowed.

Fast forward more than a decade, and I found myself in Washington DC, in a room filled with 180 powerhouse women. CMOs, CROs, CCOs, VPs of Revenue, Marketing, and Customer Success, representing industries across the map and stages across the scale.

And here’s what struck me: for the first time, I wasn’t searching for role models. I was among them. Two sessions at the Pavilion Women's Summit crystallized what I’ve been trying to name for years:

1. Rewriting Executive Presence in the Modern Age
2. Crafting Your Executive Narrative

What follows is the synthesis of what I learned, what I believe, and what I think every female executive should hear right now.

What Is Executive Presence, Really?

At its core, executive presence has always been about your ability to inspire confidence. In high-stakes rooms, on uncertain ground, in front of decision-makers. It's how you hold space. How you carry authority. How you move others to believe: she can lead us through this.

That’s still true. And important. But here’s what I’ve realized, especially after sitting in a room of 180 powerhouse women at the Summit:

The traditional model? It captured the outcome of presence (confidence, trust), but not the path to it. And that path often looked narrow: louder voices, sharper elbows, muted wardrobes, performative neutrality. One-size-fits-all power.

For many female executives, especially those who came up in male-dominated industries, executive presence meant learning to perform leadership instead of living it.

I know it firsthand. When I was just starting out, I dressed intentionally neutral, no bright colors, nothing “too feminine.” Not because I lacked confidence, but because I didn’t want to give anyone a reason not to take me seriously.

That’s when it clicked: We’re not replacing executive presence. We’re expanding it. We’re defining what it looks like when women lead powerfully on their own terms.

So here’s how I’d define it now:

Executive presence today is about how you make decisions, how you carry tension, how you inspire trust, and how your influence travels, even when you’re not physically in the room. It still requires clarity and confidence. But now, it also demands authenticity, intentionality, and self-trust. And the courage to show up as the leader you already are.

It’s not about erasing what’s worked before, it’s about creating a model that includes us. One that values range, emotion, nuance, and strategic identity as sources of real power.

Because authenticity isn’t a buzzword. It’s our competitive advantage.

How Do You Build an Executive Presence?

Then: Presence Is a Checklist of “How to Behave”

Traditionally, executive presence has been built like a collection of behavioral skills: observable, trainable, often performance-based. The focus is external: how you speak, how you look, how you carry yourself in a room.

You learn:

• Clarity & Communication by taking public speaking courses, studying frameworks like SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer) or PREP (Point, Reason, Example, and Point), and eliminating filler words.
• Composure Under Pressure through workshops like “Crucial Conversations,” reading leadership books, or practicing de-escalation in simulated settings.
• Gravitas by watching others (often male leaders) and modeling tone, posture, and controlled delivery.

And let’s be clear: these skills are still useful. I’ve learned plenty from strong male counterparts over the years. How they hold tension, how they take up space without apology, how they land a message with ten words instead of thirty. I’ve taken notes. I’ve adapted. We all have.

But when executive presence is taught only as a checklist of “how to behave,” it starts to feel performative. Especially for women, it can feel like you’re acting out a role, one that wasn’t written with you in mind.

Now: Presence That’s Built From the Inside Out

What I learned at the Summit and what I’ve come to believe is that executive presence today isn’t just behavior. It’s alignment.

Modern executive presence starts with knowing who you are, what you stand for, and leading from that center. It’s not about nailing a checklist of behaviors. It’s about showing up in a way that feels real to you and still powerful to others.

That shift hit me hard in the most unexpected way: through the outfits.

That room of 180 women executives? It was the most colorful professional gathering I’ve ever seen. Bright suits, bold prints, natural curls, textured voices, and not a single ounce of diminished credibility. It was presence in full expression. Not dimmed. Not shaved down to fit.

One panelist shared how she used to straighten her natural curls (tight, beautiful curls) just to blend in. That landed with me. Because many of us did the same in different ways: adjusting our voice, our wardrobe, our volume, just enough to not be too much.

That room in DC proved something: we don’t have to disappear to be credible.

Today, executive presence looks like this:

• You lead with purpose, not performance. You’re not just trying to look like a leader, you’re showing up in alignment with who you are.
• You carry tension without losing yourself. You don’t need to fix or avoid discomfort. You can hold space for it.
• You bring your full range. Assertive and soft. Visionary and grounded. You flex intentionally, because your toolkit is bigger than the binary.
• You own your identity. You don’t hide your culture, your curls, your color, or your voice to fit a mold that was never made for you.
• And your influence travels. Your presence is felt even when you’re not in the room, because you’ve crafted the narrative people carry forward.

So yes, the traditional skill sets still matter. But they land differently when they’re rooted in you. Because presence that’s aligned, not acted out, doesn’t just inspire confidence, it earns trust. And that trust is what power is built on.

What Is an Executive Narrative?

Then: Personal Branding with a Polished Edge

Traditionally, what we now call an “Executive Narrative” has been packaged as personal branding: a polished, curated story meant to position you for career advancement.

You’ve probably heard versions of it:

• “What’s your elevator pitch?”
• “What’s your leadership brand?”
• “How do you want people to describe you?”

The goal was to create a memorable tagline or value proposition, like a product. Often, the narrative leaned on titles, accolades, and quantifiable wins. For many, especially in male-dominated environments, the safest route was to be sharp, credentialed, and uncontroversial. Tell your story, but not too much of it.

And honestly, that version of narrative helped many of us get a foot in the door. There’s value in being known for something. In being memorable, concise, clear. But it was also limited.

For women, and especially for those of us carrying intersectional identities, the “brand” model often felt… flat. It encouraged polish, but not always purpose. It made visibility a goal, but not necessarily influence. And it risked turning the richness of who we are into a few safe sound bites.

Now: A Narrative That Travels With You

At the Summit, the idea of executive narrative took on a whole new depth. It wasn’t about crafting a personal brand to impress recruiters or polish a LinkedIn headline. It was about this simple truth: If you don’t define your narrative, someone else will.

A powerful executive narrative today isn’t a branding exercise. It’s a strategic identity, rooted in who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to be remembered when you’re not in the room.

It’s how you earn sponsorship, drive influence, and show up consistently across roles, companies, and moments of chaos. It’s what makes your reputation stick and scale.

One panelist shared how she intentionally repeated, “I want to be tough but fair.” Over time, her colleagues internalized it. That became her narrative. She made it easy for others to advocate for her by giving them the words.

For me, the shift is deeply personal. I’m a working mom with two young children under five and I say that openly. Because motherhood isn’t a liability I need to hide. It’s a core part of who I am, how I lead, and how I make decisions.

And yet, I’ve seen some female leaders or founders omit that part of themselves entirely. No mention on social media. No acknowledgment to investors. I respect everyone's choice. As an outsider looking at it, it seems as if revealing that truth would threaten their credibility. That’s not a narrative. That’s a silence. And it’s not how I choose to lead.

Your executive narrative is how you live. It’s how your decisions align with your values, especially when things get hard. It’s what guides you when roles shift, companies change, or everything feels uncertain.

And when done right, your executive narrative does three things:

• It grounds you on purpose when everything around you feels unsteady.
• It aligns your behavior with your beliefs. So you show up with consistency and clarity.
• It empowers others to tell your story accurately, with confidence and respect.

Because at this level, people are already talking about you. The only question is: are they telling the story you want them to tell?

Building Executive Narrative with The 3-Pillar Framework

So if the traditional executive narrative was all about polished personal branding, this new model is something deeper. It’s built from the inside out, grounded in your purpose, shaped by your superpower, and anchored in your contribution to the business.

At the Summit, we walked through a framework that finally made it all fall into place. It’s simple, but not shallow. And more importantly? It’s honest. It forces you to get clear about what actually matters, not just what sounds good on paper.

There are three pillars:

1. Your Purpose

This is your North Star. Your grounding. The “why” behind your leadership.

It’s not your job title. It’s the impact you want to make in the world, the kind of leader you want to be, and the change you’re here to create.

When you’re rooted in purpose:

• You don’t chase roles, you choose them.
• You don’t flinch in chaos, you return to clarity.
• You don’t shrink, you show up.

You cultivate who you are and what you believe, and let the right opportunities come to you, not the other way around.

One speaker described it this way: your purpose is like building a garden, not chasing butterflies. When you’re clear on who you are and what you stand for, opportunities come to you. Because your story travels. Your reputation becomes your marketing.

2. Your Superpower

This is what only you bring to the table. And spoiler: it’s not “getting sh*t done.” That’s expected. That’s the baseline. Your superpower is the thing that differentiates you, not just makes you dependable.

It might be how you synthesize complexity. How you build trust. How you tell stories. How you make people feel seen. The clue often lives in what people have always noticed about you, maybe even before you noticed it yourself.

And here’s the key: your superpower should be strategic, not just operational. Something that elevates teams, not just tasks.

One speaker shared how, even as a kid, she was the one rallying everyone, deciding what to play, getting the group aligned. Back then, it just felt natural. Today, it’s her superpower: leading cross-functional teams and driving momentum. Your edge often shows up early. Pay attention to what always comes naturally, that’s not an accident.

3. Your Contribution to the Company

This is the bridge between your story and the business. Because at the end of the day, companies need to understand how you drive growth, culture, and clarity.

If your narrative can’t articulate how you make the business better, more resilient, or more aligned, you’ll lose the CEO in the first sentence. And here’s where women sometimes shortchange themselves. We focus on effort, not outcome. We describe what we did, not what changed because we were there.

This pillar forces you to own your impact clearly and unapologetically. Your contribution isn’t just what your team achieves, it’s how you elevate the company as a whole.

One speaker shared how, as her role grew, so did her lens. She stopped thinking like “just” a functional leader and started thinking like a first team member: aligned with the C-suite, not siloed in her lane. That shift in mindset became part of her narrative. She wasn’t just leading a team, she was shaping the business.

The Real Power? Consistency.

Once these three pillars are clear, your narrative becomes repeatable. Memorable. Sponsor-ready. It becomes a story others can carry forward without fumbling it.

Because when your narrative is rooted in purpose, elevated by your superpower, and anchored in contribution, it becomes more than a story. It becomes your signature.

Final Reflection

I left the Summit with a full notebook, but also with a full heart.

Executive presence isn’t something we fake. Executive narrative isn’t something we spin. These are not surface-level tactics. They are deep leadership muscles. They are the structures that hold up our voice, our choices, and our power. And they’re ours to build.

I still catch myself falling into old patterns: trying to prove I belong by overworking, overdelivering, over-functioning. But now, I pause. I ask: Am I leading from alignment? Am I choosing the narrative I want people to carry forward?

So I’ll leave you with this:

If you don’t define your presence, someone else will.
If you don’t own your narrative, someone else will write it.

Let’s not let that happen.

🎧 P.S. Now My Newsletter Talks Back

Prefer to listen instead of read? I turned this exact newsletter into a podcast episode, so you can take it on a walk, a drive, or just hit play while hiding in your closet for ten minutes of peace. No judgment. Because sometimes hearing the words makes them land a little differently and you deserve to feel less alone, in whatever format works for you. Or if you want to share it with a friend who prefers podcast.

▶️ Listen to “Executive Presence & Narrative: The Modern Female Executive Edition” on Spotify (Spotify link here).