Tom
Shemesh
RevOps Leader & Founder
"Merit Is Not a Strategy: Why Women Are Taught to Avoid Power, Money, and Visibility"
"Merit Is Not a Strategy: Why Women Are Taught to Avoid Power, Money, and Visibility"
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Session: Merit Is Not a Strategy: Why Women Are Taught to Avoid Power, Money, and Visibility
Many women in tech are told that competence, reliability, and hard work will naturally lead to recognition and advancement. In reality, power in organizations follows visibility, negotiation, and political fluency, not merit alone. This talk examines how women are socialized to avoid money conversations, leadership conflict, and self-advocacy, and how this directly shapes career outcomes.Based on lived experience and observation across multiple organizations, the session offers a clear-eyed look at how decisions are actually made, the myths that keep women playing by the wrong rules, and what can be done differently without forcing women to become someone they’re not.
Key Takeaways
- Why merit alone rarely drives advancement in tech organizations
- How avoidance of money, power, and visibility is learned, not innate
- Practical reframes for navigating influence without self-betrayal
Bio
Tom Shemesh is a Berlin-based RevOps leader and founder with over 10 years of experience working across leadership, operations, and go-to-market teams in B2B SaaS. Her work focuses on how organizations scale, how decisions are made, and how power, visibility, and communication shape careers in tech.She brings a pragmatic, experience-driven perspective to leadership and career growth, with a strong interest in making invisible dynamics explicit and actionable.
