Session: The Rule You Never Agreed To — That's Running You
You've followed every playbook they gave you. The cultural one. The corporate one. Both got you here. Neither one is yours.
Most leadership talks tell you to raise your hand more. This one asks: what happens when you can't put it down?
Wen Hsu — Taiwanese-American, former engineering leader, leadership coach to immigrant women in tech — names the invisible rule underneath the exhaustion. The prove-yourself rule that earned you every promotion. That is now making decisions without your permission.
This talk is not about abandoning your culture or becoming someone else. It's about learning to hold the rules you inherited as tools you choose — not laws you serve.
You'll leave with one question you won't stop thinking about.
Bio
Wen Hsu is a Taiwanese-American leadership coach and former engineering leader with 20 years in tech. She works with immigrant women leaders in tech — Directors, VPs, Senior Directors — who are accomplished, recognized, and quietly running on empty. Her work sits at the intersection of identity, cultural conditioning, and leadership — helping women go from the leader everyone depends on to the leader who decides. She is a first-generation immigrant, an out lesbian, and an introvert who spent two decades learning to lead on other people's terms before building her own.