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Do you consider yourself ambitious? In a room full of accomplished women in a program literally called Women Who Mean Business, that question turned out to be surprisingly divisive.

This week, host Sarah Dooley sits down with Dr. Anne Welsh, licensed clinical psychologist, executive coach, and author of the new book Ambitious Mother, to talk about why the word ambitious feels so loaded for so many mothers, and what it actually means to want something for yourself.

Anne shares her own winding path, from an acceptance letter to medical school she turned down, to building a dream job at Harvard, to walking away from that too when she asked to go part time after her second child and was told it was not an option. She talks about reframing ambition as a web instead of a ladder, why motherhood can expand ambition instead of shrinking it, and what happened when she asked an AI tool to change the font color on her book cover and it renamed the whole thing instead.

In this episode:

1. Anne's path from medical school to psychology to Harvard to building her own practice

2. What a portfolio career actually looks like, and how Anne built hers one piece at a time

3. Inside her book, Ambitious Mother: the ambition paradox, the motherhood advantage, and healthy striving

4. The question that divides a room: are you ambitious?

5. Reframing ambition as a web instead of a ladder

6. How motherhood can expand ambition instead of shrinking it

7. Where AI helps, where it doesn't, and the gender bias in how AI use gets judged at work

8. The day AI renamed Anne's book, and what it revealed about bias in AI

9. Rapid-fire round with Anne

About Dr. Anne Welsh: Anne is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified executive coach, and author of Ambitious Mother, available now everywhere books are sold and on Audible. The book profiles 8 women who are ambitious for very different things. Find Anne at drannewelsh.com or on Instagram and LinkedIn at Dr. Anne Welsh.

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