Tomorrow is International Women’s Day (IWD), March 8th. I want to celebrate it with you. Not with a long post about what we should do or how we should lead.
Not with a list of frameworks or action items.

Just… us. Talking. Connecting. Pausing together for a moment.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply pause and be present with each other.

We’re Hosting a Live IWD Meetup

Join us tomorrow, March 8th at 11:00am CST (17:00 CET):
, , , and I are meeting online for a 1-hour Coffee Chat and Show & Tell.

I want to Join

Just a space to:

• ☕ Have a break

• 🌸 Talk about what we are building

• 🌟 Connect with other women in tech

• 🪄 See what happens when we simply show up for each other in this special day

Will you join? This event welcomes all who celebrate or support women in tech.

Why This Meetup

As a woman in tech, I really enjoy this day. I learned to celebrate it at AWS Berlin: It’s a day full of events and in Germany it’s a bank holidays. At AWS, I taught little girls to program robots 6 years ago, and yesterday I attended to a self-defense class.

In my opinion, there is still a big gap on women in tech. Although things are getting better, the difference is real. Yesterday, in a meeting lead by a Senior Principal Engineer, I looked at the audience and realized that I was the only woman in the call from a total of 10 people. Even though my team has several women and I don’t ofthen think about it, that moment felt lonely.

I wonder if AI will change this.

And now, more than ever, with layoffs around us, return-to-office pressure, and uncertainty with our jobs, we need connection. There are days that I am in a dip, surviving. On tough days, what helps the most is a conversation with another person in tech who looks at me and said: “I feel that too.” Like my recent conversation with , when we were sharing career challenges and shared how we use AI. Or being part of the community has built.

That’s what we’re creating on Sunday. A space that remind us that we’re not alone.

Subscribe now

In the WonderLead community, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and leadership. But the foundation is connection. And connection happens in moments like these. Unplanned, unstructured, real. Like this event that started 4 days ago in Substack Notes.

Join Us

👉 RSVP here!

📅 When: Sunday, March 8, 2026 at 11:00 CST / 17:00 CET
⏰ Duration: 1 hour
💻 Format: Online Coffee Chat (Google Meetl. Link shared after RSVP)
🆓 Cost: Free — bring your coffee ☕

We’ll begin with a short check-in, and then talk about our latest challenges: will talk about DraftKit, will talk about CarouselBot, will talk about her MCPs, and I will talk about a new app I’m building. Without much planned, wherever the conversation takes us.

Join the Coffee Chat!

You can come and say hi in the chat, demo or ask questions at the end of the session. No pressure to share anything. Just come as you are.

An Invitation for International Women’s Day

This day is a reminder to celebrate where we are!

In WonderLead in Tech, we don’t sail the journey of our careers alone.

Share

Share and tag your friends

• Are you joining us? Register and let us know it in the comments!

• What would you love to talk about in our meetup?

• Tag a friend or colleague who should join!

Let's make this an awesome International Women's Day. Together. 💜

Thank you to everyone who answered the note and can’t attend like , , . Fingers crossed for to join!

If you enjoyed this post, please tap the Like button below ♥️ Thank you!

This post’s opinions are my own and may not reflect the opinions of the company I work for.

Embark on your WonderLead journey by following this framework.

Share your breakthrough stories and increase your leadership impact!
Your story will be added in this page.

Leave a comment

Or if you are having a challenge, ask in a comment, in the chat or send a message.
Many of the subscribers have been in similar shoes and would be happy to help you!

Leading with Emotional Intelligence

EQ vs IQ

I got feedback about high IQ but low EQ: Suppressing my emotions was stopping my growth and even risking my job at the staff level. Embracing Emotional Intelligence allowed me to understand myself and connect better with others. Emotional Intelligence makes us more human and is the multiplier that transforms good engineers into exceptional technical leaders. — from in How to develop EQ as an engineer or a manager.

Self-Awareness

If I hadn’t been self-aware, the meeting would have gone downhill from there. That day instead of reacting, I caught myself. I paused. I looked away, opened my notes app and started writing my thoughts. This allowed me to process those thoughts better. With my emotions in check, I could now think clearly: How do I get the outcome I want without escalating this further? — from in Self-Awareness in Tech Leadership.

After returning from maternity leave, I struggled with impostor feelings and leading a high-stakes launch while in survival mode, caused my team to overwork and lose perspective. I addressed this by advocating for my team’s needs and applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to support well-being.
As a result, I regained confidence and enabled my team to deliver sustainably and successfully. — from WonderLead in Tech in Thriving: With Consistent Emotional Intelligence and Goals Alignment.

Self-Management

I became a bottleneck by taking on too much, missing deadlines and sacrificing quality. With mentorship and practice using WonderLead Framework, I learned to choose the right battles, manage priorities effectively, and use self-awareness to align goals with their values and vision, resulting in more focused and reliable leadership. — from in How To Achieve Your Goals With Balance.

Building Trust

Early in my career, I was eager to learn but hid my questions out of fear of being exposed, creating self-doubt and isolation. To address this, I recognized my lack of trust in the team and the need for openness. As a result, I broke the cycle of anxiety and created space for learning and growth with others.
— from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

By doubling down on delivering excellent work and relied on my creative problem-solving to prove myself, I built trust and eventually earned a leadership role. As a result, I learned to value both effort and results as foundations for building trust within a team. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

As a foreigner in Japan, I faced daily challenges with a mixed Japanese–English work environment, neither of which was his first language. I hadn’t expected language learning to be a leadership tool but discovered its power when a teammate relationship offered the opportunity. By embracing empathy and improving my own communication, I learned that investing in language skills could help build trust as a leader. — from Tokyo Tech Lead in Lead with Compassion - Case Study on Overcoming Language Challenges.

Collaboration

Working at startups, I experienced poor leadership that bred distrust and unhealthy competition, making collaboration difficult. I realized I hadn’t felt empowered to speak up or help change the environment. Looking back, I saw the importance of taking initiative and communicating with managers. As a result, I learned to call out issues constructively to build healthier, more collaborative teams. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

As a director, I faced the challenge of building trust across teams without daily interaction, especially when collaborating with a team in a different time zone. To overcome this, I fostered transparency, asked what ideal collaboration looked like, and co-created a documented strategy with recurring check-ins. As a result, trust was strengthened, alignment improved, and the partnership became a model for future cross-team collaboration. — from in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.

I observed silos forming even at the team level through “Us vs. They” language and restrictive leadership practices like forbidding inter-team communication and relying on bottlenecked Single Points of Contact. To address this, I emphasized avoiding divisive language and promoting open, direct collaboration. As a result, teams can build stronger relationships, improve workflows, and become more resilient. — from in Breaking Down Silos in Tech

Career Transitions

🔜 Coming Soon

Impostor Syndrom

🔜 Coming Soon

Returning from Leave

🔜 Coming Soon   

Meet Our WonderLeaders

This selected collection of breakthrough stories were shared in posts, chat, and notes by , , , , and . We collaborated together to create unique posts that can help you thrive and find success in your career as a leader.

You can add yours by commenting or sharing this post with a note telling your story.

Thank You!

I want this for Free!

Notion template for your next post + AI App that will support you as a bestseller newsletter editor.

⭐️ CONTEXT

At the time of writing, I realized that most of my audience are writers because I didn’t promote WonderLead.tech out of Substack. Some of you are paying for AI tools to help you in your newsletter, when you could create or use other tools for free. I don’t have a large audience but I really admire you. It’s a privilege for me that you are reading me and I thank your support, so I decided to dedicate a few minutes today and created you an app that you can fully customize with your personal style. I know the team who builds it, and I have been using its playground personally for many different tasks for a year ;). I love it and hope you like it! 💛

Most writers spend 60% of their time on tasks that have nothing to do with actual writing, from content planning to platform-specific formatting. Personally, I want to spend less! A well-designed AI toolkit combined with a Notion template can cut that administrative overhead in half, giving you back precious hours for actual creative work and audience engagement. And it is FREE!

🕰️ Comment: (1) How much time do you currently spend on non-writing tasks in your newsletter workflow? (2) How much time did this tool help you to reduce it?

⭐️ WHY THIS PRODUCT

• Free AI app which you can modify with your writing style.

  • 6 engaging titles autogenerated.

  • 2 edited blog posts with suggestions of improvements.

  • 3 Substack notes, Linkedin post, Twitter/X thread, and Instagram caption for promoting your new post.

  • 2 images autogenerator.

  • AI chat editor that will help you improve the texts.

  • App can be fully modified with your style and more social media posts, but must you keep the links to the original sources. If you decide to modify the app and make it public, let me know and I will link to your app in the original one.

    

• Free Notion template for writing and planning your next blog post.

  • Use the template in your writing calendar or planner.

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal and Commercial use. All of our products are registered under copyright. Users may not redistribute, resell, or repackage the products.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

I want this for free!

Undated Digital Planner, Printable and Digital Journal, Digital Goodnotes, Notability, Daily Planner

WonderLead Planner

The WonderLead Planner is perfect for the leader who wants to succeed in its goals by being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This planner provides a clear and concise goal-setting system that with the help of emotional intelligence will help you to succeed with life balance.

Each page in the WonderLead Planner is built on our proven WonderLead Framework—learn about it in the Self-Management post.

WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals

This product contains only the pages for your daily rituals. For other formats such as reviews or project management, subscribe to WonderLead in Tech Newsletter. We will publish more pages in the newsletter with the insights on how to effectively use them.

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals sheets

⭐️ WHY THIS PLANNER

• Print it or use it digitally.

• Duplicate any page as many times as you need.

• Easy to undo mistakes.

• For printed: Put it in a place where you will see it and will help you to keep your rituals.

• For digital: Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• For digital: Paperless planning & eco-friendly

• For digital: Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

• For digital: Get creative using your tablet

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of our products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Planner Daily Rituals is copyrighted by develAGORA. This product is strictly for non-commercial, personal use only. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the design.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

I want this for Free!

WonderLead Automated Planner

The WonderLead Automated Planner is perfect for the leader who wants to Effectively succeed in its goals by being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This automated planner in an Obsidian Vault will allow you to plan your projects, track your habits and write your journal in a single app, synced with all your devices and without having to continuously copying your purposes, tasks and goals day to day in your journal. It provides a clear and concise goal-setting system that with the help of emotional intelligence will help you to succeed with life balance.

Each note in the WonderLead Automated Planner is built on our proven WonderLead Framework—learn about it in the Self-Management post.

WonderLead Automated Planner V1

This product contains only the notes and settings for your project management and daily rituals. Newer versions will include more enhancements such as synchronization with your calendar, habits dashboards and other templates.

Details

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Automated Planner Obsidian Vault

⭐️ WHY THIS PLANNER

• Available in all your devices.

• All your productivity tools in a single app.

• Automatization of tasks in your journal.

• Easily searchable with tags and properties and the graph view connecting all your notes.

• Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• Paperless planning & eco-friendly

• Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of develAGORA products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Automated Planner is copyrighted by develAGORA. This product is strictly for non-commercial, personal use only. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the design.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.

I want this for free!

Personality sheet to track your values, strengths and aspirations. Markdown template compatible with any note-taking app supporting markdown, such as Obsidian or Notion. You can use it in WomderLead Obsidian Vault.

WonderLead Personality Sheet

The WonderLead Personality Sheet is perfect for any person who wants to track it self assessments discoveries for being intentional, self-aware and with self-control. This sheet will allow you to get to know you and track your progress towards your aspirations. It contains supported quizzes and questions for your self-assessment sessions that will help you to identify your personality type, strengths and tendencies. You can complete it for your peers to help you in your interactions and later feedback.

Use it as part of your self assessments.

⭐️ DIGITAL FILES TO DOWNLOAD

• WonderLead Personality Sheet Markdown Template

⭐️ WHY THIS TEMPLATE

• It will give you the self awareness you need to succeed while tracking your progress in your values, tendencies and strengths. This sheet gives visibility to your self and will allow you to be self aware.

• All your productivity tools in a single app.

• Easily searchable with tags and properties and the graph view connecting all your notes.

• Copy & paste to reuse digital stickers

• Paperless trackers & eco-friendly

• Easy to add images & photos - no more printing

©️COPYRIGHT & TERMS OF USE

• Personal use only. All of our products are registered under copyright.

• This WonderLead Personality Sheet is copyrighted by develAGORA. This purchase is strictly for non-commercial use. You may not resell, reproduce, distribute by electronic means, or profit in any way from the file.
  © 2024 develAGORA, All rights reserved.