Book IWD Speaker: Jamie Martin

Helping women in tech stop performing to lead as humanity is not the price of admission

Jamie is an executive coach and professional speaker who helps women in tech navigate the impossible bind: be too warm and you're "not leadership material." Be too direct and you're "aggressive." There is no version of you the system approves of.

With 17+ years of technology leadership experience (including roles as Product Manager at Google/DoubleClick and VP of Product at DialogTech), Jamie lived this paradox. She watched capable women face an impossible choice: perform a persona to survive or leave tech entirely. She watched the women who performed longest lose themselves slowly and then, without realizing it, becoming enforcers of the very system that cost them everything.

Her research with women across tech reveals the exhausting adaptations women make just to be heard and seen: softening their expertise after being told they're "too aggressive," perfecting execution because at least there the goalposts (in theory) don't move, code-switching between "too much" and "not enough" just to stay in the room. These are survival responses to a system that offers no good options.

Jamie's talks and coaching address what nobody else is saying: you can't change the system until you stop adapting to it.

Her keynote "Your Humanity Is Not the Price of Admission to Tech Leadership" names the adaptations, exposes what they cost, and makes the case for the most radical choice available: stop adapting, choose (or create)  your environment carefully and keep yourself.

Her talk "Stop Proving. Start Leading" isn't about gaming a broken system. It's about knowing yourself so clearly you stop shrinking to fit one.

Named a Top 15 Coach in Chicago by Influence Digest Media and nominated Speaker of the Year at WomenTech Global Conference (2024, 2025), Jamie draws from 17 years of tech leadership, her clients' experiences and ongoing research with women across tech to deliver insights that are no-BS, grounded and true to what women are actually living.

Audiences leave with recognition of the adaptations they didn't know they were making, awareness of the choices available to them, and the understanding that when they keep their humanity, every woman watching them keeps hers too.

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