Kristine Sickels is a marketing executive turned entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience leading consumer brands, including Rubbermaid, Crock-Pot, Calphalon, Mr. Coffee, and Oster. As senior vice president of marketing of a $2 billion portfolio, she became known for revitalizing legacy brands while recognizing a persistent gap in corporate leadership: too few women had a voice in critical decision-making.
Today, Sickels is committed to advancing women in business. She is cofounder of C-Sweet, a women-owned consulting firm serving brands such as Conair, BaBylissPRO, BIC, Vitamix, and Kimball International, and CEO and co-owner of Mic Drop, which helps women develop public speaking skills and secure paid speaking opportunities.
She holds a doctorate in business administration from Georgia State University and an MBA from the University of Michigan.
Sickles is the author of The Clearest Voice in the Room: How to Speak With Power and Intention at Work. She recently sat down with TWA to share her insights and advice for early-career women engineers.
Megan Couch (MC): Why is "let your work speak for itself" so common, and why is it holding women back?
Kristine Sickels (KS): It’s common because the advice sounds humble and safe, but it's quietly holding women back. Promotions and raises get decided in rooms you are not in, by people who need to be able to say something specific about your value, not just that you are great. Giving them the words is your job. If you don't give them the words, they fill the gap with something generic, and generic doesn't move you forward. Doing great work and waiting to be noticed is not a plan.
MC: How can early-career women contribute confidently when they're the youngest in the room?
KS: First, remember you are in that room because you have something to contribute, not in spite of your experience. So decide, before the meeting, the one thing you want to say, and say it early, because the longer you wait for the perfect opening, the harder it gets. And know that you don't have to lead like the loudest person in the room or shatter the glass ceiling with brute force.
One of the most impressive engineers I know is now vice president of research and development, leading an international team of 200 in a male-dominated field, and she got there with compassion and gentleness, not volume.
MC: What is the Voice-Values Gap, and how does it show up early in a career?
KS: There's your voice, what you say, and then there are your values, what you believe inside. Every time you suppress your truth rather than express it, the Voice-Values Gap widens. Early in your career it shows up small; you soften the idea, you add a qualifier so you don't seem too sure, you say the safe version or nothing at all. It feels harmless in the moment, but it is the slow translation of yourself into a version that is easier for the room to hear.
MC: How do women navigate the double bind of "too aggressive" vs. overlooked?
KS: We hold women to unrealistic and contradictory standards. Be confident, but don't brag. Be assertive, but not aggressive. These are not communication tips. They are a maze with no exit, because every adjustment you make to land in one zone moves you out of another. You cannot control whether people find you too much or not enough. What you can control is choosing your top values and letting them decide what you say.
As you get more comfortable with who you are and what you stand for, you start to care less about how you are perceived. When I got mixed feedback on my value of candor, half of my colleagues loved it and half found it too much. My executive coach reminded me I had a choice: lead from my values or not.
The goal is not to be universally liked. It is to be clear.
MC: How should women respond in the moment when they're talked over or their idea is credited to someone else?
KS: I've witnessed this more times than I can count. When it happened to me, I kept my tone neutral and calm and said, ‘Hey, I appreciate you reiterating what I said earlier. I actually just said that.’ Keep your tone like a journalist simply stating the facts: ‘Great point. Jennifer actually mentioned that very same thing a moment ago.’
If you're interrupted, reclaim the moment: ‘I'd like to finish that thought.’ It rarely takes confrontation. Most of the time it takes one clear sentence, said right when it counts. Don't measure success by how quiet the room is. Measure it by how alive the discussion becomes.
MC: How can young women communicate their accomplishments without feeling like they're bragging?
KS: Start by reframing what bragging even is. When you state your value plainly, you are giving people the information they need to make good decisions about you. Use ‘I’ instead of ‘we,’ add the number, the result if you have one, and drop the shrinking words such as 'just,' 'only,' ‘I was lucky enough to.’
Research shows women tend to downplay their knowledge, expertise, and accomplishments, while men are more likely to broadcast theirs. We soften, constantly adding caveats and apologies: ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ ‘This is probably a crazy idea, but ...’ All that sorry-ing causes a credibility issue, because it's hard to trust someone who keeps apologizing for existing. When you state what you contributed plainly, you're simply giving people the information they need. So say it, and drop the words that shrink you. Then own it: I led, I built, I delivered.
MC: Which of the Seven Silencers do you see most among early-career professionals?
KS: Early on, the ones I see most are ‘I'm worried they'll say no to my idea,’ ‘I'm just not good at this,’ and ‘I don't know what to say,’ which usually isn't true at all. You do know what to say. You were hired because you have experience, insights, and skills in a particular area and have something to contribute. Something is just holding it back, and once you can name which silencer it is, you can start to move past it.
MC: How do perfectionism and imposter feelings affect women in technical fields?
KS: Both women and men have a distorted perception of themselves, but in opposite directions. Women tend to view themselves in an overly negative light, and men with overinflated positivity.
In one study, men guessed they got 61 answers out of a 100 right, women guessed 46, and in reality both scored about the same.
My favorite example asked people how confident they'd be landing a passenger plane with no training, and about half of men said they could do it vs. 20% of women. In technical fields, where precision is the job, perfectionism makes it worse. So remember, your idea is probably a few points better than you think, and that being prepared and being perfect are not the same thing. Preparation sets you up for successful conversations.
MC: What do you wish someone had told you in your first 5 years of work?
KS: When you're the youngest in the room or new to the role, curiosity is your best way in. You don't need the most experience to add value, you need to be genuinely interested in getting to the best answer. Ask the questions the room needs: ‘Why do we do it this way?’ ‘What problem are we actually trying to solve?’ ‘Could there be an option we're not seeing?’ Those questions are speaking up, they're low-risk, and they often move the conversation more than a confident statement would. Curiosity is one of my core values for exactly this reason. Even in this stage of my career, I ask a lot of questions from a place of genuine curiosity. You were hired because you have experience, insights, and skills in a particular area and have something to contribute. Curiosity is a way to use your voice from day one, and it is often the one that makes decisions and outcomes better.
MC: For a young engineer walking into her next meeting, what's one thing she can do immediately?
KS: Before you walk in, get clear on the one outcome you want from that meeting and the one thing you will say and say it early. At the beginning of the meeting, say something like, ‘The outcome I'm looking to accomplish today is ...’ Most people, especially those early in their careers, don't do this, and it is simple but powerful. Because the goal is not to be the person who speaks the loudest or talks the longest. The goal is to be the clearest voice in the room. Clear on what you stand for. Clear on the outcome you want to reach. Clear on the contribution you want to make. When you know your values, you know what to say. That is the heart of my book, The Clearest Voice in the Room.
