There is a gap in leadership development that almost no one is talking about. The higher you climb, the less support you get. Senior managers, directors, and VPs are running multimillion-dollar budgets, leading complex teams, and navigating organizational politics, all while figuring it out largely on their own. Sound familiar?

In this episode, I sit down with Lori Lalonde, a leadership development expert with 30 years in the tech industry, including senior roles at Microsoft partner organizations. Lori noticed the same gap I did: the training gets thinner the higher you go, and women in the messy middle of management are often the ones carrying the most weight with the least runway.

So she built a program to fix it. We talk about her 12-week leadership development program for women, how she is weaving AI fluency into every module, and why she believes women are positioned to be the most credible thought leaders in AI right now, not despite their hesitation, but because of it.

We also get into the real talk: how to actually start using AI without feeling overwhelmed, where hallucinations can burn you if you are not paying attention, and why the fear that AI will take your job is the wrong thing to be afraid of. This one moves fast and it goes deep. Let us get into it.

Together We Will Talk About

Why leadership development disappears at the senior manager and director level, and what that costs organizations
The messy middle of management: what it is, why women feel it hardest, and what to do about it
Lori's 12-week leadership program designed for women in senior manager to VP roles
The skills the program builds: strategic leadership, financial acumen, AI strategy, board readiness, and crisis leadership
Why women are slower to adopt AI, and why that actually positions them to lead responsibly
How to start using AI today without technical expertise, starting with the tasks you hate most
AI hallucinations, fact-checking, and how to evaluate AI outputs instead of accepting them
The environmental cost of AI infrastructure and why it matters for how we use it
How to use AI to communicate better across different personality types and cultural backgrounds

One Line to Take Away with You

"If this program doesn't exist for us, I'm just gonna build it."

Connect with Lori Lalonde

Web: herexecutiveascent.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lorilalonde
Substack: https://herexecutiveascent.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/her_executive_ascent
Leadership Recalibrated Podcast
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/73cQNaSjQdDTAKC5fiEf0D
- Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-recalibrated/id1869939398

Connect with Lynsey

Go check out everything Lori is doing using the links in these show notes, and listen to her podcast. Then come back here and get your spark on. Pick one thing from this episode, one task you would love to hand off, and go play with it. I mean it. Start today.

Ready to build your own leadership strategy? Connect with Lynsey at lynseymulder.com.

Website: LynseyMulder.com
Facebook: @LynseySMulder
LinkedIn: @Lynsey-Mulder
Instagram: @LynseyMulder