In this interview, Bernadette Boas explains how the provocative title “Shedding the Corporate Bitch” emerged from a personal crisis that unfolded about six or seven months before the conversation. While leading a global professional services development organization, she realized she had adopted a harsh, domineering persona—what she calls a “bitch” persona—to earn respect, loyalty, and success in the corporate world. Despite external achievements—high salary, travel, and a prestigious title—she felt inauthentic and sensed an internal “earthquake.” A dialogue with a younger woman, Cassie Parks, triggered an emotional awakening, reconnecting her with the authentic, vulnerable self she remembered from childhood. This inner conflict led her to leave corporate life in 2007 and eventually develop the concept and program “Shedding the Corporate Bitch,” aimed at helping others discard performative personas and reclaim their true selves.
And so where out of the clear blue did this Shedding the Corporate Bitch come from? That's a great title, by the way.
Oh, thank you very much.
You can put me down on your buy-sell list. Oh, I'd love one.
Thank you. Well, it really stemmed from my having about 6 or 7 months ago, not a breakdown, not a breakdown, but at the same time I was having a dialogue like this with a young lady, and I kept saying to her, I have something here that I need to say, and I'm not sure what it is. So we started talking, and she saw me getting very worked up about my kind of my persona while I was in corporate. I was very successful in corporate. I had some great mentors and coaches and advisors leading me along. My last position, I oversaw a global professional services development organization, and yet at the same time, I was sensing that I wasn't being myself throughout that time period. I was taking on personas, especially that of a bitch, in order to be successful, in order to be respected, in order for people to be loyal to me. That's what I thought was going to be needed in order to be successful, and I was successful at it, but 4 or 5 years prior to leaving corporate, which was back in 2007, I just started sensing kind of an earthquake stirring up inside of me. And actually, I was finding kind of my inner child, my little 10-year-old girl that I used to be, that was telling me that this isn't you, you know, behaving as a bitch and being very demanding. And, you know, there's one thing to have high expectations of people, but then there's another thing to have high expectations and then put all your attitude into it. And so as I I was having this discussion with this lovely young lady, Cassie Parks, I was starting to get very emotional about it. And it started welling up. That thing in my gut just started, like, dissipating. And she said, well, what's the bottom line? I'm like, I was such a bitch to so many people. And it wasn't even good for me. Yes, did I make good money, and did I have a nice position, a nice title, and, you know, traveled the world for a long time? Absolutely. But at the same time, I was living a lie and I wasn't being myself. So I joke with people that I came out of the closet because I all of a sudden realized that the person that I was when I was 10 wasn't the woman that I was in my early 40s, and yet I wanted to be. I wanted to be that 10-year-old again.
Good.
Yeah, so it just kind of, you know, just dissipated. Not even with her conversation. It dissipated the moment I left corporate. That's the whole point of the story, was the moment that I left that building, all of a sudden, it— I just felt like I shed about 500 pounds of angst. And I didn't know why it was until that discussion with Cassie. And she started asking me a lot of questions and delving into some personal sides that I normally never talked about because I was so— always so guarded and so kind of rigid, so to speak, in my corporate career.
