In this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, host Peter Winick interviews Miri (Mary) Rodriguez, a Microsoft storyteller, author of The Women of Microsoft, and founder of the mindfulness community Be Mindful, Be Happy. Rodriguez explains how the book originated from a chance Teams connection with a colleague in Poland during Microsoft’s 50th‑anniversary celebrations. The project became a mission‑driven effort to capture and amplify the stories of 50 women across cultures, career stages, and functions within Microsoft, preserving their contributions for future history. Rodriguez discusses how impact is measured beyond traditional product KPIs, citing Microsoft’s “brand love” metric and the qualitative feedback from readers who feel inspired to share their own narratives. She highlights standout stories, such as a Ukrainian woman navigating war‑time life while working at Microsoft, and Vasu, Microsoft’s VP of Security, whose platform amplifies the book’s reach in the AI era. The conversation turns to the practical challenges of pursuing thought‑leadership projects while employed at a large tech firm. Rodriguez describes how her long‑standing personal mission to empower women aligns with her corporate role, allowing her to secure support without seeking special permission. She emphasizes the importance of aligning side projects with one’s core mission, using the book as a “force multiplier” that integrates seamlessly with her work and external ventures like her AI‑focused startup, Empress.AI. Finally, Rodriguez shares advice for emerging thought leaders: identify a clear “sweet spot” where personal purpose, professional experience, and market need intersect; focus on a single platform to amplify impact; and view corporate relationships as evolving partnerships rather than binary permissions. The episode closes with reflections on how storytelling can drive inclusion, brand affinity, and personal fulfillment.
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And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, uh, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today my guest is Mary Rodriguez. She's got a new book out, although most people don't come out with an old book, but I guess that's what we say.
Okay.
It's called The Women of Microsoft. Published by Wiley. She is a bestselling author. She runs a group called Be Mindful, Be Happy, and she's a storyteller at Microsoft, but I'll let her tell her own story. So welcome, Miri. How are you?
Hi, Peter. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Great. So give me the— this is a little meta, but, but getting a storyteller to tell me the story, right? How did the, how did this book come to be?
Yeah, yeah. The story is, you know, in celebration of Microsoft's 50th anniversary, which happened this April, this past April. And I was reached by a woman in Poland I'd never met before. She also works at Microsoft. And I love, I love the story behind the story because it is exactly about those kinds of connections that technology is able to bring together women from across the world I've never met. She reached out on Teams and was like, hey, I'm thinking of writing this book. I know you've written a couple of books. So she wanted to get my perspective. And by the end of the call, she asked me to co-write with her. And I couldn't say no. I was a little bit, I was like, oh no, another book. But I was excited because it is a compilation of 50 women across cultures, past and present, across the functions of the company. So different business functions across career stages, early in career, all the way to VP. All of us really telling our own stories, our individual stories of, um, our navigation of tech as an industry, of Microsoft as a company, and of life at large. So it's a, it's a tapestry of all the stories and it's inspirational for women all across the board.
I love that. So when, you know, when you talk about, I couldn't say no, I, I actually hear that a lot, right? And you think about, No, I, I do, you know, when someone, well, why did you do, you know, you're busy, you're this, you're that. Oh, why did you shoot the book? Or why do you do this?
Yeah.
And I think in most businesses, and thought leadership is really different, um, when someone, you know, I couldn't say no, right? They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. It's usually intrinsic, right? Now I'm sorry, it's usually extrinsic. It's usually, well, I couldn't say no to the promotion. It's usually extrinsic, right? So it's usually the money, promotion, the prestige, the title, whatever. But my sense is, push back if I'm not reading the tea leaves right, that, that your, I couldn't say no, was more of an intrinsic, I couldn't say no.
100%. It was a very mission. Yes, 100%. Um, I couldn't say no because of the mission behind this project, uh, which I understood immediately to be, it's mission-driven in the way that women show up in history, which a lot of times we have not. There's been erasure of our presence. Presence of our collaboration, of our contributions many times over in history. And when we read history books, we don't find women. We don't find how they've contributed to technology or science or education. And to me, this very particular moment, the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, marking 5 decades of technology and then entering an era of AI at the same time, which will inevitably change 50 years from now, how we do life. It was really important for me to capture those stories of those women so that when we look back in history, their stories are embedded into what happened in that time, what happened in that era and beyond that.
So, right. So most businesses, I would say all businesses today focus on metrics, right? They've got their organizational metrics that trickles down to your personal metrics.
Yeah. Yep.
Product metrics, whatever the case may be. You come from that world, right? You come from the software tech world, et cetera. But this is a little bit different, but it doesn't mean you get a free pass and say, well, there's no metrics. But what are they? And, and some might be a little squishier, but how would you say if we were to talk in a year from now and say, let's look at some of the metrics and see if we achieved our objectives. How are, how are you thinking about that?
Yeah, you know, it's funny, at Microsoft we do have a metric called brand love. And it's beyond the numbers. It's beyond the, you know, the sales numbers or the KPIs that are specifically data percentages. It's, they're really about this loyalty that people have to the brand because they love it, because they fall in love with it. And so for me, when I think about the success of the book, it's really what it's meant to do is inspire women across the board, not just in tech industry, to speak their stories, to speak their truths. For so long, we have not been, had platforms to do this and we shied away when we do. And so for me, it's, um, you know, I'm already getting emails, uh, accounts of women saying, thank you so much. This is so inspiring. I feel inspired to tell my own story. I just had a call earlier this morning with somebody say, hey, I want to write a book now. I read, no, I read the book. I want to write a book. It's so really inspiring women to come out of their shells. I had a man say, I'm a girl dad. I want my girls to read the book so they can understand how powerful it is to stand in your own. Voice and speak your own truth. So that to me, when I look a year from now, what we say here a minute.
Okay.
Yeah.
Stay, because even that sharing piece, I think there's different levers or levels or layers of that. So like, you know, 10 years ago, whenever it was when, you know, Sandberg came out with the, the circles and all that, it was sort of a closed sharing, if you will.
Right.
Come up with your people, the community. Share there, and I think that's sort of one level of sharing, but I feel like you, you, you wanna push that a little bit in terms of saying, don't just share with other women. That's an important thing to do, but share with your team, share with your org, share with your— is, is that—
Oh, 100%. It's share with your network, share with people you don't know that it speaks to, to you that you know they need it. I mean, this is a, this is a 50 stories that you will find each individually in their own power telling you something that you didn't know before about the women that have sat in this incredible company. This is a once, you know, we've never done this before. And to me, it's a sharing, it's a force multiplier. It's not sharing one piece of wisdom, one piece of, you know, advice is 50 from different angles, different perspectives in different parts of the world.
So. If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. And of those 50, and maybe it's too early to tell and that's fine. Are there a couple that are bubbling up to the top of saying, wow, for some reason people are really resonating with so-and-so's story. I would've thought it might've been this story. Are you, you seeing any of that? 'Cause I find it's interesting when you leave something to the wild. Yeah.
What, what, what, what?
So yeah, tell me about that.
We, we are where there's a story about a woman who is actually right now in Ukraine and she, it tells her perspective from being in the war, in the middle of war, having to wake up and talk, you know, get her kids up out of bed and to go to school and live a somewhat normal life and go to work, um, in the middle of this situation that she's living in her country. As she's being asked, you know, why, why did you choose to stay? Why have you not left? And she's like, this is my country. I want to be here. I'm hoping this ends. And so it's, we forget a lot of times we forget that there's people right now, right now living horrific, horrific situations, yet they have to get up and act, you know, like everything is okay. Like mom is mom and mom takes me to school and the kids have to go to school. And so that's resonating a lot. I think it's important to understand the globalization that we live in today, that we're not far removed from things happening all across the world and not just across the pond. And I think that's important. Another one is, of course, Vasu. She is the VP of Security at Microsoft. So she already brings a huge huge platform with her. She's an incredible leader. So the minute she puts something out, everybody responds. And I think it's really right now particularly important because we are in the era of AI. People are looking at Microsoft in terms of security as a technology because that's very much part of, of the era. So she brings in with her own platform, uh, a lot of audiences looking into the book and saying, oh, this is interesting that, you know, that these Microsoft women are talking about their personal stories. Out.
I love that. So tell me a little bit, I, I encounter people all the time in my work that have something they want to say, something that either to monetize it, have impact, whatever the underlying drivers are. And they've got, you know, a job at a big company and they have to wrestle with the issue of where does this fit? And I think about that on a continuum from Well, this is a side hustle. This is a nights and weekend thing.
Hmm.
This could be part of my job, right? If I'm out there speaking about this, it's actually good for me, good for the company.
Yeah.
To, I'm a company spokesperson. How did you sort of thread that needle?
Yeah, so I'll tell you, I'm not a company spokesperson, so I'll, I'll tell you, this is a disclosure. I am, uh, not, you know, I am acting as an independent, independent writer. Um, but I am at Microsoft. I am an employee. I, I think to answer your question, this is from a mission-driven perspective. Everything does intertwine if you have a specific mission. And for me, my mission in my career has been led through this mission of empowering women and their voices and their stories. I am a storyteller outside of Microsoft as I am inside of Microsoft. I have connected with women across the entire world for 20 years. I have, uh, coached them, I have talked about them, I have been part. So, so it's not one or the other, it's this and that and that and that. And it all comes into this bubble of mission-driven approach. And for me particularly, yes, it does intertwine. I, I can't, you know, I don't, I don't divorce one aspect of me to come in at Microsoft and do this one thing. The women that I connected at Microsoft, I mean, women that I have met or not met, but have known, I've known for someone else. So it's a, It's one big tapestry of a puzzle.
So someone, if someone's out there and they're thinking about this now.
Yeah.
Once you knew this was becoming a thing that you had to do.
Yeah.
How did you address, now the 50th anniversary is interesting just coincidentally, cuz I, I, you know, I would imagine if it was the 43rd anniversary, you would've found another reason to make it timely, right? Like that just kind of works for me. Right. How did you approach whether your boss or the powers that be to say, hey, this is a thing and I'm, I wanna do this. And yeah, not that they, they give you a pass on your, your, your, your job very well, but how do I do this effectively?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Again, what, right. So back to the mission-driven approach. When I speak to my managers, when I speak to people that know me or that I am speaking about my next steps in my career inside and outside Microsoft, they know what my mission is. They know what I'm about. So I, I won't take a job, for example, that doesn't align to my mission. I just won't. I won't. And I won't take, you know, or I've taken jobs that are lateral just because they align with my mission. And I think there's an expansion of what I want to do next. And so when you come in and you say, I am about women empowerment, I'm about delivering voices, I'm about inclusion, I'm about all these things, people already know that. And what they offer you, it's almost like a platform expander that offer you that opportunity. So it's not about Like you said, asking permission is about saying, hey, this really aligns with what I'm already, I'm already doing this book. It's just, it, it just makes sense. It's just part of what I already see. So go do this.
So that's interesting because if you were just say a programmer and there's no history in your career to say, why should I be talking about agility or resiliency, whatever your thing is, but your background said, of course I need to do this. Look at the roles I've taken. Look at my, so your, your, your track record, your your, your opportunities that you took and opportunities that you didn't take are so much aligned to this thinking that it would almost be like we were waiting for this conversation.
It just absolutely makes sense. That's why you can't say no. You know, it just comes, it comes to you. There's some points that I get, there's, I think, and I do believe in the universe bringing, aligning to your perspective when you are in so aligned with yourself, it just, the universe comes and throws these things at you. Here's a book, go write it. Okay, great. I might go do that. You know, and like my company, Empress.AI, that's another part of that. I, you know, I'm building a company that is actually a Microsoft partner. I'm a Microsoft employee and partner right now, uh, where I was saying, I'm doing this for women. And so they know that, they know this about me and it's just, it's just part of who I am. I'm just continuing to create channels of external and internal channels of where my mission can go. And this is just one of them.
So I, I wanna touch on something you said there in terms of, and I've seen this with others before.
Yeah.
Where the definition or the roles evolve over time. So I've had clients that have been employee of Company X, already as thought leaders. Yeah. Evolved where, yeah, their company becomes their first client or research partner or whatever. So I think that's an, uh, you know, another important way to think that the world isn't so binary, right? Relationships could. Evolve, change all the time, whatever. And, and you have to think about, think about it in that standpoint. All right. As, as we, as we start to wrap here, any final thoughts or pearls of wisdom to drop on folks that are where you might have been, say, 2, 3 years ago in this process?
Yeah. Uh, where I was, it was 2 years ago. I, I'll say this, and I think for everyone who thinks about thought leadership, we, we think of it, it's a multifaceted approach to how we enter business and life together. I think it's, uh, it's right. It's, you know, you don't you don't, you do both. You're always doing both and you're, and you're intertwining the journey. My pearls of wisdom is, you know, what, once you hit this space where you know exactly what you are about, you've tested different things as an, as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as a career, uh, you, you've tested, but you got to a place where you know, this is it. This is your sweet spot. That is where you hone down to then, to then make it a force multiplier. Supplier and it begins to compile. It begins to compile.
And so if you stay, a lot of people want to, I was gonna say a lot of people say that sweet spot, meaning I was just, I just wanna clarify the sweet spot piece is really about the idea and the platform because it's hard to do this if you've, if you're like a lot of people where you've got 10 ideas and every time I talk to you, you've got another thing and another thing and another thing. You've gotta get that laser focus. Yeah, exactly.
No, I was gonna say, and this is something like a, okay, I was gonna say this is why something like a book project no longer seems so big because it just aligns to what you're already doing. It's just part of it. And so it's not this, it's dissonant to your pro, to who you are. It is part of who you are. Anything else comes along, it's, it's like that. Yeah.
Fantastic. This has been great. I wish you the best of luck with the, the continued success of the launch and the book and all the other things. So thank you so much, Mary. Thanks. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.
