Balance & Beyond Podcast

Episode Summary

#109: Women Rising: The Quiet Shift Reshaping Success and Power

What happens when success leaves you empty?

When the leadership box you've been placed in feels suffocating? Megan Dalla Camina, founder and CEO of Women Rising, shares her powerful journey from corporate burnout to awakening in this captivating conversation.

Megan's story begins with what many high-achieving women will recognise—the relentless pursuit of success that led to multiple burnout cycles, culminating in her dramatic exit from a prestigious role as IBM's youngest general manager. Her breaking point came after a simple phone call with her mother who pointed out the obvious: "You have no life." This moment of clarity sparked a transformation that would reshape her understanding of success, leadership, and authenticity.

At the heart of our discussion lies what Megan calls "the leadership paradox"—how women are simultaneously encouraged to lead while being constrained by impossible expectations. "We want you to lead, but not like that," she explains, highlighting how patriarchal systems force women to choose between authenticity and advancement. Most painfully, many women who contort themselves to reach leadership positions discover the holy grail of external success feels hollow once attained.

The conversation takes a hopeful turn as we explore the rising feminine energy across all genders. In today's complex, AI-driven landscape, Megan sees tremendous opportunity for women who embrace their natural gifts of intuition, collaboration, and emotional intelligence. The most successful leaders of tomorrow won't be those who master hustle and grind, but those who can access their authentic power and lead from a place of integration—honoring both feminine and masculine energies.

Ready to break free from burnout and step into authentic leadership? Discover how to define success on your terms, regulate your nervous system, and bring your whole self to your work. This episode offers practical wisdom for any woman feeling trapped in masculine energy patterns and yearning for a more aligned path forward. Join us for a conversation that might just change how you view success forever.

Dive deeper into Megan's world at www.megandallacamina.com, www.womenrisingco.com, or find her at @megandallacamina on all the socials.

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Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Jo (Host)

Welcome to Balance Beyond. This week, I have a special guest joining me. We have Megan Dalla Camina. Megan, hello!

Megan (Guest)

Hi, good to be with you, Jo.

Jo (Host)

Well, before we kick into some very interesting questions, you've had an interesting journey with burnout, but you're also a published author. You've written—I think it's multiple books now—you're on the speaking circuit, you run your own programs. Why don't you just introduce yourself to our audience so that they know who they're hearing from today?

Megan (Guest)

Sure, so I am the founder and CEO of Women Rising. That’s my company. We are an education and empowerment company, primarily for professional women, but we also work with men around male allyship—which we can talk about—so that’s the core of what I do. I have written a bunch of books around women’s development, women’s leadership, women’s success, redefining success. I’m a mum to a 24-year-old, have always been a single mum since he was very young. I’m a PhD researcher—I’m doing my PhD in women’s spirituality in the US, which is exciting and exhausting in equal measure. And yeah, that’s probably a good little snapshot. I won’t go into 500 other things. We can go wherever you want.

Jo (Host)

We're all slash-ees. We're all multi-talented in many different ways. Everybody is. Why don't we start at the beginning? From what I understand of your journey, like many high-achieving women, you've had one, if not multiple, episodes of burnout. What was your experience of that wake-up—of realizing, perhaps, that you don't have everything you always wanted—and what was your pathway out the other side? Everyone burns out differently, yeah.

Megan (Guest)

So I think, um, I have a very long history of burnout. Um, one of the—I talk, I write a lot about, um, inner critic archetypes, and mine is the overachiever. So I had my first—it wasn't a burnout, but it was an illness—when I was 21, when I had chronic fatigue syndrome. And this is three decades ago, so when we really didn't know what chronic fatigue was. And I was six months in bed, terribly, terribly sick, trying to figure out what on earth was wrong with me.

And when I look at the two years preceding that, I was burning myself out. So, it wasn't, you know—I had CFS, I was very, very ill—but if I draw the thread, the precursor to that was, you know, I was in performing arts college, I was waitressing, I was doing an audio engineering/music producing degree. I—like all of the things at a very young age. So that would be, you know, my origin story, I guess, of burnout.

And then fast forward a couple of years. I hit the corporate world, which was GE, and for anyone who knows, it was GE back in the day of Jack Welch. So it was hardcore. Spent five years there, four of which I was commuting from Australia to Asia. So I would spend three weeks in Asia, one week back in Australia. And, you know, got through a number of years of that—again, mini burnout, mini burnout, illness, not recovering from illness, mini burnout, bad habits, not taking care of myself—all of the things, you know. Fast forward again.

30, get pregnant. Pregnant. I found out I was pregnant the day after I was promoted to Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the day after I had started my first master's degree. And fast forward, fast forward, became a single parent when my son was 18 months old and then ended up at IBM through acquisition and became the youngest General Manager that they'd ever had. When I was 34, did that for two years, completely burnt myself out—like that was my rock bottom. So I think for so many of us as women, we have all of these mini moments, and if we don't pay attention and wake up and adjust—and I mean wake up in a very like literal awareness, consciousness, you know, way—then we will keep going until we hit that wall. And that was mine. 36, just back from a trip to New York. Had been sick on and off for as long as I could remember, but not enough to stop me, you know. Enough to, you know, keep me going.

And I'd gotten off the plane from New York the day before, had driven into my car park at work, called my mum on the phone and said, I just don't think I can do this for one more day—expecting the pep talk. And instead she said, Of course you can't, Megan, you have no life. And that just completely cracked me open, and I literally got out of the car, walked up into my CEO's office and I said, I'm done, I cannot do this. I literally am not going to do this for one more minute. And that was the start of a whole new phase. But yeah, that—yeah, that's my burnout journey.

Jo (Host)

And it's a very, as you said, it's a very common one, where it is these constant micro moments of pushing through and thinking you don't have a choice, and putting yourself last and taking care of everyone else. So it's a very, very common pattern that we see.

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, and I think, you know, I work with thousands and thousands of women every year, and I also think that we think that this is just the way that it is. You know, that we're no different from anybody else and that either we have a story that I'm not good enough and I have to keep up with the demands of my life and my work and my family and everything else, or, well, this is just how everybody feels and this is how life just feels, so I just need to get on with it. And part of the waking-up process, certainly for me and with so many women that I work with, is that there's a third door here. You know, that we need to realize, oh, actually, that's not what life is meant to feel like, and it's not just you, and there is a better way, and that's the work.

Jo (Host)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Have you seen in the last, let's say, three to five years, any shifting patterns in the way women are burning out, or perhaps waking up, with increasing restructures, increasing workloads, decreased resources, more pressure? Are you seeing any shifts in whether it's the archetypes that you have or anything like that?

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, look, I think, in terms of shifts, I think it’s getting worse out there, not better, in terms of pressure on the work front. So I think there’s all of that work pressure, you know, industries consolidating, all of the AI, you know, restructuring that’s now happening because of that, all the layoffs — like everything, so all of that’s sort of happening out there. That’s putting a lot of pressure. I think the pressure in the world right now, because of so much darkness and trouble in the world, that’s really hard to shield us from, and as women, we pick up so much of that energy. Um, that’s arguably, you know, getting so much worse and so much more prevalent, so much more heartbreaking.

So I think we often undervalue the impact of those things on us as women because, again, oh well, that’s just the world and I don’t have time to, you know, look at that. But yet we’re processing it on every level of our, you know, of our being. We can’t not. So, you know, I think there’s a higher level of emotional burnout. I think there’s a higher level of spiritual burnout, that, however you define that, but that connection to something greater than us, on top of the burnout that we always see. And if you look at the statistics, it’s getting worse: physical burnout, mental burnout, carer burnout. And you put all of that together in the bubbling pot. You put all of that together in the bubbling pot, and I think we’re living through very, very challenging times, and so many women just don’t have the tools to navigate what is, I think, the most complex environment that I’ve seen in my 35 years of more of, you know, of sort of being in the workforce.

Jo (Host)

You mentioned the spiritual, whether you call it crisis or darkness or whatever phase we’re in. As you mentioned that connection to something greater, when it is so heavy. Is that what has spurred your PhD that you’re doing in women’s spirituality? That’s an interesting concept that I’ve never heard of, I guess curious. Your connection — is that sort of a personal passion? Is it something that’s maybe been awakened in you as your journey has progressed?

Megan (Guest)

Yeah. So it is an interesting program. It’s a Doctor of Philosophy, and my major area of research is women’s spirituality, and leadership is in there as well. No, not new for me.

Very much part of my story from my teenage years — I have always been not religious but connected. You know, when I was a teenager I was very interested in all the new age self-help, anything spiritual. Couldn't get enough of it. That kind of dampened down when I went into the corporate world. You know, I think patriarchy kind of, you know, stamps it out of us or it’s still there but the fire gets, you know, dampened. And then motherhood and all of the things where we're just so busy. But certainly since that burnout moment in my mid-30s, definitely my spiritual life in all of its forms — whether that’s through yoga and meditation — now it’s, you know, my daily spiritual practices and pilgrimages to India that I do all the time, and just this very deep connection that grounds my life, you know, has certainly been coming more and more and more and more to the forefront. And through my writing and, you know, my teaching, my coaching, everything that I do, it’s always the foundation, even if it’s not spoken. If that makes sense, like if I’m teaching women’s leadership, I may not be talking about their spiritual life, but it’s all connected underneath.

So yeah, decided. I’m in my second year of this program and it was the only program I was interested in. I wasn’t interested in — I’d started a more traditional PhD 10 years ago because I did two master’s degrees and I was like, well, this is the next step, but it was the wrong program at the wrong time. It was very traditional, you know, traditional university, and it just wasn’t for me and I wasn’t going to pursue one. And then I, I, you don’t — and then you don’t happen upon anything. It comes right, and this program, which I had actually looked at 10 years ago, that I had forgotten about, and I just knew that this was the research area that I wanted to pursue.

Jo (Host)

What do you see? I’ve seen a similar pathway as more and more women come into my world and they wake up. They become more self-aware, they tend to open more — you could call them spiritual gifts or a greater level of consciousness. The pattern between women’s self-awareness and almost capabilities in leadership, ability to be more emotionally astute, and their spirituality — do you see a connection between those women walking that similar path more often than not?

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, it’s such a good question. I see that the more women wake up, whatever that looks like — you know, that obviously has 5,000 million different flavors for different women. It could be a midlife awakening. It could be they’ve had their burnout and they’ve had an awakening on the other side of that. They’ve been retrenched and there’s an awakening.

But the more that we wake up, the more we start to see the world around us as it is, which is why I write so much and talk about patriarchy and the systems that hold women back. You know, the more we see that, the more we know ourselves in a very honest and true, felt sense, the more that pervades every aspect of our lives. And, you know, I always love when I see those things converge. You know, when we see a midlife awakening, as an example, and a woman who’s in a leadership role, who finally sees the patriarchal system that she’s working in and is awake to it — and awake to the leadership paradox that she’s always been caught in of “we want you to lead, but not like that, like lead like this,” how we put you in the box — and she finally says, “No more, no more, I’m not going to do it your way anymore.” And this sense of power that comes through that awakening and that convergence. I am seeing that more and more and more, and that’s the future of women’s leadership and the world.

Jo (Host)

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. I’ve got beautiful clients who have been on that very similar journey, where they get that beautiful convergence state, they trust intuition, they trust downloads, and then they’ve got the now to better translate the intuitive here into the risk register for the board so they can still straddle both spheres. It’s not like you can walk into the board and say, “My gut says we should make this investment now.” There’s a way that you have to learn to travel both worlds, and there’s a beautiful art and science to it. I think seeing women do that exceptionally well — yeah, I talk about it a lot in the realm of feminine and masculine traits, which are non-gendered.

Megan (Guest)

We all have them. All genders have both traits, as you, as you know. But what I have seen — and I’ve been talking about this for gosh, I was talking about this when I was in corporate, so 20 years now, and nearly 15 years in my own business — people used to look at me like I was literally on a different planet. Now they go...

Yeah, yeah, of course. I’m like, oh, finally, we’re here, right? Having this conversation. But that ability for us as women and as female leaders to not feel like the only traits that are valuable in that boardroom are the masculine traits — and that we can bring in those feminine traits, you know, empathy, intuition, vulnerability, collaboration, vision for the future — and that they’re not always respected in women. They are in men, by the way; men have much more permission to lead with their feminine traits than women do, still to this day. But it is changing. Like I’m saying, it is changing. And for a long time I was like, are we ever going to get to this point where we see this shift? And I think with leaders like Jacinda Ardern really bringing this conversation and this type of leadership to the fore, I am seeing the shift.

Jo (Host)

What would you say to a woman who is trapped in her masculine hustling, grinding, pushing, forcing, and very disconnected from her intuition, from her feminine, completely numb, living in her head, disconnected from her body? We’ve all seen those — you know this is the fast track to burnout. What’s one piece of advice you would give to her to facilitate this beautiful convergence of being able to break free of the box and stand up for who she truly is?

Megan (Guest)

Yes, I was that woman, just so you know, for anyone listening — that’s who I was for a very long time in my corporate career. The first thing I would say is start small, with small steps. Because if you’re in that space, so is your nervous system and your survival mechanisms, and everything about you is geared to hold that space and that energy. So we don’t go from being really driven, with that armor and cape on — you know, all of my masculine traits, I’m in protection mode all the time: fight, flight, freeze, fawn mode — to suddenly, “Well, I’m just going to bring in all my feminine traits and soften into that.” It doesn’t happen like that. We have to go on this journey.

Jo (Host)

One of the hardest things to do is actually to ask for that help, to say, “Can you go and drop the kids off?” or “Can you pick them up?” It’s layered with so much story and emotion. That part of the work I love that we do is unraveling that and making those requests clean and easy to do—without all the gumph that usually comes with them.

Megan (Guest)

So the first step is to really tune in and focus on your nervous system — to learn to create some space to pause, to feel again. When we’re in that masculine state, it’s not feeling; it’s thinking, it’s all cognitive, no embodiment. So we have to make that shift to become embodied. And people used to say that to me, and I’d go, “What are you talking about? I go to yoga!” But no, no — we have to feel ourselves in our bodies. So using the breath, having mindful moments, getting into nature, looking at your sleep, looking at your moments of restoration, looking at your moments of renewal. You know, we think that resilience is about endurance. It’s not — the science tells us it’s about renewal. How do you renew yourself? So all of that — around nervous system, peace, space, calm — that’s where I would always start. Yep, and you’ve just hit the reason on the head.

Jo (Host)

I have somatic coaches in my business because we don’t need women who know how to think better; we need women who know how to come into their bodies. So, yes, I love that.

Megan (Guest)

The body always has the answer, and it holds us going. It does. And when we—and like—that’s a rude awakening. I find, oh, it certainly was my case, yeah, for, you know, after my burnout. And it took me years after my burnout to actually get that. It didn’t happen straight away, as I think.

Sometimes we think, well, you have a burnout, you have this pinnacle moment, and then, oh well, I’m awake now, so I’m going to—no, no, no. Like, we take ourselves with us. Right? We have to unlearn and relearn everything so that getting into our bodies, staying in our bodies, and living from there happens. Yeah, I love that you do that work. It’s so important.

Jo (Host)

Yeah, without question. As you said, you can mindset all you like, but your nervous system is going to bring you back to those old patterns that always feel safe—fundamentally so. Until you rewire those patterns and rewire your nervous system, you’re going to be stuck in that never-ending loop. Yeah, yeah, without question.

Megan (Guest)

It’s a very demoralizing place to be, I find, especially for us as women when we’ve had that wake-up moment and we think, “Well, I know now. I can see that. So why can’t I create the change I need to create?” We have to be really compassionate and gentle with ourselves, which, when you’ve been in that drive and strive mode, can feel like it’s just 15 steps too far.

Jo (Host)

And weak and fluffy and not useful and productive and all of those things. I don’t have time for soft. Have you seen my to-do list? Come on.

Megan (Guest)

Softness creates space. Like, isn’t that just a magical thing?

Jo (Host)

Yeah, I think many of us, like you, have been very much in our masculine energy for a long time—and I got a lot of rewards from that. Achievements, accolades—it’s so reinforcing. The masculine part of us says, “If I have a bit of space, I can do more in that space. Let’s create more space and tick more things off the list.” And so the cycle just keeps going, never-ending.

I love that you mentioned how women have been placed in boxes and sold lies about leadership—that we have to be a certain way to succeed. What’s your take on what women have been sold about leadership? What are the boxes we’ve been taught to live or operate within?

Megan (Guest)

Such a big topic. Historically, women have been taught a lot of limiting things. We’ve been told that to be successful leaders, we need to lead like men—that is, like the dominant leadership style and structure, which is typically white, masculine, male. It’s A-type behavior: dominant, command and control—all the things I was brought up on, certainly back in my GE days and beyond. If you couldn’t do that, you didn’t fit.

That’s why I write about the leadership paradox. Women are constantly told, “We want you to lead, we want more women in leadership.” But at the same time, the messages coming from the other side are, “Don’t do it like that. Don’t show up authentically. Don’t show your feminine traits. Don’t be nice because we’ll think you’re too soft. Don’t be direct because you’ll be called aggressive.” Women literally can’t win.

This is what we’ve been taught. And now, we’re starting to— I wouldn’t say we’re fully out of it yet, but we’re finally having the conversation. I couldn’t have written Women Rising even five years ago—it was too early. I’ve been waiting for the right moment when we can have this real conversation.

So yeah, this is one of the massive consequences of patriarchy.

One of the other big messages women have been taught—and that’s been demonstrated over and over—is that there’s only room for one. It’s like, “There’s only room for one woman here.”

“Oh, no, we have a woman, so we’re okay.”

Or, “There’s a woman on the board? Great.” But really, maybe there’s only one or two women on the executive team, and suddenly there’s this weird scarcity mindset.

And then we wonder why women compete with each other. This isn’t just a personal thing—it goes way back, generations deep, and we’re still carrying that in our DNA.

Jo (Host)

Absolutely — that’s such a crucial insight. The patriarchy isn’t just an external structure; it’s ingrained in the way we relate to each other, especially among women, creating this undercurrent of competition and division that we often unconsciously absorb.

Unlearning those patterns is huge. For the last 15 years, you’ve been shining a light on this: that it’s the system that’s broken, not the women themselves. And the real breakthrough comes when women can step fully into their authentic selves — because only then do we start creating workplaces where everyone can truly thrive.

Otherwise, like you said, the risk is women just check out — and we see that happening all too often today.

How do you usually guide women through that shift from “I’m broken” to “This is the system — and I’m going to own my power anyway”?

Jo (Host)

That’s such a profound truth and often the hidden cost of “making it” in a system that wasn’t designed for us to thrive authentically. So many women sacrifice parts of themselves—values, creativity, connection, even their emotional truth—to fit into that narrow mold, only to realize that the external markers of success don’t bring the inner fulfillment they hoped for.

It’s like chasing a mirage: you reach the top, but instead of feeling empowered and whole, you feel hollow, disconnected from who you really are. And that can be deeply isolating and painful because the achievement that was supposed to bring joy and validation feels empty or even suffocating.

I love how you frame it — it’s not just about getting there but about being there fully and authentically. And that means redefining what success means, on our own terms, in ways that honor our full humanity—not just our ability to hustle or compete.

What do you think helps women reconnect with that deeper fulfillment once they’ve felt that emptiness at the top?

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, like there is no holy grail, right? There just isn’t—unless we create it for ourselves. And this is our work: what does success look like and feel like for me in this season of my life? That’s what we want to go and build. But I completely agree with you. You know, we see that at the top, and I think even worse than that are the women who did get there, but they don’t even realize that they don’t have fulfillment in their external success.

Jo (Host)

They don’t even know. They’re just hungry for more because they think the answer is more.

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, or they’re just empty and don’t realize it—which is worse, right? At least if you have that awakening, like, “Oh, I thought it would feel different than this. This isn’t what I thought it was going to be,” then you can do something with that.

Jo (Host)

Absolutely, it often does come home to roost, sometimes indirectly—through health issues or strained relationships. That little crack in the armour can be the opening needed. It’s not everyone’s time to wake up, and it’s not everyone’s path, but for those who are ready, that small crack can be just enough to burst open and maybe hang up a second mirror for reflection.

Megan (Guest)

Exactly, “I’m not as happy as I think I am.” And yes, that question—how many cracks do you need before you actually wake up? That’s such a real part of the journey. So many women experience those little cracks—hairline cracks, then bigger cracks—and eventually, the whole vase shatters, the water’s spilled all over the floor, and you’re like, “Oh, okay.” That’s the moment everything shifts.

Jo (Host)

So, what are you excited about for the future, given that we are in dark times? What’s the hope?

Megan (Guest)

So much. Look, I'm an eternal optimist—I couldn't do my work in the world, I'm sure you can understand, if I wasn't. Like, I'm excited for women. I'm really hopeful for women. I feel like we are living in a world right now where the feminine is rising—like truly rising—and not just in women, in all genders. I feel like... like the world—I don't know how other people feel—but I feel like the world...

I don't know how other people feel, but I feel like the world feels darker now in so many ways—in such public ways, inescapable ways—that more people are waking up to say, Not this. Not this way. There has to be something better than this. And I think that is creating this opening for the feminine in all of us to come to the fore. I think it is creating—is going to create—more openings for women to step through into their rightful roles of power and leadership. And I feel like we are on this precipice of this true humanity awakening now. How long that's going to take—that could be five years, that could be fifty years—but I feel like we are in this. I feel like we're in motion for that. So when I look at the big picture, I feel very hopeful for what's coming. I just don't know how dark it's going to get before we get there.

Jo (Host)

Yeah, they always say, it's darkest before the dawn. We hope that there are some slivers of light—that it doesn't have to get too much darker.

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, yeah. That may have been a bigger answer than you were going for, but these are the things I think about, you know? I completely agree with you.

Jo (Host)

I think AI is going to fundamentally change the way businesses run. I think women who are relying on their “get-shit-done” patterns and hustle muscle are going to be the fastest to be replaced. And so, it's an opportunity for all of us to step into our humanity—to live more creatively and to be more curious. These are traits that live in the body, not in the head. So if there was ever a time for humanity, it’s in the rise of, in the era of, AI.

Megan (Guest)

Yeah, it's interesting. I also think that what I'm starting to see more and more of is this regression—people wanting to go back to small groups, community, face-to-face connection, and wisdom over information. I feel like we're going to see this mass opting out and opting in to things our grandparents used to do, to how we used to live a long time ago. And we're already seeing it, right? In so many ways. This human craving, at its essence, is for true, real connection and real wisdom—and that makes me very excited as well.

Jo (Host)

Absolutely. So Megan, if somebody wants to know more about either your books, your programs, or your thoughts on various topics, where can they find that information?

Megan (Guest)

megandallacamina.com would be the best place, and also womenrising.co, which has everything related to Women Rising. I’m @megandallacamina on all the socials—there’s only one of me! Who else has a Dalla Camina? So yeah, I’d love to connect.

Jo (Host)

The joys of having an uncommon name—it definitely helps you stand out in a crowded market full of sameness.

Well, Megan, thank you for your time today. This has been such an enlightening conversation—and one we need to be having more often. I say amen to the rise of the feminine, amen to women waking up and stepping into their rightful places of power, and to everything that comes with that.

Megan (Guest)

Thank you so much, love talking to you!

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.

Balance & Beyond Podcast

#109: Women Rising: The Quiet Shift Reshaping Success and Power

What happens when success leaves you empty?

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