Power Should Never Cost a Woman Herself | Executive Conversation
What happens when leadership continually asks women to perform, carry, and endure without giving them space to renew? Eva Simone and Tarak Bach-Hamba discuss a model of leadership that allows women to remain connected to their bodies, judgment, vitality, and voice.
Eva Simone · Tarak Bach-Hamba|49 min
About this conversation
The conversation begins with Eva Simone's thesis that power should never cost a woman herself. She describes Embodied Architecture as a way for women to hold power in their bodies without leaving parts of themselves behind. The discussion then expands into leadership, exhaustion, nervous-system renewal, visibility, storytelling, organizational responsibility, and the role Build With Her can play in giving women a safe place to share their work and experience.
Key ideas
Power should return to the woman
Leadership should not leave a woman depleted, fragmented, or disconnected from herself. Eva argues that power should renew and return to the woman rather than consume her.
The endurance trap
High-capacity women are often expected to carry more because they are capable of carrying more. Over time, this can create a cycle of hypervigilance, over-functioning, exhaustion, and loss of vitality.
Leadership is embodied
Decisions do not happen only in the mind. Eva describes the body as an internal operating system that communicates alignment, discomfort, boundaries, yeses, and noes.
Renewal is part of leadership
Leaders need opportunities to return to themselves instead of remaining in a permanent state of performance.
Activation → Rest → Integration → Repeat
Capability should not become over-responsibility
Being able to carry a responsibility does not mean a woman should be required to carry everything. Delegation, boundaries, and trust allow both leaders and teams to grow.
Visibility requires safety
Women already have voices. The missing element is often a platform and environment where they feel safe enough to speak honestly about their work, experience, ambitions, and challenges.
Stories create self-awareness
Writing a personal or professional story can help someone understand the journey that led her to where she is today. Tarak describes writing as a way to turn experience into language, self-awareness, visibility, and impact.
Women should not have to become smaller to become visible
Build With Her exists to create a place where women can share their expertise, journeys, and perspectives without reducing themselves to fit an existing professional model.
Organizations carry a responsibility
When women are exhausted or unable to lead as themselves, the cost is not only personal. Organizations lose creativity, judgment, leadership capacity, retention, trust, and institutional knowledge.
Conversation notes
01Returning women to themselves
Eva introduces the idea that women frequently move forward professionally without bringing their full selves with them. Leadership then becomes something performed through only part of the person.
Embodied Architecture is presented as a framework through which women can hold authority and responsibility in their bodies while remaining connected to their full selves.
02The nervous system and the boardroom
The discussion describes how work does not remain contained inside the workplace. Pressure can continue into sleep, homes, relationships, and family life.
When the nervous system never receives permission to exhale, the person can remain in a state of constant activation.
03Why the old leadership model no longer works
The old model rewards endurance, constant availability, and uninterrupted performance.
Eva argues that it often prevents renewal and keeps women separated from their vitality. A new model would allow people to carry significant responsibility without assuming that they must carry everything.
04The hidden cost of high capacity
Women who can process quickly, solve difficult problems, and manage many responsibilities are often given more to carry.
Capability can therefore become a liability when teams assume that the most capable person will always step in and complete the work.
Eva describes recognizing that she was carrying responsibilities that belonged to other people. Stepping back allowed others to take ownership and allowed her energy to return.
05Leadership, boundaries, and delegation
Tarak connects Eva's experience to the founder journey.
Founders often begin by performing every function themselves. As the organization grows, continuing to do everything can prevent the team from developing.
Real growth requires giving people the tools, trust, and environment to take responsibility.
06Writing as a form of understanding
Tarak explains that the first story a woman shares does not need to focus exclusively on what she is doing today.
It can begin with the journey from zero to one:
- What shaped her?
- What led her here?
- What did she experience?
- What did she learn?
- What can another woman take from the story?
07The role of Build With Her
Build With Her is described as a place where women can:
- Share their stories
- Build a visible body of work
- Develop their personal brands
- Connect with women internationally
- Be discovered through their expertise
- Speak inside a moderated environment
- Choose when and how they participate
08Why companies should participate
The conversation also explores how companies benefit when women inside their organizations share credible stories about their work.
Employee stories can reveal expertise, culture, leadership, and lived experience in a way that a corporate LinkedIn page cannot always reproduce.
For companies, employee expertise can strengthen trust, employer branding, external visibility, customer connection, and market credibility.
Publish → Build a profile → Gain visibility → Build credibility → Create opportunities
09A new model of leadership
The central question becomes: is this power expanding me, or is it consuming me?
A healthier leadership model would allow women to direct their energy deliberately rather than spending all of it simply surviving the role.
10The six-month challenge
The conversation closes with urgency.
Rather than waiting decades to see whether leadership systems improve, Eva and Tarak discuss creating visible impact within six months by working with women, founders, executives, and organizations that believe a different model is possible.
In this conversation
Eva Simone
Creator of Embodied Architecture · Founder, Embodiment Is Everything
Eva Simone is the creator of Embodied Architecture and the founder of Embodiment Is Everything. Her work focuses on helping women hold power and leadership in their bodies without leaving themselves behind.
Tarak Bach-Hamba
Founder, Build With Her
Tarak Bach-Hamba is the founder of Build With Her, a global publication and platform created to give women a safe, lasting place to share their work, stories, and expertise.