When I was 17, I entered an elite French preparatory program to study literature, languages and philosophy.

For years, the unspoken rule of professional life was simple: the person who sent emails at midnight and answered Slack before breakfast was, by every measure the organisation recognised, winning.

There's an assumption most women carry into their first real job. If you do the work well, the work eventually gets seen.

Most people, when the exhaustion finally becomes impossible to ignore, respond in the same predictable way. They take time off. They set the out-of-office and come back on a Monday morning feeling, for a brief and hopeful window, like a functioning human being again.

There’s no doubt that, for a long time, playing it safe worked. You kept your head down and did the job properly without taking any unnecessary risks.

Success does not just happen. It belongs to those who refuse to back down, who rise stronger from setbacks, and who boldly carve their own paths.

As AI grows and more AI tools arrive, anxious questions such as, “Will it take my job?”, “Will what I do be dumbed down?” or “Will I understand what it needs?” dominate workers’ conversations and spread uncertainty and worry about the fast pace of change.

Last year, I had a dream I have never fully been able to forget. In it, I was attending my own funeral. I saw myself walking beside the men carrying my coffin toward the place where I was about to be laid to rest.