There are simple rules of engagement: You need to have your voice, but it has to be very intentional - be brief and to the point, with fresh ideas. Don't restate things someone else has said. Make eye contact with the person who has the floor.

There are three pillars, regardless of your work culture, whether you're in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street: how you look, how you speak, and how you behave. It's all three things, and nailing them makes you a contender.

The feedback women are getting at work is amazingly ineffective or vague. You need to signal to your boss or senior colleagues that you want honest feedback, and that you promise not to take it too personally.

Modern women are squeezed between the devil and the deep blue sea, and there are no lifeboats out there in the form of public policies designed to help these women combine their roles as mothers and as workers.

Recently we've been hearing a lot about women "having it all." Myself, I think that is not really an accurate description of female lives today. It seems to me that what we have been up to is DOING it all.

Women have made enormous progress on the lower and middle rungs of the career ladder, but we are failing to make the leap into senior positions. Everyone jumps to the conclusion that it's motherhood that holds women back, but often the big roadblock is the lack of executive presence.

If you show up without makeup or looking sloppy, no matter how impressive your ideas are, no one is going to pay attention to you. People take you more seriously if you look polished.