Every day, women are stepping into stronger and more powerful leadership roles -- and the 2019 espnW: Women + Sports Summit has made it clear that these women are here not just to stay but to dominate.
"It's just understanding your value, what you bring to the table outside of being a male or a female. In our case a female. I think once you recognize that value, now you can kind of propel yourself with the characteristics that you bring as a female," Nneka Ogwumike, president of the WNBA Players Association, told ESPN on Tuesday after her panel.
Strength in numbers is key, the Los Angeles Sparks star explained. It's also about having the confidence to be who you are and trusting yourself.
Just turn to anything WWE superstar Becky Lynch has said. Ever.
"When we're young, we spend so much time doubting ourselves, telling ourselves the story about why we're not good enough, why we're wrong, why somebody else is right. Never have I uttered the words, 'I wish I didn't trust my gut.' Never said that, and I don't know anybody who has ever said that. We know what we're meant to do. Trust yourself," the Raw Women's champion said after her panel.
But the thing is, not everyone can be a superstar athlete. When another woman does something impressive in a meeting at Gatorade, Jill Abbott, head of consumer and athlete engagement, said the women in the room send each other emails applauding what went down.
"[It then] feels [as if] they've got this extra level of support from the girl bosses around them and we're always going to have each other's backs," Abbott said.
But it's not always that easy.
"I think, as women, I think we're taught to be overly self-critical. So I try not to think [to] myself, 'That was a failure,' on a regular basis, but acknowledge it's just part of the ups and downs of business. That helps me, because I think we can be way, way too self-critical, and I think we've been socialized that way," said Christy Hedgpeth, WNBA chief operating officer.
And really, failure can be good, Shari Van Cleave, head of digital labs at Wells Fargo explained.
Van Cleave will put new leaders on her team into situations where they may well fail.
"I know they're safe failures for them. They're going to learn from their own mistakes and then they can recount why. And see, and then decide what they would do differently in their own style, but at least they got to run up against that failure," she said.
But sometimes it's as simple as not buying into what the men -- and maybe even women -- in the industry around you are defining you as.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told ESPN that she never wanted to be defined as simply a woman running for political office. But she has to consciously remember that she is paving the way for other women who want to take the same brave leap.
"How do you make a balance?" Benson mused. "The bottom line is a challenge inherent to this stage in the trajectory in equality of being a female leader. We only change it if we don't buy into it ourselves."
She doesn't see herself as a female secretary of state -- she wants to be seen as an executive, a leader, a boss: "It's a choice you make every day to be just defined as who we are and what we accomplish and not by others' perceptions of us because of our gender."
She continued: "Leadership shouldn't be defined as 'This is what a man does, and maybe a women can do it too and match it, and if she doesn't, it's because she's a woman,'" Benson said. "Leadership is based on who you are as a person, not based on your gender."
But whether you're a star athlete or a CEO of a major company or one of the youngest women in the state's history to be inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame (yes, all of that is Benson), you can rest easy learning to live your life based on how WNBA star Liz Cambage stays confident.
"Something that makes me confident is knowing that I am 100 percent myself and not faking anything," the Las Vegas Aces star told ESPN.