Media Kit

 Long Bio

Deb Smallwood spent more than four decades in executive leadership, rising to CEO, CIO, and Senior Partner roles at Fortune 500 companies including Liberty Mutual, KPMG, Tower Group Advisory, and ICW Group, as well as founding her own firm, Strategy Meets Action, before asking the question that changed everything: why does success feel like this?

She had done everything right. Delivered extraordinary results. Exceeded every expectation. And still found herself at a moment too many high-achieving women recognize but rarely say out loud: everything you worked for arrives, and something essential is still missing. She lived it, and she found her way out.

That personal reckoning became a research question she could not stop asking, and then two years of original qualitative work: sixty-two narrative interviews with senior leaders, 52 women and 10 men, across industries, generations, and career stages. What emerged was a pattern so consistent, and so rarely named, it demanded a framework.

At the core of that framework is the InnerShift: from external proving to internal choosing, from endurance to alignment, from "Will they choose me?" to "Do I choose this?" Built on four Principles (Acknowledge, Awaken, Accept, and Align) and four Gifts (Confidence, Clarity, Choice, and Strategic Boundaries), the SelfPowerment framework gives high-achieving women a clear, structured path to stop waiting to be chosen and start choosing themselves.

Those findings became the foundation of her book, SelfPowerment: The Inner Shift for High-Achieving Women Who Want More Than Just Success, with a foreword by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Karen Anderson. The accompanying white paper, What No One Talks About — But Women Know, is available as a free download at SelfPowerment.com/research.

Deb is a keynote speaker, executive mentor, and Mastermind program leader whose work reaches women leaders and the organizations that depend on them. She lives with her husband of 49 years and treasures every moment with her two daughters and four grandchildren.

 And because no single decision signals exclusion, the pattern goes unnamed — experienced as personal when it is structural.

Those findings became the foundation of her book, SelfPowerment: The Inner Shift for High-Achieving Women Who Want More Than Just Success, with a foreword by Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author Karen Anderson. The accompanying white paper, What No One Talks About — But Women Know, is available as a free download at SelfPowerment.com/research.

At the core of the book is the SelfPowerment framework.  It guides the Inner Shift — from endurance to alignment, from external proving to internal choosing, from "Will they choose me?" to "Do I choose this?" Built on four Principles — Acknowledge, Awaken, Accept, and Align — the framework gives high-achieving women a clear, structured path to lead and live with clarity, confidence, and conscious choice.

Deb is a keynote speaker, executive mentor, and Mastermind program leader whose work reaches women leaders and the organizations that depend on them. She lives with her husband of 49 years and enjoys family time with her two beautiful and smart daughters and her four amazing grandchildren.