Over 50% of Women Leaders Now Prioritize Alignment Over Authority — Here's Why

After more than 20 years as a senior marketing executive in entertainment, Paige Lewis was hospitalized with extreme burnout. Only then did she notice her values were no longer aligned with her work.

“I didn’t take the time to realize that,” she said. “We don’t often do that.”

But something is shifting among senior women leaders.

In a recent survey of Chief Members, over 50% ranked strategic alignment and purpose as the most important factor in achieving their ambitions in 2026, surpassing resources, authority, and traditional upskilling. Alignment is emerging as the foundation for clearer judgment, sustained influence, and leadership that compounds over time.

Lisa Steelman, who spent decades climbing the corporate ladder, puts it bluntly: "My generation was supposed to break the glass ceiling — that was supposed to give you purpose. But that's a great lie." Now there's permission to ask different questions: "If we find ourselves working forever, how do we want to spend our time?" Lisa Angulo Reid asks.

For many women, time has become the most valuable asset.

But this shift in thinking doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It often requires a crisis — or at least hitting a wall — to recognize it. Many don’t stop chasing external validation until something breaks.

Steelman was terrified to break out of the mold. She built a government affairs strategy AI tool in secret and didn’t even tell her children until it was licensed because she was worried about what might happen if it didn’t succeed. “It’s so ingrained in us that there’s a specific path you need to follow,” she said. “Many women are afraid to go after purpose because we’re afraid of failure.”

But even when women push past that fear and climb the ladder they're supposed to climb, they often discover an uncomfortable truth. “If you keep rising up the ranks or accumulating prestige or status, you think you’ll arrive at a place and the skies will part,” said Gena Chieco. “But a lot of times what happens is you arrive and you realize it was a mirage.”

Chieco discovered this herself. Even in purpose-driven work for the Obama administration and at a clean tech startup, she was still chasing external validation. For years, she pursued promotions, status, and titles — a definition of ambition that may be familiar, but wasn't actually hers.

The alternative is looking inward to define what matters to them. Lewis, now a coach, tells her clients to aim for their values to align with their job at least 80% of the time. When they hit that threshold, even the mundane aspects of work become more tolerable. "You have to fall in love with the everyday-ness of your job," she said.

Getting from external validation to an internal definition of ambition is a process — one that requires shedding the conditioning that many have carried and understanding what they actually want instead of what they’ve been told to pursue. As Chieco puts it, “embracing your unique genius and pairing it with being of service. But to do that you have to shed the limiting beliefs and ‘shoulds’.”

The old model — stay, ascend, maybe jump companies, but keep climbing — is no longer the only option.

Women now see a range of possibilities, including pauses, pivots, portfolio approaches, or building multiple things simultaneously. “More often the pivot isn't a sharp left or right, it's an 'and this and this.’ You never quite let go when you round the corner,” Angulo Reid said.

For some, it’s not about changing jobs at all, but finding ways to connect to their purpose within their roles, looking for parts that align with their values, or carving out a special project.

Ana Munro, a financial advisor, expanded her work beyond individual clients to broader community impact through nonprofit boards and financial literacy programs. Her purpose, she says, is “giving families back time so they can pursue their own purpose.” When work becomes a lifestyle, "it needs to reflect who I am personally, my impact goals and bigger purpose, and be intellectually and economically stimulating."

For others, it's about building something new. Angulo Reid spent two decades in advertising where she never felt like she could bring her full self to work. Now, as founder of Dear Flor, a cannabis company celebrating her Filipino culture, she finds that "purpose is intrinsic at a personal level and bleeds into the company — not the other way around." For multihyphenate women, ambition shifts from chasing titles to intentionally building skills and experience.

And, for Emily Lewis-Pinnell, alignment meant building businesses around her own lived challenges. As a mother of a child with disabilities, she spent hours on administrative tasks — advocacy letters, medical records, accommodation requests. When she discovered how AI could help, she didn't just use it for herself. She built a platform to reduce that burden for other family caregivers.

"I'm pulling together the personal and professional in a way that genuinely excites me," she said. Leaving the security of corporate roles meant losing the built-in community and structure she'd relied on for years. But she gained something else: "The flexibility of owning the outcomes. I get to decide where to have impact."

What aligned work looks like for each of these women is different. The common thread is integrating who they are with what they do.

The path forward is personal, but certain principles emerge from these women's experiences that resonate for anyone seeking greater alignment in their own careers.

• Talk to people doing different things — seek out perspectives beyond your current world.
• Start small within your current role before making big leaps. As Chieco emphasizes, "it's about baby steps. You don't wake up tomorrow and your life is upside down. You gradually move toward it."
• Map your fears to remove barriers.
• Let people know you're open to opportunities.
• Recognize that cultivating deeper purpose is "an inward journey," as Chieco puts it. "It's treasure buried within us, beneath the layers of armor we wear."

Yet excavating that treasure isn’t work you do alone. Forty-three percent of Chief Members cite peer support through a trusted network as critical to enabling success this year.

Steelman credits Chief with making her business possible. She found women who helped with nearly every aspect of getting it off the ground, offering her "a safe space and a community of like-minded women." But she had to learn to "drop my ego and pride and ask and receive help."

Munro discovered this through Chief itself. When someone suggested organizing member trips during COVID, she said yes even though it meant stepping outside her comfort zone. Those connections opened unexpected doors. "If you get out of your comfort zone, two things reveal: either clarity that this path isn't for you, or new people and opportunities."

Women leaders today aren't simply pursuing the careers they were told to chase.

They're asking harder questions: What actually fulfills me? Where does my expertise meet genuine need? How do I want to spend the finite time I have?

The answers look different for everyone, from Munro expanding financial advisory work into community impact, to Steelman building AI tools in secret before revealing them to the world, to Lewis-Pinnell creating platforms from her lived experience as a caregiver. What unites them is the courage to shed old definitions of success and build new ones rooted in their own values.