You have spent four episodes building the language for what you have earned. You have named it, priced it, and practiced asking for it. This time, you get to hear what it sounds like from a woman who has done it across every transition of her career.

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In the fifth episode of Earned Equity, Angelia Williams Graves sits down with Dr. Ruth Jones Nichols, C-Suite executive, President of the IAMRUTH Foundation, and Founder and Principal of IAMRUTH LLC, a strategic advisory consulting firm. Dr. Jones Nichols has walked into rooms where the job market would have named her, priced her, and shelved her. She declined that offer every single time.

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Jones Nichols starts with the conversation she has with herself before she has it with anyone else, and the questions she asks in every season of her career. She walks through the moment an offer was built around what she earned in her last job instead of the job she was being hired to do, and what she did next. She explains how she responds when a salary conversation starts treating experience as a ceiling, and how she uses an organization's own pay structures to keep the conversation about the work.

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She also talks about the mentor who would not let her stop short of her PhD, the meaning behind the name her mother gave her, the faith that has carried her through rooms where she has had to reintroduce herself, and a homecoming that brought her career full circle.

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Then Williams Graves draws the conversation into a principle any woman can carry into her next transition, whatever her title.

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In this episode

• The questions she asks herself before every career transition

• Why your next offer should be priced on the job you are stepping into, not the one you are leaving

• How to respond when a salary conversation treats your experience as a ceiling

• What to negotiate when the salary will not move

• Why preparation is what makes courage possible in the room

• The mentors who show you the way, and why women have to build those relationships on purpose

• Three specific actions to take in the next two weeks

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Every episode ends with something to do.

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Episode 6, "When the Manager Half Your Age Asks Why You Have Not Pivoted," drops October 20. New episodes every other Tuesday.

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Your earned equity is rare. And rare is valuable. Don't forget it.

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