I have interviewed many leaders. I have written their stories, secured their features in national publications, negotiated partnerships that landed them on Times Square billboards, and booked them on morning news shows. I have spent my career making sure the right people get seen by the right rooms. But nothing quite prepares you for what happens when you put four women on a stage, ask them honest questions, and create the space for truth to show up.
That is exactly what happened when I had the privilege of moderating the “Claiming Your Space: Speaking with Authority, Visibility & Confidence” panel at the 2026 Women in Restaurant Leadership Conference in Charleston, South Carolina, sponsored by ROKT. Devon Croom, Senior IT Manager at Chick-fil-A; Lauren Selman, Vice President of Operations at the International Food and Beverage Technology Association; A’ysha Callahan, Food Innovation Scientist at KFC US; and Olivia Ross, Chief Marketing Officer of El Pollo Loco, sat down and gave the room something rare: the unfiltered truth about what it actually takes to lead authentically. I walked away with six lessons I began implementing before I even left Charleston, and those have continued to inspire me to claim my voice as a communications strategist, entrepreneur, and thought leader.
1. Visibility is not vanity. It is a strategy.
I asked each panelist for one leadership strategy that women can take away and apply in the next 30 days. Devon Croom issued a challenge to the room that I immediately wrote in my notes. For the next 30 days, document your wins, your impact, and your influence every single week. Then share it with your leadership team.
She was not talking about self-promotion for its own sake. She was talking about making sure the value you create does not go unseen. In an industry where being busy is a badge of honor, the people doing the most important work are often the last ones to advocate for themselves. Devon’s point was clear: visibility is not about ego. It is about ensuring that your contribution is legible to the people who make decisions about your future.
I have been applying this myself. Wins documented. Impact tracked. Visibility intentional.
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2. Influence is more important than applause.
Olivia Ross said something early in the panel that reframed how I think about leadership entirely. She talked about spending years performing perfection, staying quiet, staying poised, being afraid to show vulnerability because she thought that was what leadership looked like. Until she realized that influence, not applause, was the real currency.
Her presence in conversations moves them forward. That is the standard she now holds herself to. Not whether she was praised, but whether she shifted the room.
For anyone in food and hospitality who is waiting to be recognized before they feel like a leader, Olivia’s message is worth sitting with. Recognition follows influence. Influence comes from showing up fully and consistently, not from playing it safe.
3. Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. Act anyway.
There is research that shows girls begin losing their voice around age 14, shifting from bold to cautious. I brought that into the room and asked each panelist what they would say to their 14-year-old self about claiming their voice.
Devon did not hesitate.
She talked about the version of herself who went quiet when she should have spoken, who let insecurity pause her voice before she had the language to name what was happening. “What you have to say does in fact matter,” she told that younger version of herself. “Push through even when you are scared. Do it anyway.”
Then she gave us the framework she has carried ever since. “F.E.A.R. False Evidence Appearing Real.”
What moved the room was not just the acronym. It was the honesty. It was a senior leader at one of the most recognized brands in the world admitting that she was once afraid and that the only way through was to act anyway. For every young woman in that room who has ever talked herself out of raising her hand, that moment was permission.
4. Stop comparing yourself to others. Start competing with who you were yesterday.
A’ysha Callahan gave the room one of the most practical frameworks for managing the comparison trap that social media creates every single day.
She talked about the scroll: the moment you stop congratulating people and start questioning yourself instead. She shared her own practice of pausing before engaging with someone else’s win. If seeing their success inspires her, she celebrates them fully. But if she starts questioning her own path after looking at another person’s post, she recognizes that as the signal to stop.
The antidote, she said, is simple but powerful: “Compare yourself against yourself.”
Not against someone else’s highlight reel. Not against the person who just got promoted, landed the deal, or climbed the mountain. Against the version of you from yesterday. Against your own growth. Against your own standard. That is the only competition worth having. In an industry driven by rankings, revenue comparisons, and competitive benchmarks, that is a radical act of self-preservation and one of the most grounding pieces of advice I will carry with me.
5. Someone else’s success is not evidence of your insufficiency.
If there was one line from this panel that deserves to be printed and taped to every bathroom mirror, it is this one from Olivia Ross.
A’ysha had just set it up so perfectly with her compare-yourself-to-yourself framework. And then Olivia built on a metaphor Satyne Doner, producer and editor of WiRL, had shared during the opening night of the conference: the big tree and the figs. “We are all picking from the same tree, but we each only get to choose a few things. Own yours. Enjoy yours. Stop wondering if someone else’s fig is better, because it is only as good as you make it.”
Together, the two messages created something complete: stop measuring your path against someone else’s and start owning what is already in your hands. Then Olivia made it actionable. She did not just talk about mindset. She talked about momentum. She created the Digital Innovation Committee, named it herself, built the structure, invited the people she believed in, and became a visible leader in her organization before anyone gave her an official title.
Nobody stopped her.
If you are waiting for permission to lead, that story is your answer.
6. From People Pleasing to People Advocacy: Your work will speak for itself. Let it.
Lauren Selman, Vice President of Operations at the International Food and Beverage Technology Association, brought something to the conversation that many of us recognized immediately but rarely say out loud: people pleasing.
She talked openly about taking on more than she needed to just to avoid burdening others. About the deep desire to make sure people liked her, liked her work, and wanted to keep working with her. About feeling figuratively second to a strong-willed leader early in her career and looking for external validation to compensate.
What shifted for her was a realization that arrived through the quiet accumulation of genuine feedback from the people she actually worked with. As she opened up and showed more of herself, her confidence grew. And she arrived at a truth that is simple but hard-won.
“You are going to come up with your own opinion of who I am and how I work anyway. Because frankly, my work is going to speak for itself.”
That is the shift from performing for approval to trusting your own standard. For anyone who has ever softened their voice, over-delivered out of anxiety, or dimmed themselves to keep the peace, Lauren’s lesson is the permission slip you did not know you needed.
Stop managing their opinion. Do the work. Let it speak.
My Final Take:
The most powerful thing I do in my work is create space for real conversations to happen and then get them in front of the people who need to hear them. This panel was one of those conversations.
The women on that stage were not performing for the audience. They were speaking from the places where leadership actually gets built: through fear faced head-on, through comparison resisted, through visibility claimed before it felt comfortable, through work trusted to carry its own weight, through voices reclaimed long after a 14-year-old girl first learned to go quiet. If you work in food, hospitality, or any space where women are still fighting to be seen and heard on their own terms, I hope these lessons inspired you the way it inspired me.
Claim your space. You have already earned it.
Tenyse Williams is an award-winning Brand Strategist, an Adjunct Instructional Specialist at Columbia University and George Washington University, and Founder & Chief Communications Officer of Verified Consulting, leading a team of digital marketing professionals amplifying awareness for their clients. Follow her on LinkedIn.
