I'm Deb Smallwood,
I named the cycle.
Now I help women break it.
I am a woman executive, an author and a researcher.
I spent more than four decades in women leadership roles at Liberty Mutual, KPMG, ICW Group. I know what it means to deliver at the highest levels. To be the person everyone depends on.
And I know what it feels like when that is still not enough.
As Founder and CEO of Strategy Meets Action, I led a research and advisory firm through launch, growth, and acquisition.
But the work I am most proud of began with a question I could not stop asking: why do some high-achieving women keep delivering extraordinary results and still find themselves passed over, invisible, or stalled while others do not?
That question became two years of research. Sixty-two narrative interviews with senior leaders across industries and generations. And a pattern so consistent it had to be named.
That research project turned into SelfPowerment. Not a self-help platform. A research-backed framework built from my personal experience and the lived stories of senior leaders, organized around four Principles—Acknowledge, Awaken, Accept, and Align and designed to give high-achieving women the path from endurance to alignment.
The book—SelfPowerment: The Inner Shift for High-Achieving Women Who Want More Than Just Success is published. The research-based white paper is free to download. The programs are built and are running. And the community of women doing this work is already here.
SelfPowerment...
The Research is Personal
This research did not begin in a library. It began in conversations—with women who had done everything right and still felt something was off. Women who were indispensable and invisible at the same time. Women who had never been able to name what they were living.
These are some of them. They shaped this work from the beginning—asking harder questions, challenging inherited narratives, and leading with courage and clarity. They are the reason this research exists.
And they are the reason it matters—not just for us, but for every woman who comes after us. Our daughters. Our granddaughters. The generations who will lead the organizations we are building today.
The shift starts with us.
Mission
Guide high-achieving women with SelfPowerment to move from endurance to alignment and lead on their own terms.
Framework
4 Principles. 8 Strategies. Built from my own experience and 62 narrative interviews with senior leaders across industries and generations.
The Promise
From the research to real life, a clear, structured path from proving to owning. For women ready to lead from the inside out.
"You are the only one who can live your life. No one else can do it for you."
-Eckhart Tolle -
Spiritual Teacher & Author of "A New Earth"
Want to stay connected?
Join the SelfPowerment community for new conversations on leadership, alignment
and what it really takes to lead on your own terms.
