On her 54th birthday, Maria gets personal, fired up, and a little cheeky. She shares the story behind her brand-new speaker reel – three minutes, eighteen years of work, and all the vulnerability that comes with watching your life’s mission condensed into a single video.
Then she reads an open letter she wrote to toxic male influencers and leaders, on behalf of boy moms everywhere, about the kind of strength, integrity, and empathy we actually want our sons to see modeled in the world. Because true strength is not force; it is the courage to know who you are, bring people along, and take responsibility for your impact. This one comes straight from the heart.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen to this episode for:
- A behind-the-scenes look at what it really feels like to launch a speaker reel after 18 years of work and why vulnerability is part of the process
- An open letter to toxic male influencers and leaders, written by a boy mom who is done staying quiet
- A powerful reframe of what true strength actually looks like in leadership and in life
- A birthday reflection on why this work matters more than ever in a world drowning in toxic role models
“We want to raise boys who become strong adult men who love honestly, feel deeply, and advocate equitably — not through greed, abuse of power, or misogyny.” — Maria Ross
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Episode References:
- My new speaker reel!: https://youtu.be/iMmsYiHhew0?si=JEul0NQ4_G5Ot98t
- Outspeak Media: https://outspeakmedia.com/
- My Open Letter to All Toxic Male Leaders and Influencers (please like, comment, and share to amplify this!)
- On LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/p/gMUek4cH
- On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeZStfkAftx/
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Empathy Edge. I’m Maria Ross, and this is one of our solo hot take episodes. And this one is a little different because today, October 21, I am turning 54. Yes, 54, and I have thoughts. I always have thoughts, but today I have a few announcements, a little gratitude, and then I’m going to read you something that I wrote that’s been sitting in my heart for a while. So buckle up. Here we go. All right. I have to share something I’m genuinely thrilled about, and also, if I’m being honest, I’m a little terrified by. I just launched my new speaker reel. It’s three minutes, 18 years of work, and watching it all condensed into a single reel is a strange and humbling experience. There’s pride, absolutely, but there’s also vulnerability because so much is missing from those three minutes: the early failures, the reinventions, the doubts, skipped over the whole brain aneurysm recovery that cracked me wide open and changed everything, and the moment my son was born, which became the reason I couldn’t stop doing this work, even when it was hard. But it’s me, just like this is me, and I’m more fired up than ever, so I want to just extend a huge thank you to the team at Outspeak Media, Sam Bourbon, Kaylee K, Andre Bellarive, all the other folks on the team whose names I probably don’t know for helping bring this reel to life and capturing something I didn’t even know how to ask for, and I also want to thank my longtime video partner Brett Renville and videographer Jesse Garrison for the incredible live event footage they took. I will put the link to the new video in the show notes. I’d love to hear what you think after you watch the three minutes. So moving on, as I mentioned, my birthday, 54 trips around the sun. So yeah, 54. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t think I would be here, and you know my story. This is not in a dark way, but in a very literal way, because as many of you know, I survived a ruptured brain aneurysm 18 years ago, and I got a whole second act I almost didn’t get. So, as I’ve said before on these solo episodes, every birthday does feel like a gift and a little bit of a dare-a dare to keep showing up, to keep using my voice, to keep fighting for a world where empathy is not a punchline, but it’s a strategy and it’s a way of life. Even as I imperfectly practice it, and speaking of using my voice, I’ve got something I need to say today. Something I wrote as a mom, as a woman, as someone who spent her career making the case that strength and compassion are not opposites. Given everything that’s hitting our headlines lately, from the attack at Cornell to the manosphere of male influencers, who I’m just going to say it are poisoning our sons with their rhetoric around anti-compassion and being a man and holding your feelings in and all that stuff. I wanted to write an open letter to all male leaders and all male influencers out there, and it’s meant for the toxic ones, right? We don’t hate all men here. We hate men or women who try to tell us that strength and compassion are mutually exclusive, who try to tell us that we should hate another group of people because of their gender, or because of where they’re from, or because of the language they speak, or their sexual identity, or the beliefs they hold. That’s what we do here, and so I make no apologies for this open letter that I posted in social media, and I’ll put a link to the post in social.
Maria Ross 04:51
But I’m going to read you the letter in full, so you can tell me what you think. This is an open letter to toxic mail influenza. And leaders, on behalf of boy moms everywhere, please, for the love of God, stop. Your bad behavior, tantrums, greed for money and fame, arrogance, and explicit and implicit disrespect for women is making our jobs as moms harder. We recognize you may have had negative role models of your own. Perhaps you were damaged by trauma, or you truly believe there’s no other way to succeed. Maybe your parents didn’t spend enough time with you or treated you badly. Maybe they never showed you the value of honesty, integrity, and empathy as true strength. Whatever it is, that is heartbreaking, and that is not the road we want our boys to walk down. When you spew hate for clicks or cash, or laughs and high fives, you teach our boys a way of being that doesn’t work for them or their mental health, or their ability to create fully formed, healthy human relationships. We want to raise boys who become strong adult men who love honestly, feel deeply, advocate equitably, and have the emotional capacity to work their shit out in healthy ways, not through drugs, greed, abuse of power, misogyny, or an obsession with building phallic rocket ships to space. Strength is not the same as force, or oppression, or lack of compassion, or cutting yourself off from your human feelings. True strength is being brave enough to know who you are, stand up for what is right, bring people along, hold both compassion and ambition in balance, and take responsibility for your impact on others. No one is denying you did something to get to where you are. Some of you built amazing businesses and exceeded your metrics, and perhaps even made yourselves and others a lot of money. But at what cost to your soul? Look, you do you, but the problem is you have built a platform and cultural presence that influences our boys in negative ways. Cut that shit out. All we ask is that you consider either changing your ways or stepping out of the limelight. If you want to make an intentional decision to be better human beings and role models, there are plenty of resources we can point you to. So the next time you get arrested for embezzlement, get caught in a sex scandal, make a shock jock laugh by denigrating women, or start a toddler war on social media, can you please take it inside and not influence our young boys who have the chance to grow into healthier adult men than you. You had your chance. Give them theirs, please and thank you. Signed, moms of the world. P.S. This letter also applies to anyone who is not as famous, but who idolizes these guys, who name drop to show your degrees of separation from them. You have a sphere of influence in your own lives too, and more importantly, on a real daily basis. So please be better. And the letter ends. So I read that to you because it matters not just to me as a mom raising a son in this world, but to all of us who are trying to build workplaces or communities or cultures where people are treated with dignity, where strength means something real, and where empathy is not weakness but the most powerful tool we have, you cannot lead well if you cannot see beyond yourself. You cannot build anything lasting if it’s built on fear, ego, or the diminishment diminishment of others, you certainly cannot raise the next generation of leaders if you are modeling the opposite of everything we know makes humans thrive. So, this year on my 54th birthday, this is my wish-not just for my son, for all our kids, that they get to grow up in a world where the loudest voices are also the wisest ones, where influence comes with integrity, and where empathy is not something we have to fight for, but something we simply expect. As ever, the best birthday gift is that you’re here, and that you’re listening, and that you’re supporting this podcast. Thank you for all that you do to support this work. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind.
Maria Ross 09:55
For more on how to achieve radical. Success through empathy. Visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
