Chealsea W.
Keynote Speaker, Writer, Coach
Chealsea Wierbonski is a Keynote Speaker, Writer, and Coach, as well as a product leader at Google, where she's worked for over 13 years. Chealsea started her journey as a woman in tech nearly 30 years ago!
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As the daughter of a coal miner and a first generation college graduate, Chealsea struggled a lot early on in her career. Her non-traditional background and working class upbringing created a mindset that was filled with limitations around her abilities and self worth. After a few painful career setbacks, Chealsea realized that in order to have the kind of life she wanted, she'd need to do some deep inner work to shift her mindset.
Chealsea is now dedicated to sharing the insights and strategies that she used to navigate this journey from a first generation college student in Appalachia to the successful female leader that she is today.
Chealsea aims to empower women with the tools and confidence necessary to become strong and capable leaders in all aspects of their lives.
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See official bio here.
As the daughter of a coal miner, a West Virginia native, and a first generation college graduate, I grew up, unbeknownst to me, with the inherent belief that certain things were not available to me. When I entered the workforce, I was unaware of the ways in which my working class upbringing was impacting how I related to myself, how I related to my co-workers, and what I thought was possible for me.
As I advanced in my career, I experienced a tremendous amount of stress, self-doubt, and anxiety, and was unaware of the source for a long time. Instead of fleeing these situations, however, I chose to embrace the feelings of discomfort to explore and examine myself with the hope of gaining insight and discovering the root cause.
Eventually, I realized that I had deep internal limiting beliefs that were the result of internalized messages related to my class and gender. I began developing a series of strategies and tools that not only helped me to change habits, but also my mindset. I continued refining my process over the next decade into a set of strategies that opened up a positive pathway to becoming the confident, healthy leader that I am today.
Through my public speaking, writing, coaching, and online courses, I'm dedicated to sharing these strategies with women all over the world with the hope that I can create a more positive and equitable workplace, where leadership by women is the norm and not the exception.