Once I stopped treating my ambition like something needing apology, I became intentional with my energy by building spaces where people succeed without losing who they are.
The Day She Stopped Explaining Her Ambition
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Influential Woman · Healthcare and Life Sciences
Lauren Wu
Adjunct Professor of Law / Former Chief Privacy and Compliance Officer, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
San Francisco, CA 94104
1Article published
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After a health crisis, I stopped asking how to get back to normal and started asking what "better" could look like. Don't measure recovery by speed, but measure it by intention.
Lauren Wu · In Her Own Words
From How She Did It
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After a health crisis, I redefined success from endurance to alignment - building systems where people don't hide who they are to succeed.
How She Redefined Success After Achieving It
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Lauren Wu for Bold. Brilliant. Unstoppable.
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Lauren Wu: I believe being an influential woman means someone who shapes a room even when she's not trying to. She isn't always forceful. She's sometimes energetic. And when she speaks, people adjust to who she is. They reconsider, they reflect. She changes the temperature of a conversation, not through dominance, but through clarity and steadiness. She defines herself before the world does. She's someone who doesn't contort herself to the society around her, but does so to match her own values and those of her strongest beliefs. She's someone who builds, not just achieves. Being an influential woman is someone who She understands that she doesn't just win, she redesigns the system around her to make the world a better place. She makes power usable. She stands. Being an influential woman means that she understands that power isn't just intimidation. It's about access. She shares knowledge, she mentors, she names what others are afraid to name, and she creates psychological safety along the way. She stays human. Her humanity, her empathy, her authenticity become her superpowers. That is what matters most to me, and that is the basis of heart-led leadership. It's those superpowers that ultimately make an influential woman so powerful. But when empathy, accountability, and courage exist together, that's where leadership truly lasts. You don't have to be famous to be influential. If your child watches how you set boundaries, if your team recalibrates because you modeled honesty, if one person thinks that a conversation you're leading is different because you modeled authenticity, then you've truly been influential. And I think that women are truly the strongest leaders out there because of how much they are truly Human in their leadership. And it is that that authenticity that they bring, that ability to bring others up along with them that make them such special leaders.
What's one piece of advice you would give to younger women chasing their dreams?
Lauren Wu: If I could give one piece of advice to younger women chasing your dreams, I would say it would be to really engage in mentorship. Mentoring has meant the world to me in my career, and I have been able to really Extend my network from the earliest days of my internships to my current positions, um, leading global privacy and compliance programs, and now keynote speaking, all because of mentorships. Some of my greatest friendships and relationships come from establishing a mentorship relationship in my internships. Um, I can think of one in particular with a judge in San Diego who was only a public defender at the time. I was working at the alternate public defender of San Diego County, and he was a public defender. I used to go and watch his court sessions all the time to try to learn about litigation and the court system. And we became friends. And he has been my mentor ever since. He's seen me through relationships, decisions about jobs, decisions about classes to take in law school. And beyond. Um, and to this day, he still helps me make decisions about my job. He later swore me into the California bar in a beautiful ceremony he did just for me and my family. Um, we have seen each other through highs and lows, personal and professional. And I owe so much to that relationship. And I would say he in turn, relies on me as his mentee. Um, that's the great thing about mentorship is it's bidirectional. You learn just as much from your mentee as as you do from the mentor. And I think that that is really the biggest thing that you can rely on as you chase your dreams because you can Really learn so much from the people around you, the people that you network with, and the people who will help you along the way. Mentors can open doors that you haven't dreamed of yet, and they can help guide you along the way in your decision making processes. They can help you as you learn. And as you grow, they can help you issue spot, they can help you to understand the gaps that you're not seeing, um, or even celebrate the wins. And it's those things that make mentorship relationships so important and essential. I really think that mentorship is the key to my success and it will be the key to your dreams as well.
Full transcript available
Her Story
About Lauren
Lauren Wu, JD, CIPP/US, is a keynote speaker, attorney, author, adjunct professor, and board member based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With nearly two decades of experience in law and compliance — including 15 years serving as a Chief Privacy and Compliance Officer in healthcare and digital health — Lauren is known for translating complex regulatory frameworks into practical, executive-level strategy. She advises boards, founders, and leadership teams on embedding privacy, data protection, and compliance into the fabric of organizations, building trust and institutional resilience in high-stakes environments.
In addition to her legal and advisory work, Lauren is an active investor and strategic advisor to startups at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and data governance.
Following a life-threatening medical event that permanently altered her relationship to capacity and work, Lauren founded Heart Led Leadership, a systems-aware speaking and coaching platform that challenges endurance-based models of success. Heart Led Leadership reframes empathy, accessibility, and sustainable performance as strategic advantages rather than concessions. Drawing from her experience navigating disability while operating at executive levels, Lauren equips leaders to redesign workplace systems so that excellence does not require self-erasure. The platform bridges regulatory insight, lived experience, and institutional design to help organizations strengthen culture, mitigate burnout risk, and widen leadership pathways for women and other underrepresented groups.
As an adjunct professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Lauren teaches privacy, data protection, and regulatory governance, bringing doctrine to life through simulations, case studies, and interactive exercises that prepare students for real-world decision-making. She serves on the boards of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and Grateful Giving, advocating for civil liberties, ethical technology use, and social impact.
A former professional ballerina, Lauren remains a passionate supporter of the arts and women’s sports. She holds season tickets to the San Francisco Ballet, Broadway SF, and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. Outside of her professional work, she enjoys travel, cooking, gardening, and wine collecting.
Whether advising startups, teaching future lawyers, or speaking on global stages, Lauren blends technical precision with a heart-centered philosophy, demonstrating that leadership rooted in empathy, ethics, and accessibility creates enduring trust, stronger institutions, and meaningful impact.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lauren
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success, above all, to mentorship and relationships that have endured over time.
At every stage of my career, from internships to executive leadership, I have been shaped by mentors who showed me what leadership could look like in practice. Sometimes they were formal managers, sometimes peers, sometimes people I quietly aspired to become. I’ve been intentional about staying connected to those relationships over the years, and I still seek guidance from mentors and mentees today. Mentorship, when done well, is bi-directional and lifelong. These relationships have carried me not just through professional decisions, but through life. Mentors are cheerleaders, sounding boards, and steady presences during hard seasons. They are also the people you celebrate wins with, ask for templates from, and eventually stand beside as peers.
One mentor in particular captures this for me. I met him decades ago when I was an intern with the Alternate Public Defender’s Office in San Diego. As a Superior Court Judge, he later swore me into the California Bar, and over the years, our relationship evolved into a deep, mutual friendship. We have supported each other through marriages, health crises, career changes, parenthood, and growth. That relationship — and others like it — is the quiet throughline of my success.
I would also be remiss not to name my mother. She is the foundation beneath everything I’ve built. She showed me what it means to be a strong woman through sacrifice, steadiness, and unwavering belief. She supported my education, encouraged my dream of becoming a professional ballerina (which I was for a few years), and made it possible for me to pursue my ambition without apology. She remains one of my closest friends and greatest sources of strength.
Ultimately, my success is not something I achieved alone. It is the result of community, mentorship, love, and people who believed in me long before I fully believed in myself.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received was this: pay attention to how your body and values respond to an opportunity, not just how impressive it looks on paper — and don’t be afraid to set boundaries.
Early in my career, I was taught to pursue roles that signaled success: the right titles, the right institutions, the right trajectory. A mentor helped me see that alignment matters more than optics, and that noticing discomfort early is a form of wisdom, not weakness.
Just as important, they reminded me that it’s okay, and necessary, to set boundaries, both at work and at home. That advice reshaped how I lead and how I live. Boundaries aren’t barriers to success; they preserve you. They protect your energy, clarify your values, and make it easier for others to understand how to work with and respect you. They also prevent burnout before it becomes inevitable. Especially after experiencing a significant health disruption, this guidance became non-negotiable.
Careers are long, nonlinear, and deeply human. The most meaningful success comes from building one that you can sustain, where your ambition, health, and integrity can coexist over time.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If I were giving advice to young women entering the legal field, I would say: pursue law school for the right reasons and focus on finding an area of law that truly excites you. One that ignites you from within. For me, that's privacy and compliance! The law is demanding, and curiosity and purpose are what sustain you over the long term, not prestige alone.
Seek out mentors at every stage of your career and invest in maintaining those relationships. Learn from people whose values you respect, not just those with impressive titles. As you progress, make it a priority to mentor others and help guide the next generation of legal professionals. Mentorship is not a phase of your career; it’s a responsibility that grows with you. Plus, mentorship turns into friendship, which is quite a beautiful thing.
I would also encourage young women to build careers that are sustainable, not just successful. Set boundaries early. Pay attention to how environments make you feel, how leadership shows up under pressure, and whether you are expected to perform at the cost of your health or humanity. You do not need to become harder, louder, or less yourself to succeed in this field.
Finally, remember that careers are long and nonlinear. It’s okay to change paths, step back, or redefine success as your life evolves. The goal is not just to make it into the profession; it’s to stay whole while you’re there.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest opportunities and challenges I see right now is the incorporation of AI into the legal profession.
When used responsibly, AI can be a powerful tool for efficiency, effectiveness, and accessibility. For lawyers with disabilities, chronic pain, or invisible health conditions, AI can be the difference between being able to show up fully or being pushed out of the profession altogether. Used well, it can reduce cognitive load, support drafting and analysis, and allow lawyers to focus their energy on what truly matters.
At the same time, AI understandably creates fear. Many worry it threatens jobs, professional identity, or the future size of the legal workforce; concerns that extend well beyond law into many professions. Those fears shouldn’t be dismissed. But I believe the real opportunity lies in how we design, govern, and train AI. When built with appropriate data, logic, guardrails, and ethical oversight, AI doesn’t replace lawyers; it strengthens them. AI can handle baseline work such as drafting, templating, and stress-testing logic, freeing lawyers to focus on the parts of the job that drew many of us to law in the first place: critical analysis, judgment, negotiation, and problem-solving. That is where human expertise remains essential, and where AI can be a true amplifier rather than a threat.
Alongside this, stress and burnout remain persistent challenges in our field. And more broadly, we are navigating a moment where long-standing assumptions about civil rights, ethics, and the rule of law are being tested. That reality places a responsibility on both current and future lawyers to remain grounded in their values, lead with integrity, and align their actions with the profession's core purpose. This moment requires not just technical adaptation, but moral clarity; using new tools wisely, protecting access and inclusion, and ensuring that progress does not come at the cost of our humanity.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity, empathy, responsibility, family, and service are the values that anchor both my work and my personal life.
Integrity means aligning my actions with my values, even when it’s inconvenient or costly. It shows up in how I practice law, how I advise leaders, and how I make decisions under pressure. I care deeply about doing work I can stand behind — work that protects people, honors trust, and reflects ethical judgment rather than expediency.
Empathy shapes how I lead, teach, and serve. It allows me to recognize unseen burdens, understand complexity, and design systems (legal, organizational, or technological) that work for real people, not just ideal ones.
Family keeps me grounded and reminds me why sustainability matters. It influences how I think about boundaries, time, and the kind of legacy I want to leave, both professionally and personally.
Finally, service reflects my belief that expertise carries responsibility. Whether through mentorship, board service, teaching, or community engagement, I believe in using my skills to widen access, strengthen institutions, and support others.
Together, these values guide how I work, lead, and live — with intention, care, and a commitment to leaving people and systems better than I found them.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Lauren
An exploration of how women leaders can redefine power by embracing authenticity, empathy, and humanity—rejecting outdated conformity pressures to lead with strength rooted in their full selves.
Why Humanity Is the Leadership Advantage When the Rules Change
How women leaders can embrace authenticity, empathy, and humanity to redefine power and create lasting impact.
“You’re great, but…”
Most women in leadership have encountered that sentence, whether stated directly or conveyed through subtle, coded feedback.
You’re great, but you’re too emotional.
You’re great, but you’re too direct.
You’re great, but you smile too much.
That “but” shapes careers. It influences who is perceived as leadership material and who gradually learns to take up less space.
Much of contemporary leadership advice was not developed with women in mind. It is grounded in norms that value emotional distance, stoicism, and endurance—traits historically linked to (mostly white, cisgender male) authority. Empathy, warmth, and emotional intelligence have often been framed as risks rather than strengths.
Yet real-world experience frequently challenges these outdated models of power. Many women eventually learn—through experience, disruption, or crisis—that what makes us human is not the opposite of strength. It is its source.
When Feedback Is Really About Conformity
Early in my legal career, a performance review included a line I will never forget: “Too happy. Smiles too much.” It was not feedback about my work. It was feedback about conformity.
Research confirms what many women intuitively understand: women are more likely than men to receive personality-based feedback that is largely unrelated to effectiveness and disproportionately pressures them to conform to gendered expectations of leadership behavior.¹
This kind of feedback rarely improves performance. Instead, it teaches women to self-edit—to suppress the very qualities that often make them effective leaders. That realization led me to a decision I have never regretted: I would not diminish the aspects of myself that made me effective simply to make others more comfortable.
Being Excellent—and Still Unsupported
Later, in my first in-house leadership role, I was told I cared “too much” about Legal and not enough about the business. Yet my team was high-performing, deeply engaged, and trusted my leadership. The issue was not competence. It was my willingness to challenge accepted norms—particularly around ethics, risk, and long-term trust.
When organizational leadership changed, so did the tolerance for questioning, especially from a woman who led with transparency and conviction.
This pattern is well documented. Studies show that women leaders who challenge norms or raise ethical concerns are more likely to be perceived as difficult or disruptive, even when their concerns are well-founded.²
That was when I learned an essential leadership lesson: it is possible to be right and still be in the wrong room. Leaving was not a failure. It was an act of discernment. Not every organization deserves your leadership.
When the Rules Change in Your Body
Leadership is not tested only in boardrooms.
I have survived multiple life-threatening medical events, including emergency childbirth complications and, later, multiple pulmonary embolisms that left me disabled for months, the aftermath of which I am still navigating years later. Those experiences dismantled the illusion that resilience is built solely through endurance. Healing did not come from pushing harder—it came from safety, support, and self-compassion.
Neuroscience and trauma research affirm this principle: psychological safety is foundational to recovery, cognitive function, and sustainable performance.³ The same conditions that allow bodies to heal are the conditions that allow teams to thrive.
Empathy Is Not a Weakness—It Is a Multiplier
When I returned to leadership after trauma, colleagues told me I seemed stronger. What they meant was that I was more human.
Empathy did not weaken my authority; it sharpened it.
Empirical research supports this shift. Leaders who prioritize empathy and psychological safety see higher engagement, stronger retention, increased innovation, and better decision-making across teams.⁴ People do not do their best work when they are afraid. They do their best work when they feel safe enough to tell the truth.
Empathy anticipates problems before they escalate. It builds trust faster than hierarchy. It allows people to contribute their full intelligence rather than mere compliance. This is not softness. It is strategic leadership.
Authenticity Is Alignment, Not Oversharing
Authenticity is often misunderstood. It is not oversharing. It is not a lack of boundaries. It is not emotional dumping.
Authenticity is alignment—when values, words, and actions tell the same story.
Research shows that authentic leadership is associated with higher trust, stronger organizational commitment, and more principled decision-making, particularly in times of uncertainty.⁵ In unstable environments, predictability rooted in values becomes one of the most powerful leadership tools available.
For women especially, authenticity is radical. Many of us have been conditioned to perform acceptability rather than lead from alignment. Yet authenticity is not a liability. It is a competitive advantage.
Still Standing—and Leading Differently
Leadership is not measured by the number of followers you create, but by the leaders you develop.
The clearest indicator of effective leadership is not control, but growth—when people outgrow your mentorship, and you feel pride rather than threat.
Every woman who leads authentically creates space for another woman to do the same.
When you refuse to diminish your humanity, you are not simply leading differently; you are leading with humanity. You are redefining what leadership looks like.
And when the rules change—as they inevitably do—your humanity is not what holds you back.
It is what allows you to remain standing.
References
- Joan C. Williams et al., What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know (NYU Press 2014).
- Hannah Riley Bowles et al., Social Incentives for Gender Differences in the Propensity to Initiate Negotiations, 103 Psychological Science 229–233 (2007).
- Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation (W.W. Norton & Co. 2011).
- Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Wiley 2018).
- Bruce J. Avolio & William L. Gardner, Authentic Leadership Development: Getting to the Root of Positive Forms of Leadership, 16 The Leadership Quarterly 315–338 (2005).
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