What Kristine’s story taught me about speaking up, protecting yourself, and what survival actually looks like
Let me ask you something before we get into it.
If you spoke up about something serious at work, something that clearly crossed a line, and the company sided with the person who did it, would you know what to do next? Not the version where it resolves cleanly and everyone learns something. The real version. Where your job turns hostile, where your team disappears piece by piece, where a job offer gets pulled back because you asked a reasonable question about HR policy. Where you end up sitting in your house trying to figure out how a career you spent decades building can come apart so completely, and nobody on the outside even knows it’s happening.
That’s what happened to Kristine. And her story changed everything I thought I knew about what protecting yourself actually looks like.
How it started
Kristine was two months into a VP role. She jumped on a video call, and before she’d said a word, the CEO told her she looked fantastic. She was the only woman on the call. Everyone else was a man from senior leadership. She had a board presentation in two hours. She didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t; she just absorbed it and kept going.
Months later, at a team dinner, the CEO sat beside her and started commenting on her appearance again. He compared her to his wife. He held her arm while he said it, in front of colleagues, in front of other executives. Kristine told me afterward that what hit her hardest wasn’t just what he said. It was the realization that she’d worked so hard, accomplished so much, and here she was being reduced to how she looked. By the person she reported to.
She couldn’t think straight for the rest of the evening. She just wanted to leave.
The next day, a colleague told her it was sexual harassment and that if Kristine didn’t report it, she would. So Kristine went to her boss. He shut her down mid-sentence, said he needed to call legal, and told her not to say anything more. An investigation started. Weeks passed. She was eventually told that her account had been corroborated, that the board had been notified, and that appropriate action had been taken.
She never found out what any of that meant. The CEO stayed in his office. Kristine stayed in her role. And she waited to see what came next.
What nobody talks about
Here’s the part that never makes it into the story. The part after.
Kristine watched the other female VPs leave one by one. 8 women at the VP level were reduced to 2, including her. She got moved into a new role. Things settled for a while, and she started to wonder if it was over.
Then her budget got cut. Her team shrank. Approvals started going nowhere. Her new boss kept hitting walls and couldn’t figure out why. And then came the call with the two options: leave now, or step down two levels and take a role with half the responsibilities. They’d already hired a man to fill her original position, full VP title, half the scope.
She called a lawyer. She fought. She threatened to stay and take the lesser role rather than sign the non-disclosure agreement they wanted her to sign. Eventually, she got a package, and she left.
Then she tried to find a new job.
At one company, she asked to see their sexual harassment policy before accepting an offer. Reasonable request, right? She’d just been through what she’d been through, and she needed to know she’d be safe somewhere. The hiring manager told her they were an HR-free zone, no HR issues. And then told her that because she’d asked for the documentation, the company had decided she was a legal liability. They pulled the offer.
She came apart after that. Couldn’t get out of bed. Told me on one of our calls that she’d just been mowing her lawn, kept mowing until there was nothing left to mow. I knew exactly what that meant. She was losing her sense of her own worth, not because she’d failed at anything, but because she’d been punished for telling the truth about something that was done to her.
Why I’m telling you this
Not to scare you. I want to be really clear about that.
I’m telling you because we do women a disservice when we talk about speaking up without being honest about what it can cost. 3 out of 4 women who experience sexual harassment at work never report it, and it’s not because they don’t know it was wrong. It’s because the math doesn’t work in their favor, and they’ve already done that calculation. Companies protect people they consider valuable regardless of what those people have done. HR is there to protect the organization, not the person coming forward. And the person who speaks up absorbs most of the consequences.
None of that is a reason to stay silent. I believe in speaking up; I’ve built my whole career on it. But I want you to go in with your eyes open, because Kristine went in believing the system would work the way it was supposed to. She thought the truth would be enough.
How to protect yourself
Before anything goes wrong, start building your record now. Keep a running file of your contributions, wins, and performance feedback. Save emails that confirm your role on projects and copy them to your personal account. Think of it like backing up your phone; you hope you never need it, but you’ll be devastated if something goes wrong and it’s not there. If you ever need to demonstrate your value while someone is trying to make you disappear, you need evidence that doesn’t depend on anyone else’s memory.
Build your external network at the same time. Former colleagues, mentors, people in your industry, these are the people who can support you without a conflict of interest. They can validate your experience when you start to doubt it. They can help you reality-check situations when you’re too deep in them to see clearly. They can remind you of who you are when an organization has been working hard to make you forget. Kristine and I talked through everything during those months, and those conversations kept her grounded. Don’t wait until you need that kind of support to go and build it.
When something happens, document it immediately. Send yourself a detailed email the same day. Date, time, location, exactly what was said, who was present, what happened next. Blind copy it to your personal email so it lives outside the company server. This creates a time-stamped record that you own and control. Do this even if you’re not sure yet whether you’ll report it, because by the time you decide you need that record, it will be too late to create it accurately.
When you report something, understand what HR is and isn’t there to do. HR isn’t your advocate. HR protects the company. That’s not a cynical take, it’s just accurate, and knowing it before you walk in changes how you show up. Tell HR explicitly that you want everything documented. After every meeting, send yourself a follow-up email summarizing what was discussed and the next steps, and bcc your personal account. Something like, “Following up on what we discussed today. I reported this on [date], you said [next step] would happen, and I’ve asked that this be on record.” This protects you and clearly signals that you’re tracking everything.
Get legal advice earlier than you think you need it. Most people wait too long because they think it means escalating, or they assume they can’t afford it. But a lawyer can tell you what you’re entitled to before you sign anything, what retaliation looks like legally and how to document it, and what options exist beyond just staying and suffering or walking out with nothing. Some lawyers take cases on a contingency basis, meaning you pay only when the case settles. Kristine nearly signed a non-disclosure that would have silenced her entirely. She got a proper package instead, only because she had a lawyer who knew exactly when and how to push. Don’t sign anything without having it reviewed first.
When you’re looking for your next role, interview the company as hard as they’re interviewing you. Kristine asked about HR policies and got an offer pulled back. That was devastating. It was also, if I’m being honest, useful information, because a company that views you as a liability for asking about employee protections would have given you no protection at all once you were inside.
You’re allowed to ask real questions. How are promotions decided here? Can you give me an example of a time the company had to make a hard call based on its values? What does a realistic growth path look like from this role? Listen for whether the person can give you a specific, real answer or whether they pivot to polished language that sounds good and says nothing. Look at the leadership team. Look at who gets promoted and who gets given the complex, high-stakes work. What a company does with the people it already has tells you everything.
The thing that took me the longest to figure out
For a long time, I absorbed hard things at work without telling anyone. I processed them on my own, showed up the next day, and kept going. And I told myself that was strength.
There’s a difference between being strong and being alone, though. I spent years going through difficult situations without asking for support, without building the kind of network that would have made those moments less isolating. And what I know now is that the isolation was never protecting me. It was only protecting the system.
Kristine, at her lowest point, had people around her. She had conversations with people who knew her work and could remind her of her worth. She had a lawyer who knew her rights. She had enough outside reference points to eventually remember who she was beyond that organization’s version of her. She came back. She’s in a role she loves now, she’s doing well, and she’s one of the most rigorous interviewers of company culture I’ve ever seen because she knows exactly what she won’t accept and exactly what to look for.
That’s what surviving something like this can give you if you let it. Not just scar tissue. Clarity.
You deserve to work somewhere that actually deserves you. You’re allowed to hold out for that. And you’re allowed to protect yourself hard in the meantime.
Kristine’s full story, along with the strategies I’ve built over thirty years for navigating workplaces that weren’t designed with us in mind, are in my book Not Made for You. You can find it here.