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123 | Renee Nicole Good. A Thursday Rant on Power, Leadership, and the Cost to Women

• Dawn Andrews • Season 2 • Episode 123

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Is it still leadership if it leaves you exposed?

Renee Nicole Good’s death is a tragedy and a mirror. In this Thursday quick-hit, Dawn Andrews confronts the uncomfortable truth that leadership, as it’s sold to women, often ignores the costs of stepping into power inside systems that weren’t built for us.

This is not a hot take. It’s a call to stop telling women to "take up space" without also teaching them how power actually works.

If you’re looking for a meaningful way to respond, consider donating to Emily’s List — an organization for training and electing progressive women into power. It’s not performative. It’s practical. Because systems don’t reward courage, they respond to leverage.


In This Episode:

  • The truth about visibility and why it doesn’t equal safety
  • How leadership culture sets women up to be punished for their boldness
  • Why bravery without strategy is a leadership trap
  • The myth that confidence protects women in unsafe systems
  • What real power looks like (hint: it's not individual heroics)


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She’s That Founder
123 | Renee Nicole Good. A Thursday Rant on Power, Leadership, and the Cost to Women

As a podcaster and as a leader, I don't comment on everything. There is a lot happening in the world all the time and leadership. Real leadership is knowing when to speak and when to stay quiet. I'm speaking today because of Renee, good, and I wanna be very clear as we begin this conversation.

This is not a hot take, this is not a policy debate. This is not me trying to insert myself into someone's tragedy. This is me pausing deliberately because Renee's death. Renee's murder sits directly at the intersection of women power leadership and the stories we keep telling women about what it means to take up space before anything else.

Renee was a human being. She was a mother, she was a writer, she was loved. And whatever conclusions are eventually drawn by investigations or officials, her life mattered more, so much more than the discourse that has followed it. I wanna hold that line clearly because honoring someone means not turning them into a symbol without consent.

So today I'm not here to analyze footage, argue facts, or debate intent. I'm here. I spend my life encouraging women to lead and moments like this, demand honesty about what leadership actually costs inside systems that were never designed to see women as legitimate authority. I work with women who are founders, executives, creatives, leaders, women who have been told over and over again.

Speak up, take space, lean in, be visible, own your power. And I believe in that work deeply. But here's the part that we don't say out loud nearly enough. Visibility does not equal safety. Confidence does not equal protection, and bravery does not neutralize systems built on an intent on control. Renee's death is not something I'm going to reduce to a lesson, but it is a mirror because what happens to women when they don't comply quickly enough, softly enough, or legitimately enough is not new.

Most of the time. The consequences aren't bullets. They're reputational, professional, legal, social. She was difficult. She escalated. She should have known better. She didn't read the room. We train women to be bold without training them to be power literate, and that is a failure of leadership culture.

 Here's the uncomfortable truth that I need to say clearly. We, and I include myself in the, we are doing women a disservice when we tell them to take up space without telling them the truth about the systems they're stepping into, because those systems still respond disproportionately, even viciously, cruelly to women who are perceived as non-compliant, unpredictable, or out of bounds.

And especially women who don't fit the narrow archetype of acceptable leadership. Calm, but not cold. Assertive but not aggressive. Confident, but not threatening. Visible, but not inconvenient. That tightrope is real, and pretending it isn't, doesn't make it disappear.

It just leaves women unprepared and let me be very clear about something else, the answer.

And let me be very clear about something else. The answer is not to be smaller. I will never tell women to shrink, soften, or silence themselves in order to survive. But I will say this, leadership for women cannot be built on bravery alone. It has to include strategy, systems, awareness, collective power, and an understanding of how authority is enforced, not just how it's claimed.

That's not pessimism, that's adulthood. And that's leadership that lasts. Renee's story is devastating because it exposes something we'd rather not look at. When women act outside expected scripts, the margin of error collapses and the punishment escalates faster. Again, not always in the same way, not always to the same extreme.

The pattern is familiar enough that most women listening right now don't need me to convince them they've lived it. You've felt it in meetings, in negotiations, in public visibility, on social media, in moments where you've realized too late that the room was not as safe as you were led to believe. That doesn't mean that we stop leading.

It means that we stop lying about what leadership requires. So here's a leadership reframe that I wanna offer, and this is where I wanna be responsible, not incendiary. The future is not saved by women being louder. The future is saved by women being informed, strategically aligned, connected to one another, unwilling to be isolated or singled out, and working in networks and community.

Power grows in networks, not heroics. And one of the most dangerous myths we sell women is that if they're confident enough, good enough, articulate enough, the system will reward them. Systems don't reward courage. They respond to leverage. So our work, the real work is building leadership that understands both.

I wanna come back to Renee here because this matters. She did not exist to teach us anything. She is not a metaphor. She was a human being whose family is now living with an absence. That should never have happened. And if you're listening to this and feeling overwhelmed, angry, numb, or unsure of what to do, it totally makes sense. you don't need a perfectly formed opinion to care. Sometimes the most human response is simply to be a witness and to support. So I wanna offer one very concrete, very grounded thing. Because thank goodness Renee's family GoFundMe fundraiser has closed.

I've included a link in the show notes to Emily's List. It's an organization dedicated to training and electing progressive women into real positions of power. If supporting women who can change systems from the inside, feels like a meaningful response. The option is there.

No pressure, no performance, no obligation. If you're able, it's a tangible way to turn your concern into action. And I'll close with this. We don't honor women by pretending leadership is safe when it isn't. We honor women by telling the truth, building real power, and refusing to let them stand alone inside systems that benefit from isolation.

We honor women by being honest enough to say courage matters and so does strategy. Voice matters, and so does protection. And leadership is not just about stepping forward, it's about making sure no one is left unprotected when they do hold Renee's name with care and take care of yourselves and each other.

I will see you next Thursday. Lovies.