Elizabeth Rowe on Worthy Connections

In this episode of Worthy Connections, Laura Lasher talks with Elizabeth Rowe, a former classical musician who reached the highest levels of her profession before moving into executive and leadership coaching. Elizabeth’s story includes a pivotal experience in her music career: pursuing and ultimately resolving a high-profile equal-pay lawsuit. Rather than describing that experience simply as a professional dispute, Elizabeth explains how it changed her perception of what was possible.

Taking action initially came from dissatisfaction, but it eventually created something more important—a larger vision for her life. She began discovering capabilities, interests, and opportunities she had not previously recognized. Elizabeth believes meaningful change often requires a combination of dissatisfaction and vision.

Today, Elizabeth works with executives, leaders and people navigating career transitions. Her clients include both women and men, and she describes them as people who want to become more intentional about how they lead, serve and live. A significant part of that work involves helping people recognize their blind spots—the possibilities, habits and assumptions that are difficult to see from inside our own experience.

Transcript Highlights

Laura Lasher: Welcome to Worthy Connections, the podcast where we sit down with people who are building something real—entrepreneurs, brand builders and leaders who've earned their authority the hard way. Today we're talking with Elizabeth Rowe. Elizabeth has been all over the world and has a unique story to tell. Elizabeth, thank you for joining us.

Elizabeth Rowe: Thank you for having me, Laura. I love conversations like this, and I'm so glad to be here with you.

Laura: I met you through another organization where you volunteered for a couple of sessions, and there were so many positive takeaways. We recognize that you're a worthy connection for people, so tell us your story and let us learn more about you.

Elizabeth: That's wonderful, Laura. Something you and I share is a desire to be of service.

I spent the first part of my professional life as a performing artist. I was a classical musician who rose to the very top of that industry, as one of relatively few women in those roles.

Part of that experience also included filing and successfully coming to a resolution in a very high-profile equal-pay lawsuit.

That experience led me to become curious about the size of the world. Through my career, and specifically through the equal-pay experience, I realized that we often have much more in common than we imagine.

I also began thinking about opportunities to connect with and serve a broader range of people and to use my unique path to support others who want to accomplish big things—whether that's something big in the world or something big in their own personal world.

That's the work I do now.

I'm an executive and leadership coach working with people in many different spaces and stages of their careers, including people going through transitions. I help support them in becoming everything they can be.

Laura: How did you reach the point where you felt you could take that step? It takes guts to go against a major organization. How did you finally recognize that you'd had enough?

Elizabeth: I love thinking about change and what prompts change.

Sometimes change happens to us, and sometimes we choose it.

When we choose to act, advocate for ourselves, or make a change in our personal or professional lives, there's usually some combination of dissatisfaction and vision. We need enough of those ingredients to choose change for ourselves.

For me, there was an opportunity to advocate for myself, although it took many years before I was comfortable taking that step.

What's valuable to me in retrospect is that a decision born partly out of dissatisfaction with a pay-equity situation ultimately pushed me toward vision.

Taking that action unexpectedly opened up new terrain in my own thinking. It showed me things I hadn't been aware of. It showed me what I was capable of and what was interesting and inspiring to me.

I began thinking, I want to create something different and new for myself and in the world.

I'm grateful that experience pushed me into a place where I could have new ideas and see a bigger world than I'd seen before.

Laura: I see that as breaking through a ceiling. Now you can help other people rise who may not recognize where they are or what's possible for them.

Elizabeth: Half of my clients are men, and they're men who are committed to being intentional about how they're showing up in the world. They're thoughtful about how they want to lead, how they want to serve, and about changes they want to make in their lives.

Each of us has an opportunity to take greater responsibility for our own experience in the world.

That includes being curious about our blind spots—what we don't see in ourselves.

I had a huge blind spot about what was possible for me professionally until someone showed me there were other options.

We all have ways of being in the world that work for us until they don't.

It's a privilege to spend time with people who are interested in focusing on what's within their control, including how they relate to what's happening around them.

There's so much opportunity to slow down, become curious, ask different questions of ourselves and others, and have different kinds of conversations.

Laura: What do you think you're being recognized for most in this expanded stage of your career?

Elizabeth: I don't think about that very much.

But I came from being someone in the public eye with a very polished persona. That was part of my job as a performer. We were supposed to present something polished and almost ideal.

One of the most meaningful things I do now is lower that facade and step off the pedestal.

I reveal the very human parts: the times I'm afraid, the times I didn't say what I wish I'd said, the times I didn't find the courage, and all of the messy, vulnerable things that come with simply being human.

In my previous career, I was recognized for very public, polished, and accomplished work.

Now part of my work is dismantling misunderstandings about what high performers are actually experiencing inside. I want to challenge some assumptions about what success looks like and open conversations about the real human experience behind external success.

There are many people who are highly successful on paper but aren't living lives that feel successful to them.

They may feel unfulfilled, overworked, uninspired, or powerless.

When we see somebody with an impressive résumé or a C-level title, we can imagine they have this magical life.

But there are real human beings behind those titles and accomplishments. That's an area where I believe I can have a lot of impact because I've lived in that very public, polished world.

Laura: Your communication skills are obviously extraordinary, yet you're humble enough to acknowledge things you were working on yourself. Bringing that perspective into corporations and people's lives can have a tremendous impact.

Elizabeth: I think many of us have an idea that we need to show up a certain way.

There can be some truth to that. But it can also become protective armor—or almost a box we put ourselves in.

Then we don't see that there are many ways to lead. There are many ways to be a high performer. There are many ways to have a successful career.

Often, what we think success is supposed to look like stops serving us.

Maybe it worked very well for us at one point, but eventually we can reach a wake-up moment and recognize that our old patterns served us and no longer do.

We may not yet know what the new patterns can or should be.

That's where I come in.

I ask different questions. I listen very specifically. I help people explore territory in their own thinking and behavior that's new for them.

That takes courage, willingness, and openness. It's exciting to be with people on that journey.

Laura: Part of what we're trying to do with this podcast is to spread the word about people doing great things who can help others uncover something that takes them to another level. Sometimes people don't even know where they could go.

Elizabeth: That's often the missing piece. Until we see something, we don't know what's possible.

Sometimes my role is simply to shine a light on what might be possible for someone—to open a door and ask whether they're interested and curious enough to walk through it.

I needed that in my own life, and I continue to need it in my own work.

I work with a coach because I have blind spots, too. I benefit tremendously from having somebody slow me down and say, There might be another way to look at this. Have you considered that there's another possibility you're not seeing?

For all of us committed to growing—as professionals, individuals, family members or simply human beings—it's incredibly powerful to have somebody walk with us whose job is to help us see what we can't see in the moment.

Laura: That's what Worthy Connections is about: helping audiences find worthy things to pursue and people worth learning from. Elizabeth, thank you for joining us.

Elizabeth: Thank you, Laura. I love questions and conversations like this. I'm excited to watch this project grow and to see you continue the valuable work of reminding us that we're connected, that we have more in common than we might think, and that there's strength in community.