Recap: Own Your Influence: The Secrets to Persuasion, Presence, and Professional Power with Sherenne Simon

Influence Is a Skill—Not a Title

Own Your Influence: The Secrets to Persuasion, Presence, and Professional Power

Featuring Sherenne Simon

🎥 Watch the Recording
Missed the live session or want to revisit the conversation?
You can watch the full recording of Own Your Influence: The Secrets to Persuasion, Presence, and Professional Power here:

We recommend watching with a notebook—this session is dense with practical frameworks you’ll want to apply directly to your work.

Influence is often misunderstood as charisma, authority, or positional power. In today’s Own Your Influence session, Sherenne Simon dismantled that myth and reframed influence as a learnable, strategic skill—one that can be built deliberately, ethically, and without waiting for permission.

For professionals building careers in women’s health—across startups, healthcare systems, policy, research, and investment—this distinction matters. Progress in this sector rarely hinges on job titles alone. It hinges on the ability to move ideas through complex systems, shape decisions, and earn trust long before formal authority arrives.

This session offered both a mindset shift and a practical operating system for doing exactly that.

Influence Is Not a Personality Trait — It’s a Practice

One of the most grounding takeaways from Sherenne’s talk was her insistence that influence is not something you “have” or “don’t have.” It is something you practice, intentionally and repeatedly.

Many professionals—particularly women—wait for credentials, promotions, or external validation before stepping into influence. Sherenne challenged that reflex directly. Influence is not bestowed. It is built in motion, through consistent choices about how you show up, how you communicate, and how you make other people successful.

This framing aligns deeply with the foundation of In Women’s Health: careers in this space are rarely linear, and waiting for the system to “anoint” you often means waiting indefinitely. Those who move the field forward learn how to operate inside imperfect systems while reshaping them from within.

The Hidden Architecture of Persuasion

Drawing from Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, Sherenne made one point unmistakably clear: persuasion is already happening in every organization—whether or not we are conscious of it.

Authority, social proof, reciprocity, liking, and scarcity are not abstract concepts. They are the unspoken rules governing who gets heard, whose ideas move forward, and whose work becomes visible.

The real risk is not using these principles; the risk is being unaware of them.

For women’s health professionals working inside legacy systems—healthcare institutions, government, large enterprises—this awareness is power. Understanding persuasion is not about manipulation; it’s about learning how decisions actually get made so you can participate with clarity instead of frustration.

Presence Is Strategic, Not Performative

Sherenne also reframed presence—not as polish or performance, but as strategic clarity.

Presence, in her framing, is the ability to:

• Read the room accurately

• Understand what matters to decision-makers in that moment

• Communicate in ways that align your goals with theirs

This is especially relevant in women’s health, where professionals often bring deep expertise but struggle to translate it into influence. Presence is not about being louder or more confident—it’s about being precise. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to frame it so it lands.

The Influence Map: Turning Insight Into Action

One of the most practical tools Sherenne shared was the Influence Map—a framework designed to move professionals from ambition to execution.

Instead of asking, “How do I get more influence?” the Influence Map asks:

• Where do I need influence right now?

• Who actually shapes decisions in this context?

• What do they care about?

• What currency do I already hold that matters to them?

This approach replaces vague frustration with strategic focus. It encourages professionals to stop trying to influence everyone and instead invest intentionally in the relationships, conversations, and contributions that compound over time.

This mirrors IWH’s emphasis on career strategy over career hope. Influence is not about doing more—it’s about doing the right things, in the right places, consistently.

Influence as a Career Asset — Not a Side Skill

A final throughline of the session was the idea that influence is not an “extra” skill—it is a career asset.

Professionals who learn to build influence early:

• Advance faster

• Shape better opportunities

• Experience less burnout

• Maintain greater agency over their work

In women’s health especially—where the work is mission-driven and the systems are slow to change—building influence is often the difference between being indispensable and being exhausted.

Sherenne’s message was clear: you do not need to wait for a title to begin practicing influence—but you do need to be intentional about how you use it.

What’s Next: Influence in Action

For those who want to go deeper and apply these ideas directly to their work, Sherenne is offering an Influence in Action Workshop Series.

This small-group experience is designed for professionals who want to turn insight into execution—without waiting for a promotion, title, or permission.

What you’ll get:

• Two live, 90-minute sessions in January 2026

• Guided reading, reflection, and discussion on persuasion principles

• The Influence Map framework

• A personalized 2026 Influence Plan

👉 Sign up here: https://www.sherennesimon.co/book

Additional Resources

Get a copy of Own Your Influence

• Book discount for the In Women’s Health community:
  👉 Here

• Amazon:
  👉 Here

Healthcare consulting & speaking inquiries:

• Website: https://www.globalsimongroup.com

• Email: [email protected]

Influence, as this session made clear, is not about becoming someone else. It’s about learning how to work the system as it is, while steadily shaping what it becomes.

That work sits squarely at the heart of In Women’s Health.

—
Jodi + In Women’s Health Team