Taking Up Space: Leadership, Belonging & Breaking Into Rooms Not Built For You
Be Unapologetically Ambitious
Rachael Paskvan spent years as one of the only women in executive protection — protecting public figures around the globe, then leading executive travel security and large-scale event logistics at one of the world's largest tech companies. She never waited for an invitation. She just walked in.
In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda Lentz sits down with Rachael Paskvan — former executive protection agent, tech industry security leader, founder of Femme Force, and host of the Femme Force podcast — for a conversation about what it takes to walk into rooms you were never handed an invitation to, and what to do once you're in them.
How You End Up in a Field Nobody Pictures You In
Rachael's path into executive protection was, by her own admission, a little bit nepotism. Her father was a Marine, a police officer, and an EP agent. He had a rule: his daughters would do martial arts. Rachael started young, became nationally ranked, received her black belt, competed across the country, and earned college scholarships through the sport. None of which, at the time, felt like career preparation. It felt like her after-school activity.
She graduated in 2009 — into the recession — with ambitions to work at one of the three-letter agencies, none of which were hiring. Her father kept pushing. You would be really good at this. And there are no women in this field. She listened, went to an EP school, and had a very direct reaction: he was right.
"I was always the only woman in the room. Any women in EP will tell you the same — 99.9% of the time."
— Rachael PaskvanWomen who entered the field typically came from government agencies — Secret Service, FBI. In the celebrity sector, female agents were rare. In royal and dignitary protection, cultural norms created demand: Saudi princesses couldn't be protected by men in certain settings, which created a small opening. The entry points were narrow and specific. Rachael found hers through networking, being in the right room, and landing her first client — which snowballed from there.
What the Days Actually Looked Like
Your life, Rachael explains, revolves around someone else's. When a client is filming, you're up when they're up — overnight shoots, weekend shoots, on-location in Romania or in the middle of Thailand where a film was being produced because it was more cost-effective. Your day is their day, from beginning to end.
In the corporate and tech sector, the rhythm was different but equally consuming. High-functioning executives running trillion-dollar organizations, with families and charities and everything else stacked on top. Most of Rachael's days started at 5 a.m. and ended around 10 p.m. She was with them at the office, at doctor's appointments, at soccer games, through every part of the day until they went in for the night. At her peak, she was traveling 285 days out of the year.
What You Learn in Those Rooms
One of Rachael's most striking observations comes from a moment at SpaceX — watching a rocket launch with everyone from the janitor to the engineer who designed one of its components. Someone pointed out: the janitor took out that engineer's trash. If the workspace was littered and distracting, the engineer might not have been able to do the work that made the launch possible. Every role contributed.
"You can make your role as important as you are. You can gain as much traction as you can by just paying attention and being in those rooms. It doesn't matter if you're a janitor at a company. You can look around, see what books are on their desk. You can learn."
— Rachael PaskvanShe also absorbed how world-class leaders move — how they speak, how they ebb and flow in front of rooms, how they captivate. Being present in those spaces, day after day, is its own form of education. She took what she saw and built from it.
How Femme Force Started
The tech sector was undergoing wave after wave of layoffs. Rachael was still employed but watching it happen around her. A C-suite executive told her: you need a personal brand. What are you known for? What do people associate with you beyond your name? Build something you can point to.
She started Femme Force as a side hustle — Instagram posts, a bi-weekly newsletter about whatever she wanted, speaking engagements she was beginning to line up. Her career coach suggested a podcast. Rachael's first reaction was the standard one: that's too much time and work. Her second reaction, once she actually looked into it, was characteristic: she went fully in.
"I'm not looking to be the next Joe Rogan. I do it for free. It's my creative outlet. It gives me such joy to have this global network of women who are completely not in my sphere at all."
— Rachael PaskvanThe first 25 guests were her friends because she didn't yet know how to find anyone else. Two years later, the podcast has become a platform she didn't fully anticipate — a way to amplify women doing remarkable things who don't have Kardashian followings, whose work is making real impacts that simply don't travel far enough on their own.
Women's Leadership as an Asset, Not a Liability
Rachael addresses something she navigates constantly: the expectation, in male-dominated industries, that women should lean so far into their masculine energy that they leave their femininity behind. She never did that. She loves pink, Barbie, Harry Potter, Disney, and Bravo. The guys she works with know all of this. They send her clips. It's part of who she is in every room she enters.
"I don't ever try to be one of them. That whole saying of 'be like one of the guys' — I'm not one of the guys. I'm a girly girl, a girls' girl at heart. I just never wanted to change that. And I think that's actually what showcased a lot of my leadership."
— Rachael PaskvanShe makes the case that authenticity isn't just personally important — it's strategically smart. If you're spending 80% of your life at work while pretending to be a different person, that's an enormous expenditure of energy on nothing. And it doesn't make the work better. Diversity of perspective, personality, and approach creates better outcomes. Not everyone will like who you actually are — Rachael is clear about that — but the ones who do, and the work that gets built with them, will be more real than anything built on performance.
She also carries a specific conviction about the glass ceiling: it's broken, but not shattered. Women who have climbed through it have a responsibility to reach back. She tries to bring another woman to every table she sits at. That's part of what Femme Force is for.
Burnout, Boundaries, and Why She Finally Took a Vacation
285 days of travel a year. Sixteen to eighteen-hour days. A power bar if she was lucky, hotel room grilled cheese if she had time. Rachael describes two kinds of burnout: the physical kind — a body that slowly starts shutting down when it doesn't get sleep, food, or the gym — and the mental kind, which is subtler and sneakier.
She didn't take a vacation for her first six years. Taking PTO felt like a betrayal of some obligation, like she'd miss something critical. She didn't. Everything was fine when she finally went on a ten-day trip. The revelation came later: she could schedule downtime deliberately.
"I try to take burnout weekends now — pick an island, somewhere warm, Friday night to Sunday. Sleep 90% of the time. Watch the Sopranos. Read a book. Just sit in the sun and do nothing I'm supposed to do."
— Rachael PaskvanShe's also practical about what accessibility looks like: not everyone can leave the country for a weekend reset. A Sunday where you turn off your phone, put on a Harry Potter marathon, and don't leave the couch except for DoorDash — that counts. One day a quarter, deliberately scheduled to do nothing, is a boundary that doesn't require money or travel. Just intention.
She also found connection through online communities and volunteer organizations — building friendships with women of similar drive and values who were in completely different industries, creating a network she could think alongside and be honest with. Filling her cup, as she puts it, so she could fill anyone else's.
Building a Brand Rooted in Integrity
Rachael speaks on this topic — brand as integrity rather than performance — and she is the first to admit she's not great at social media. She forgets to film things she's actually experiencing. She gives herself dramatic pauses. She's newly 40 and navigating the content creator world as someone who did not grow up with a phone in her face. She's learned to take feedback on this, too.
What she tells women who are building something is simpler than any content strategy: you bring a perspective that nobody else has, and that diversity is genuinely valuable — to teams, to products, to outcomes. Especially now, as AI does more and more of what's replicable, the distinctly human and the distinctly specific to you becomes the competitive advantage.
"We're already pinned against AI. We don't need to be pinned against each other. Be diverse. Be yourself. That's only going to be a benefit for the future."
— Rachael PaskvanWhat She'd Say to the Woman in That Room Right Now
To the woman who is the only one in her room — exhausted, doubting herself, wondering if she actually belongs — Rachael's answer is four words:
"Be unapologetically ambitious. Stop apologizing for it. If you want to be a mom and work, do it. CEO? Do it. Start something? It might fail — do it anyway. Be unapologetically ambitious with everything you want: your career, your life, your relationships. Don't settle for anything less than what you actually want."
— Rachael PaskvanWhy This Conversation Matters
Belonging isn't something we wait to be given. It's something we claim, defend, and eventually build for others. Rachael Paskvan walked into rooms she was never invited to and built a career, a platform, and a movement in them. The question her story leaves behind is a simple one: what room are you standing outside of right now? And what would it look like to simply walk in?
You don't have to fit in to take up space.
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