The Future of Work for Busy Women and Minorities

by | Aug 23, 2023 | Podcast | 0 comments

Rachel Cottam
Rachel Cottam

Rachel Cottam is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Lexion, an AI-powered contract management system. She is also the Founder and Co-leader of Women’s ERG at Divvy and Clearlink. As a high school English teacher turned marketing director, Rachel went from a female-led career to being the only woman in the office. She created the “Allies at Work Playbook,” which shares tactics to level the playing field for women and other minorities. 

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • [0:00] Rachel Cottam — a former English teacher bridging the gender gap — shares her stance on remote work
  • [5:29] The challenges women face returning to the office
  • [10:05] Maintaining a work-life balance with remote work
  • [14:17] Rachel addresses conflicting perspectives on remote work
  • [18:11] How work-from-home policies accelerate diversity and eliminate bias 
  • [24:18] What is the role of trust in remote work?
  • [31:54] Tips for designing remote work policies that benefit the employee

In this episode…

As the labor market tightens, businesses must reconsider their work models. By enforcing a return-to-work policy, some companies have lost 40-50% of their workforce. Today’s guest challenges opposing views of remote work, shares its positive impact on employees, and provides practical methods for adoption.

Public figures like Elon Musk maintain remote work discriminates against service industry employees. As the only female digital marketer at her first company,, Rachel Cottam advocates for restructuring work environments and hiring methods. She argues with equitable remote work policies, companies can promote diversity by hiring from marginalized communities and providing support to caregivers requiring flexibility. This work style also allows working mothers to structure a productive schedule around their responsibilities. When implementing unbiased recruiting and remote work practices, acquiring input from employees is vital to build trust and maximize impact.

In this episode of What The Teck?, Rolando Rosas and Dave Kelly invite Rachel Cottam, the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Lexion, to speak about equitable remote work practices. Rachel addresses the challenges women face returning to the office, how to design advantageous remote work policies, and how to maintain a remote work-life balance.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

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Episode Transcript:

Rachel Cottam 0:00

adults in the office distract me more than my daughter has, during my time work from home. She’s almost three. She says your child isn’t a distraction. And even if she is, I would rather have watercooler conversation with my three year old and hear about the Fairyland that she’s imagining, then talk about the Super Bowl. But I treasure those two minute moments between meetings where I step out of my basement office, and I get to see the art gallery that my kids have plastered all over the walls, that that’s why I work. And when I did a LinkedIn full recently to just ask my audience Hey, where where do you think you’re most productive? Like does that actually mattered to you? Overwhelmingly, my audience said that they are more productive when remote so I had 352 responses 74% said they were more productive when remote 17 So they were equally productive wherever and 9% only 9% said they were more productive in the office.

Dave Kelly 0:53

When working from home. You should never

Rachel Cottam 0:57

worry. Oh, this is a good one. Ah.

Rolando Rosas 1:09

Welcome to What The Teck?, your gateway to business strategies and tech secrets, shaping today’s workplace. what up what up? It’s Rolando over here. And over there is an over here’s Dave. Mr. Dave Kelly. Hey, Dave. 

Dave Kelly 1:26

Hey, Ro. How you doing, man?

Rolando Rosas 1:27

I’m doing fine. It’s a lovely day here just outside the nation’s capital. Looking forward to this conversation today.

Dave Kelly 1:34

Absolutely. Let me tell you about our guest. All right, as a high school English teacher turned marketing director, Rachel Cottam went from a female majority career to being the only woman in the office. While she’s loved her time and the Utah tech startups. She’s also seen the need to bring men into the conversation, creating allies, not enemies. And as always, if you want to get the full experience and sound effects, you’ll want to listen with your headphones. If you’re listening to this podcast, we’ll be serving up videos that you can watch on circuitloops.com. Make sure to check us out.

Rolando Rosas 2:11

All right, Dave, thank you very much. And before we get to Rachel, you know, I gotta give big props. And I want to give some big props to Colin Raja, from the MDS group who was on the podcast last week. And if you want tons of value to unlock the secrets to being a kick butt seller on Amazon, you’ll want to check out this episode because Colin has a few things up his sleeve that I never heard of. But I’m sure that you’ll find very interesting and valuable for your business. So go check that out. And you’ll love it, I think. I think you’ll love it. I did. So Dave, let’s let’s talk about Rachel. So, Rachel created the Allies at Work Playbook to share easy tactics to level up the playing field for women and other minority groups. You can download it for free at Rachelcottam.com. Rachel is currently collaborating with the Utah women and leadership project to close the gender pay gap. She shares her story on LinkedIn, and she loves her husband and three, mini feminist. Let’s bring on to the show. Rachel Cottam. Hey, guys. Did we get that right, Rachel? I hope I didn’t miss anything there in that intro.

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