I hear you out there, the fear is real - but it's actually pointing you in the right direction. It's just that most of us are approaching things backwards.
There's a particular kind of disconnection I watch settle over women mid-career when AI and redundancies start moving through their industry. It's not utter panic - you're far too experienced for panic. It's something more subtle: it's a slow, underlying fear that the expertise you've built over multiple decades is suddenly being eroded from you. And the bigger question is: what next?
There's a name for that feeling now, believe it or not. Researchers call it FOBO - the fear of becoming obsolete. In a 2025 Harris Poll of more than 15,000 US adults (run for ETS), 58% of workers said they felt it. Among tech workers it jumped to 74%; in financial services, 73%. What strikes me is that these aren't people who've been left behind - they're usually the ones closest to the change.
I understand the instinct, because I've lived it. I spent over 15 years in corporate tech - Citrix, VMware, Salesforce, WalkMe - before I left to build this business back in 2022. So I know exactly what FOBO does to you. Especially the feeling of shifting identities and the process of figuring out who am I, and how do I fit into this new world, and finally what will I even do?! (probably the most common question I hear). And whilst the job might feel like the secure thing, because it's "known", it's suddenly become one of the biggest risks.
I want to clarify what is happening and where the opportunity is...
What Is AI Actually Doing to Work?
The mistake in the whole FOBO story is the leap from "AI is changing my work" to "AI is coming for my job." They're not the same thing - and the data tells a far more specific, and far more useful, story.
AI is brilliant at routine, task-based work - the predictable, repeatable bits that used to eat up so much of a professional's day. What it doesn't replace is judgement, and the market is starting to pay accordingly. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer looked at more than a billion job ads across 27 countries and found the labour market splitting into two tracks. The roles where AI takes over the routine parts and human expertise becomes more central are growing twice as fast as the roles being simplified by AI - and they're seeing 42% faster wage growth since 2021.
I'd read that twice, because it's really the whole argument: the work that blends human judgement with AI isn't shrinking. It's the fastest-growing, best-paid part of the market.
The bigger picture agrees. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the economy will add 5.2 million net new jobs between 2024 and 2034 - add, not lose. And the growth is concentrated exactly where you'd expect: professional and technical services, healthcare, the judgement- and people-heavy work. The roles in decline are the clerical and admin ones - the routine, task-based jobs AI is best at absorbing.
So the economy isn't shedding work. It's revaluing it. And the things going up in value are the things that were never really about your job title in the first place - your expertise, your adaptability, your ability to think, decide and connect with other people.
Why Is a Portfolio Career the Structural Answer?
This is where it gets interesting for me, and what I've been relaying to my network. If the market is rewarding human judgement, multi-skilled adaptability and self-direction... organisations that have laid off employees or are cutting costs still NEED human capital to lend their expertise - sometimes this is in fractional, consulting or advisory style roles. There's a HUGE opportunity if you play your cards right. Why would you pour all of that into a single employer instead of being able to leverage multiple opportunities with clients and a lifestyle structure that suits you?
A portfolio career - a few income streams built on your skills, run on your terms - isn't a fallback for people who couldn't hack the corporate ladder. In a market reshaping this quickly, it's simply the more resilient design. One employer is a single point of failure. A portfolio spreads that risk, compounds your most valuable (and least automatable) skills across lots of different contexts, and keeps you adaptable by default - because adaptability is the job.
It's also built out of exactly what the data says is appreciating: human-centred, judgement-led, relationship-driven work. It's no accident that the wider human-development and wellness economy - coaching, health, human potential - reached $6.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Global Wellness Institute. As routine work gets automated, the human work becomes the premium.
What Is the Part Women Can't Afford to Skip?
There's a second thread here, and it's the one that matters most to the women I work with.
When the ground shifts, the response so many of us reach for is to shrink - spend less, save harder, take up less space, wait for security to arrive. But the evidence suggests we're pulling the wrong lever. Vanguard's 2026 How America Saves report found that women defer a higher share of their pay than men at every single income level. Better savers, in other words - consistently. And yet men finished the year with retirement balances around 30% higher. Ouch. The driver isn't discipline or behaviour. It's income.
That's the whole thing, right there in one statistic. The lever for women's financial independence was never "save harder" - you're already doing that. It's earn more: higher-value skills, the confidence to charge properly for them, and more than one stream to charge through. Which is, again, exactly what a portfolio career is designed to build.
Who Are You When the Title Is Gone?
FOBO is real, and I'd never try to talk you out of taking it seriously. But it's a signal, not a sentence. It's telling you the old bet - one title, one employer, one ladder - is getting riskier. It is not telling you that you're becoming obsolete. The most future-proof things about you are the very things AI can't do - and the market is paying more for them every single year.
So the real question isn't whether you can survive the AI age inside the structure you already have. It's what you'd build if you stopped assuming that structure was the safest place to stand.
If that question feels alive for you, we're running a live Online Event on the 14th September: "Life by design: Turn your corporate skills into aligned income streams" - register HERE.