Early in my career, I believed good work speaks for itself.

It doesn't. Good work is quiet. Somebody has to give it a voice, and the person who benefits most when you do is you.

After a decade of building WomenTech Network into a community of 200,000+ people across 179 countries, and hundreds of conversations with executives for my book Chief in Tech (Wiley, 2025), I compressed everything I know about this topic into one formula:

Personal Brand = (Authenticity + Expertise) × Visibility

It looks simple. The math inside it is not, so let me unpack each variable the way I do in the book.

Authenticity: the part you cannot fake

Your brand starts with what is true about you: your story, your values, the specific path that brought you here. Not the sanitized version. The real one, including the pivots and the setbacks.

Why does this matter commercially? Because audiences are drowning in polished sameness, and trust goes to the person who sounds like a human being. Authenticity is what makes people remember you when a role, a stage, or a board seat opens up.

Expertise: the part you have to earn

Authenticity without substance is just a diary. The second ingredient is demonstrable expertise: the problems you have solved, the teams you have built, the results you can point to.

Here is the trap I see brilliant technologists fall into: they keep raising the expertise bar for themselves and never feel "ready" to speak. If you have solved a problem someone else is currently struggling with, you are ready. Expertise is relative to your audience, not to the smartest person in your field.

Visibility: the multiplier everyone skips

Notice the formula multiplies, it does not add.

Authenticity plus expertise with zero visibility equals zero brand. That is the whole argument in one sentence. The most capable engineer nobody has heard of loses opportunities to a less capable peer who shows up consistently where decisions get made.

Visibility is a practice, not an event:

  • Write and speak regularly, even when it feels repetitive. Your tenth post about your specialty is the first one most people will see.
  • Choose rooms, not just platforms. A conference stage, an executive dinner, an internal all-hands. Visibility compounds fastest where your next opportunity is sitting in the audience. We have watched this happen with the 700+ speakers we feature at each of our global conferences.
  • Let others amplify you. Communities, allies, and sponsors multiply reach in a way solo posting never will. It is why I built a network before I wrote a book.
× 0 = 0The formula's uncomfortable truth: brilliance with zero visibility produces zero brand. Visibility is not vanity. It is the multiplier.

Putting the formula to work

Try this exercise from the book. Score yourself 1 to 10 on each variable, honestly.

  1. Where is your lowest score? That is your constraint, and the only place where effort moves the result.
  2. If it is visibility (for most technical leaders, it is), commit to one visible act per week for a quarter: an article, a talk proposal, a panel, a well-argued comment in the room where it counts.
  3. Reassess after 90 days. The formula compounds quickly once the multiplier stops being the bottleneck.

For executives, this is exactly the gap our Elevate framework exists to close: putting real expertise on real stages, consistently. And if you want the full chapter on crafting your unique value proposition and building executive presence, it is Chapter 6 of Chief in Tech.

What is your lowest variable right now? Be honest with yourself. That answer is your next quarter's plan.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the personal brand formula come from?
It is the framework from Chapter 6 of Chief in Tech: How Women Are Breaking the Silicon Ceiling and Leading with Impact (Wiley, 2025) by Anna Radulovski, distilled from a decade of building WomenTech Network and hundreds of executive interviews.
Why is visibility a multiplier and not just another ingredient?
Because a brand only exists in other people’s awareness. Authenticity and expertise add up to potential; visibility multiplies that potential into reputation. If visibility is zero, the product is zero, no matter how strong the other two are.
How can technical leaders increase visibility without feeling self-promotional?
Reframe visibility as teaching: share the problems you have solved for the benefit of the person still struggling with them. One visible act per week, in rooms where your audience actually sits, compounds into a durable brand within a few quarters.