Ambition and intuition. And/both.

Hello beautiful soul

How do you feel when I say the word ambition?

Like really. How do you feel in your body?

Because if it is anything like the women I work with, ambition feels a little like forbidden fruit. A part of you is naturally pulled towards it. But something has been coded into you to tell you that you are not allowed to want it. It is a word you feel a little uncomfortable claiming. Amiright? 

Now. Intuition.

How did you feel as you read that? Would you say you are an intuitive person? Is it something you feel able to claim? Or is it yet another form of forbidden fruit?

You see, women have been told who to be — quietly and explicitly — for a very long time now. I am tired of witnessing it. So in this newsletter I want to help you feel proud to claim both.

Ambition and intuition. And/both. 

Let me start by telling you about a job I nearly took.

Chief People Officer. The title I had been working towards for years that people told me, as a Talent Acquisition Director at Shazam, that I was wild for shooting for. I was told I needed to take a step back before I could be at the leadership table. But somehow I had done it. The money was right. More than right actually. The scope was incredible. On paper it ticked every single box I had ever written down.

But my body said nope.

Not loudly. Not with a reason I could put in a spreadsheet. Just — something is off. I felt it the first time I met the team, told myself it might be nerves. But there it was again yet much more clearly the second time. And by the time I sat across from the CEO in interview number three I knew. The people around this leader were not okay. They were struggling to keep their masks on their faces. The whole thing had an energy I had learned to be wary of — over years and years of being in rooms where I did not feel safe and found myself struggling to share my views freely. Happily that lived experience helped me to trust that read completely.

So I said no. And thank you.

And then I waited.

Not long as it turned out. Because the role that was actually mine — the one my ambition had been building towards and my intuition had been clearing the path for — was already on its way.

That is what happens when you stop forcing direction and start trusting the signal.

Here is what I want to say about ambition and intuition living on opposite sides of a line.

That line was drawn by the same system that called ambitious women difficult and intuitive women hysterical. The same system that decided the masculine way of knowing — logic, proof, data, the business case — was the only way that counted. And the feminine way of knowing — the felt sense, the body signal, the thing you cannot yet explain but know completely — was something to apologise for or keep quiet.

So we learned to perform the ambition and suppress the knowing.

And we wonder why it costs so much.

Here is the science. Because I know you love a receipt and I want you to be able to use this the next time someone tells you your gut feeling is not good enough evidence.

Your intuition is not soft. It is your most sophisticated intelligence.

Neuroscientists call it pattern recognition — your nervous system processing thousands of data points faster than your conscious mind can keep up with. The slight shift in someone's energy. The word choice that landed slightly wrong. The room that felt charged before anyone said anything. All of it synthesised into a signal before you have consciously registered it.

Women are extraordinarily good at this. Not by accident. We evolved to scan environments for threat. We give life. We have always had to read what is not being said. To feel the temperature of a room. To know before we know.

That is not a weakness dressed up nicely. That is real intelligence being systematically dismissed.

And your ambition? Also real. Also yours. Also something you are allowed to claim without apology.

I can see it in you. In the way you work harder hoping someone will notice. The raise email sitting in your drafts. The way you said the real version to your best friend in the car instead of in the room where it mattered. The 2am replay of the conversation your therapist already resolved.

That is not a woman who lacks ambition. That is a woman whose ambition has been running without her intuition to guide it. Driving hard in a direction that looks right on paper and feels slightly wrong in the body.

Ambition gets you moving.

Intuition tells you which direction is actually yours.

When you bring both together — the drive and the deep knowing. The structure and the wisdom. The masculine and the feminine. The plan and the felt sense of what the plan is actually for — something shifts.

You stop proving and start deciding.

You stop asking for permission and start trusting the signal.

You stop building the perfect business case and start having the actual conversation.

That is what I want to offer you now.

What's Actually Real? is my research project on women's experience in the workplace in 2026 that gives you an actual report too. But it is also something else. It is an invitation to use your intuition as a map.

You go through the Five Career Freedoms — Pay, Promotion, Progression, Peace, Pivot — and instead of thinking your way through them, you feel your way through them. Where does your chest tighten? Where does something in you go quiet? Where does the energy shift?

That is your intuition showing you where to look.

And then at the end you get your Career Freedom Report. The structure. The plan. The clear next move. The masculine container to hold what the feminine wisdom just showed you.

Both at once. The way it was always supposed to be.

Ten minutes. Free. And it will tell you something true about where you are and what needs to shift next.

Go here: womenatwork.ruthpenfold.com

Rooting for you always
Ruth x