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In this solo episode, Jessica Santana unpacks what Emma Grede actually got right, what the discourse got wrong, and what none of us are talking about loudly enough: proximity bias is not a remote work problem. It is a design problem. And in a world being reshaped by AI, it is becoming more urgent, not less.This episode is for you if:- You've ever been told your work is great but your "visibility" needs improvement, and you didn't know what to do with that.- You're a woman of color navigating a system that wasn't designed with you in mind and trying to figure out how to build power anyway.- You manage a team and want to understand the structural patterns that are quietly leaving people out — even when no one intends them to.- You're thinking about remote work, hybrid work, or returning to the office and want a sharper framework for what's actually at stake.- You want to understand what proximity bias looks like in an AI-driven world, and why the relational gap is about to widen.- You're in leadership and looking for thoughts on how to change things internally Connect with Jessica:Subscribe to the Behind The Work newsletter — link in bioFollow Jessica on Instagram: http://instagram.com/@jessicasantanaFollow Behind The Work on Instagram: http://tiktok.com/@behindtheworkshowFollow Jessica on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jessworldwideFollow Behind The Work on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@behindtheworkAbout Behind The Work:Behind The Work is the show for the ambitious person looking to level up their lives, their career and their businesses. Hosted by Jessica Santana, Behind The Work goes deep with the executives, founders, leaders who are building from a place of power. Each episode pulls back the curtain on the real work — the strategy, the setbacks, the pivots, and the purpose — behind the people, companies and organizations shaping what's next.
Jessica Santana is a business and leadership coach for entrepreneurs and executives. She specializes in teaching founders, entrepreneurs and executives how to build strong businesses, careers and lives they love.
Behind The Work is the podcast show for ambitious executives and entrepreneurs looking to build businesses that scale and careers that leave an impact. Hosted by Jessica Santana, each episode features in-depth conversations with entrepreneurs, founders and executives who are building companies from the ground up and are succeeding in their career fields. Discover the real successes, honest failures, pivots, and the vision behind the most successful people reshaping industries.
Some episodes, we’ll sit down with some dope guests and hear about their journeys. Other times, it’ll just be us—breaking down the lessons, strategies, and real talk that I have learned as an entrepreneur and executive – It will be everything you need to keep pushing forward and you’ll always walk away with something tangible and practical.
This show will provide answers to questions like:
- What does the real journey from zero to success actually look like—beyond the highlight reel?
- How do I turn my business idea into a profitable, scalable company?
- How do successful founders navigate failure, pivots, and setbacks without giving up?
- What's the difference between entrepreneurs who scale to millions and those who stall?
- How do you secure funding, and what should you know before approaching investors?
- What does it actually take to build product-market fit?
- How do you build a high-performing team and company culture from the ground up?
- What blind spots do first-time entrepreneurs have, and how do you avoid them?
- How do you balance growth with profitability and sustainability?
- What's the real behind-the-scenes strategy that successful founders use?
- How do you stay motivated and resilient through the tough seasons of building?
- What's the path to building a company that can scale beyond you?
- How do you know when to double down on your vision versus pivot?
- What does leadership actually look like when you're building something from scratch?
- How do the most successful entrepreneurs think differently about risk, money, and opportunity?
Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Behind The Work. The show for the ambitious person looking to level up their lives, their careers, and their businesses. I'm your host Jessica Santana. And if this is your first time tuning in, I wanna say welcome to the show.
Jessica Santana:So Emma Grede pissed off a lot of people last week when she said that work from home culture is career suicide for women. But here's the thing, she is not wrong. Don't eat me up y'all. Don't eat me up. The headline makes it sound like the problem is where we work.
Jessica Santana:At home, in an office, hybrid, remote. Working from home is not inherently harmful. But because success has never been just about output it has always been about proximity, visibility, relationships, the informal conversations before and after meetings, the quick check ins, the I thought of you for this moments, the rooms where decisions get shaped before they ever get documented. But the truth is the location has never been the real variable. The real variable is access.
Jessica Santana:Access to relationships. Access to information. Access to power. And if we're being honest those things have never been distributed equally especially for women of color. Let me start with something personal.
Jessica Santana:There was a point in my career where I was doing everything right. Hitting deadlines, over delivering, being the reliable one on the team, the one people could count on. But then came the performance review process and the feedback from my manager wasn't about my work it was about my visibility. And I remember sitting there thinking how can I be invisible when I'm doing the most work in the room and on the team and when I'm just killing myself? But what I learned and what so many women of color learn eventually is that work does not speak for itself.
Jessica Santana:People speak for your work. And if you don't have the right people in the right rooms speaking your name when you're not there your work does stay invisible. Now layer that reality onto remote work because what work from home does is strip away accidental visibility. Those moments where someone sees you staying a little bit late, overhears your problem solving abilities, pulls you into a conversation you weren't invited to and suddenly everything becomes more intentional. And that sounds good in theory until you realize the system was never designed to be intentional about including everyone.
Jessica Santana:There's actually research that backs this up. A 2024 study published in the Harvard Business Review found that junior women received 40% more feedback from their managers when they sat physically near their colleagues. 40! That is not a small gap y'all. That's the difference between growing quickly and stagnating quietly.
Jessica Santana:That's the difference between someone investing in your development as an employee and someone forgetting you're even there. So when people say remote work is hurting women's careers what they're really saying is the system relies heavily on proximity to function. But here's where we need to be honest and a little uncomfortable. That system it was never working equitably to begin with. A system that always relied on proximity to power while never equitably granting access to that proximity in the first place.
Jessica Santana:A system where women of color have historically been excluded from informal networks, overlooked in rooms they were technically present in, and denied sponsorship even when their performance spoke for itself. Remote work didn't create that, it exposed it. Another body of research out of Harvard shows that women's advancement isn't primarily stalled because of flexibility or family responsibilities. It's because of organizational structures and cultures that quietly reroute them out of power paths. Let that sink in.
Jessica Santana:It's not that women opt out. It's that systems push them sideways. And for women of color that push is even stronger. Because now you're navigating gender bias, racial bias, and proximity bias all at the same time. And you can be in the room and still be overlooked, and you can be on the Zoom and still be unheard, and you can be doing the work and still not be seen as the one who should lead it.
Jessica Santana:I've lived that being in meetings where your idea lands and then lands better when someone else repeats it, being left off the follow-up email chain not because of malice but because of habit. Because systems don't have to be loud to be exclusionary. They just have to be consistent. Now let's talk about AI because a lot of people think AI is going to make work more meritocratic. More objective.
Jessica Santana:More about output. But the reality is it's going to do quite the opposite. AI is going to automate execution and in a world increasingly shaped by AI where technical skills are being democratized and productivity is easier to measure human relationships are becoming even more valuable not less. AI can replicate tasks, it cannot replicate trust, and it cannot replicate advocacy, and it cannot replicate the nuance of being known fully known. Which means the differentiator becomes who is trusted, who is brought into strategic conversations, who is seen as a thought partner and those things are built through relationships.
Jessica Santana:Not resumes, not slack messages, not perfectly written reports. Relationships. So now we're in a world where the technical barrier is lowering but the relational barrier is rising. And if access to relationships is unequal then AI doesn't fix inequality it actually accelerates its growth. So when Emma Grede says work from home can be a career suicide for women what she's actually pointing to is this.
Jessica Santana:If you remove proximity in a system that already depends on proximity you expose who the system was built to support. So when we talk about work from home being career suicide what we're really naming is this: Distance makes it harder to access the invisible infrastructure of opportunity. But again, let's be clear, remote work is not the problem. Because remote work has also been a lifeline. It has been a way to protect women from daily microaggressions.
Jessica Santana:It has created flexibility where none existed before. It has also allowed more women to stay in the workforce. Even global research has called remote work a double edged sword for women creating both opportunity and risk depending on how organizations design around it. But when you remove the office you also remove the accidental visibility and what's left is a structure that was never designed to intentionally include women of color. No built in pathways, no deliberate sponsorship, no systemic correction for bias.
Jessica Santana:So no, the issue isn't whether remote work is good or bad. The issue is whether companies are willing to redesign how opportunity flows. If the system stays the same remote work can amplify inequity. But that's not an argument against flexibility. That's an indictment of design.
Jessica Santana:And we all know that inequity is a product of bad design. Because the real question is why does opportunity depend on who sees you instead of what you do? Because right now most companies are still operating like this. Visibility equals proximity, opportunity equals relationships, advancement equals sponsorship. But none of those things are being systematically distributed.
Jessica Santana:They're informal which means they're biased. So what would it look like to actually fix this? Not patch it, not talk about it, but actually fix it. First, make sponsorship a system not a coincidence. Making sponsorship a formal responsibility not an informal favor.
Jessica Santana:We know from multiple workplace studies that employees with sponsors are promoted at significantly higher rates. So why is sponsorship still based on who you click with? Companies should be assigning sponsors especially for women of color and holding leaders accountable for outcomes. Second, track opportunity not just performance. Tracking who gets access to high visibility projects and correcting disparities in real time gives you a level playing field.
Jessica Santana:Who is getting visibility into these projects? Who is being invited into the decision making rooms? Who is getting feedback? And how often? Because if one group is getting 40% more feedback just by sitting closer to power that's not performance.
Jessica Santana:That's access. Third, design intentional relationship building strategies. Creating structured opportunities for relationship building that don't rely on physical proximity or personality bias. Not happy hours because I hate me at happy hour. Not forced small talk.
Jessica Santana:Structured meaningful interactions, rotational project teams, cross functional mentorship, leadership exposure sessions. Because if relationships are the currency of advancement then access to relationships must be engineered. Measuring not just performance but opportunity distribution. Fourth, decouple visibility from physical presence. If someone has to be seen in order to succeed then the company is responsible for redefining what seen means.
Jessica Santana:That could look like: Standardized reporting of contributions Regular talent reviews that include remote employees Documented recognition systems because I didn't know what she was working on is not a performance issue. It's a management failure. And finally interrogate the culture itself. Training leaders to recognize and interrupt the patterns that consistently leave women of color out of the loop. Because culture is not neutral.
Jessica Santana:It's built on patterns. And if the pattern is that women of color are consistently overlooked, under sponsored and under advocated for that is not an individual problem. That is a design problem. So no, work from home is not career suicide. A system that relies on proximity, ignores bias and refuses to evolve.
Jessica Santana:That is the real risk. And in an AI driven world this becomes a defining question. Because we're designing right now will the future of work be more equitable or just more efficient at reproducing the same inequities. Because if we don't change how relationships are built, how visibility is distributed and how trust is assigned then the same people who were invisible before will simply disappear faster. So the conversation we should be having is not should we go back to the office.
Jessica Santana:It's who does this system actually work for and what are we willing to redesign to make sure it works for everyone. Because proximity was never the advantage, access was. And if we're serious about equity then access has to be intentional not accidental. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Behind the Work. If you liked this week's episode I hope that you subscribe to the YouTube.
Jessica Santana:Make sure that you follow us on Apple Podcasts and on social media and share this with a friend in power who might have the opportunity to make a difference. See you all next week.