Women and wealth building look different when you stop climbing the ladder and start buying the building.

For Heather, it started with a paper route in small-town Nova Scotia, a mom who modeled resilience, and a belief that working hard was the only way out. Syama Bunten sits down with Heather Kernahan, CEO of the Content Bureau and author of Unstuckable, for a Getting Rich Together conversation about building wealth as a woman in the corporate world and beyond.

Heather shares the unfiltered story of student loan debt, stock options she did not fully understand, and the mindset shift that changed how she showed up at work. She gets into negotiating salary and equity as a woman, what the path from corporate career to CEO genuinely cost her, and how she eventually became a limited partner in a venture capital fund focused on female and minority founders.

Venture capital investing for women, female entrepreneurship, and business acquisition are not topics most personal finance conversations touch, and Heather makes each one feel within reach.

She also opens up about the personal decisions that made her ambitions possible, and what it meant to personally finance her first acquisition. Financial independence for women does not follow one path, and this conversation proves it.

If this conversation moved you, keep going. Join Syama and the community at the Wealth Catalyst Summit, a full-day event in San Francisco this October. Find your city and claim your seat at wealthcatalyst.com.

This is a story about financial independence, women and wealth building, and the courage it takes to bet on yourself.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Women and Wealth Building With Heather Kernahan

02:11 Growing Up Without Financial Safety Nets

09:53 The Exchange Program That Changed Everything

18:19 How a PR Certificate Launched Her Career

22:06 Student Loan Debt and the Wake-Up Call That Forced Her to Get Serious

28:03 The Performance Review That Rewired Her Professionally

36:01 Pursuing an MBA While Working Full-Time With Two Kids

43:30 Stock Options, RSUs, and Learning to Negotiate Equity in Tech

49:54 What to Do With a Big Financial Win

51:58 Becoming a Limited Partner in a Venture Capital Fund

55:14 Acquiring Her First Business and Betting on Herself

1:00:07 Legacy, Longevity, and What She Is Building Next

Find more from Syama Bunten:

Attend a Salon near you: wealthcatalyst.com/salons

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/syama.co/

Join Syama's Substack: https://thewealthcatalystwithsyama.substack.com/

Website: https://wealthcatalyst.com

Download Syama's Free Resources: https://wealthcatalyst.com/resources

Wealth Catalyst Summit: https://wealthcatalyst.com/summits

Speaking: https://syamabunten.com

Big Delta Capital: www.bigdeltacapital.com

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Women and money is a conversation most people only have in private, if at all.

Alicia Umpierre is a patent attorney with a Ph.D. in chemistry. She built her career with no family blueprint and no financial network to draw from. On Getting Rich Together, host Syama Bunten draws out the story behind the credentials. What emerges is the women and money conversation you know but rarely hear spoken out loud.

Alicia grew up in Southern California not thinking about finances. No one around her had a Ph.D. She didn't even know what one was until college. Without mentors, she says she might still be testing wastewater in a lab in Ontario, California. People told her what was possible before she knew to ask.

Her patent attorney career path didn't come from a plan. She followed what felt right. She left behind what didn't. A career change to law came from recognizing a dead end, not a vision. She passed the patent bar in two months, went back to school for her J.D. while raising a toddler, then had her second son during law school, and built a career most people don't even know exists.

What Alicia is still working on is teaching kids about money the way she wishes she'd been taught. Her own financial goals now center on a question many women know well: how do you build wealth as a woman when you know what you have, but don't have a trusted network to help you decide what to do next?

She watched her immigrant father work without rest his whole life. She doesn't want to do the same.

Syama built Wealth Catalyst because women and money deserved a better conversation. If you're ready to be in the room where that conversation happens in person, the Freedom Tour salons are gathering women across 32 cities this year, and the Wealth Catalyst Summit comes to San Francisco this October. Save your seat at wealthcatalyst.com.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Women and Money: Alicia Umpierre on Building Wealth Without a Roadmap

02:12 Growing Up Middle Class With No Financial Role Models

04:01 Why Math and Chemistry Became Her Foundation

06:24 Working Through College and the Value of Hard Work

09:17 How Mentorship Changed Everything

13:21 FromPh.D. to Patent Attorney Career Path

16:49 Passing the Patent Bar and Landing the Job

18:28 Going Back to Law School in Her Thirties

21:57 Building Financial Goals as a Couple

24:46 Teaching Kids About Money and Work Ethic

27:57 Retirement, Nest Eggs, and Investing Honestly

33:41 Why Trusting a Financial Advisor Is So Hard

38:46 On Implicit Bias and the Power of Mentorship

Find more from Syama Bunten:

Attend a Salon near you: wealthcatalyst.com/salons

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/syama.co/

Join Syama's Substack: https://thewealthcatalystwithsyama.substack.com/

Website: https://wealthcatalyst.com

Download Syama's Free Resources: https://wealthcatalyst.com/resources

Wealth Catalyst Summit: https://wealthcatalyst.com/summits

Speaking: https://syamabunten.com

Big Delta Capital: www.bigdeltacapital.com

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Impact investing for women does not have to mean choosing between profit and purpose.

Lucy Rogers built a global network connecting more than 3,000 family offices, investors, and founders by asking one simple question in every room she entered about what that person actually needed. On Getting Rich Together, host Syama Bunten sits down with Lucy to explore how that instinct became the foundation for a new model of values-based investing that is quietly outperforming expectations.

Lucy's path was anything but conventional. She was expelled from two schools, dropped out of college at 17 to travel solo through Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand, and left university a second time to chase work experience instead of a degree. She bought her first flat at 24 through sheer discipline and eventually built a career spanning creative direction, entertainment, and capital. None of it followed a straight line, and that turned out to be exactly the point.

The conversation gets into what family office investing looks like from the inside, how Lucy positions impact investments to skeptical investors without ever leading with the impact angle, and why the most oversubscribed deals in her network are increasingly backed by women in venture. Lucy shares the story of an investor who said he wanted nothing to do with climate, and how she got him to fund a climate company anyway.

For anyone thinking seriously about impact investing for women and wealth building, this episode changes what it means to put capital behind values. The return data is catching up to the conviction. Lucy Rogers is proof that when you build from alignment, the numbers tend to follow.

If this conversation sparked something, the next step is a room of your own. Join Syama and the Wealth Catalyst community at the Freedom Tour salons happening in 32 cities across the country, or at the Wealth Catalyst Summit in San Francisco this October. Find your seat at wealthcatalyst.com.

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 Meet Lucy Rogers, Entrepreneur, Investor, and Family Office Connector

02:32 Early Entrepreneurial Instincts and the First Lessons About Money

04:43 Getting Expelled Twice and What It Taught Her About Reading People

07:37 Dropping Out, Traveling Alone, and Finding a Creative Path Forward

10:42 Buying Her First Flat at 24 Through Extreme Discipline and Saving

13:18 Why She Built Financial Independence From a Place of Feeling Unsafe

15:08 From Advertising to Music Videos and the Power of Following Intuition

20:12 Going Freelance, Starting a Company, and Building Real Wealth in Entertainment

30:45 Finding Alignment Through Values-Based Investing and Impact-Driven Work

33:31 How Just Us Was Built to Replace Transactional Networking With Human Connection

38:15 Impact Investing for Women and Why the Market Still Confuses It With Charity

40:38 Converting a Skeptical Investor Into an Impact Deal Without Leading With Impact

41:56 Building Infrastructure for Legacy Through the Aspen Institute Partnership

45:32 How Intuition Drives Her Investment Decisions Alongside Rigorous Due Diligence

48:49 The Philosophy Behind Her Work and Why Safety Is at the Core of Everything

Find more from Syama Bunten:

Attend a Salon near you: wealthcatalyst.com/salons

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/syama.co/

Join Syama's Substack: https://thewealthcatalystwithsyama.substack.com/

Website: https://wealthcatalyst.com

Download Syama's Free Resources: https://wealthcatalyst.com/resources

Wealth Catalyst Summit: https://wealthcatalyst.com/summits

Speaking: https://syamabunten.com

Big Delta Capital: www.bigdeltacapital.com

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm