Welcome to the Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success. I'm Ashley Milne Tite. This time on the show, two perspectives on getting ahead at work. The first comes from a generation-wide journalist who thought she was doing all the right things, only to realize subtle and complicated factors can get in the way of

career progress. Then I talked to a seasoned business owner and financial times columnist who has

firm views on how to thrive at work, including learning how to say no and getting rid of guilt.

Coming up on the broad experience. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.

For a free trial and 20% off, go to Squarespace.com and use offer code Broad 9.

Jessica Bennett has already had a career a lot of young journalists would envy.

She's written for many publications over the years and worked as a writer and editor for

Newsweek for seven years before the magazine eventually folded.

She then moved on to be executive editor at micro-blogging site Tumblr.

Now she's editorial director at Facebook, C-O, and best-selling author Cheryl Sandberg's lean-in.org.

When we met, I told her I'd noticed her own Tumblr site bears the title,

Good Girls Finish Last.

She had to go back a bit to explain how she came to that conclusion.

I grew up in Seattle, which is like this heaven of a place where everyone is equal,

and we had a female governor.

And I never, I went to public school.

I never really thought about gender issues because the women outpaced the men in every way imaginable.

So went to college, moved to New York,

got my first full-time staff job at Newsweek,

assumed that I would just keep excelling the way that I always had.

You know, I was kind of one of those typical overachiever young women.

So I was at Newsweek for a few years,

...