Executive Summary

Effective leaders are effective communicators, but women are socialized to speak in disempowered ways. From hedging to uptalk, disempowered speech drives perceptions of women as subordinates. This creates barriers to equity in wages and leadership. To dismantle these barriers, Project CELIA will use rigorous design-science methods to develop and validate a cutting-edge solution, a "conversational selfie" artificial intelligence agent. At first, it will mirror women's speech habits to promote essential self-reflection and recognition of disempowered speech patterns. Then, it will coach women to adjust their speech by honing dialogue skills. Our solution will be developed to support all women, but especially Indigenous and Hispanic women. They comprise stigmatized speech communities who are underrepresented in the energy sector, impacting environmental justice for their communities. We will empower women to speak effectively as leaders, while avoiding dominant white, patriarchal expectations for leadership communication.

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