Future Shapers: Difference Is the Superpower

BRG Director Shantee Hope sits down with Heather Sager, an industrial-organizational psychologist and Senior Workforce Transformation consultant at Perceptyx, to discuss:

• why the things we are taught to hide often turn out to be our sharpest professional assets
• why it can be better not to fit the mold
• how Marvel Comics, and Spider-Man in particular, gave Heather a language for reframing difference years before she ever led a team
• why leading global, multigenerational, and increasingly artificial intelligence–augmented teams means letting go of the idea that there is only one right way to look, sound, or lead

Selected Transcript Summary

[1:30]
An unlikely friendship, a shared consulting lens. Shantee introduces Heather, a friend she met by chance who turned into a close confidante. Both work in consulting: Shantee in AI strategy and transformation, Heather in employee experience. They frame the episode as a chance to let listeners in on the kinds of conversations they have had privately for years.

[4:50]
What an industrial-organizational psychologist actually does. Heather demystifies her field, explaining that it is closer to a business degree than therapy—just centered on the people behind the numbers. She shares an employee satisfaction case study that backfired: how, during the pandemic, giving frontline nurses a Starbucks gift card tanked engagement because it felt dismissive of their sacrifice.

[7:40]
The story: Spider-Man and a diagnosis that came with shame. Heather traces her leadership lens back to a childhood dyslexia diagnosis in rural Pennsylvania—a moment when she overheard adults doubting she’d have a “normal life.” Spider-Man’s secret identity became the lightbulb: something she was told to hide could be a source of power.

[14:00]
Turning the reframe into a professional edge. Heather describes catching a costly flaw in a fifteen-year-old onboarding process—simply by asking why it worked the way it did—and cutting assessment costs by roughly 15 percent. She now coaches colleagues and adult learners to name what they think disqualifies them and find three ways it is actually an asset.

[19:00]
When the bias wasn’t about the learning difference at all. Heather recalls being told in a grad school interview that she looked too “Barbie” to be taken seriously. It was a different kind of scrutiny than the one she’d braced for, and she weathered it more easily because she was used to being underestimated.

[21:30]
Shantee’s parallel: the consultant in jeans. Shantee shares her own breakthrough: watching a young lead consultant show up to an organization-wide town hall in jeans and command the room anyway. It cracked open her assumption that leadership had to look a certain way and reshaped how she thought about her own career timeline.

[25:30]
Leading across difference, and what AI is changing. Shantee argues that sameness is not a prerequisite for effectiveness and turns to how AI is reshaping leadership—potentially as an equalizer if approached with curiosity and judgment rather than as a replacement for expertise.

[27:35]
Bringing authenticity into the classroom and the workplace. Heather describes using Marvel references—like calling out her “Spidey sense”—to connect with adult learners and colleagues alike. Shantee connects it to authenticity as an anchor against the exhaustion of constant, accelerating change.

[32:45]
Owning the room, imposter syndrome and all. Heather tells the story of preparing for an audience of fifteen and instead finding one thousand people in the room—and the trick she used (removing her glasses) to calm herself down. Both Heather and Shantee land on the same insight: nearly everyone fakes confidence to some degree.

[36:00]
Advice for rising leaders: your belief system overrides everything. Shantee shares a therapist’s insight that no amount of intellectual self-assurance matters if your inner belief system says otherwise. She urges young leaders not to let external noise about AI or the future of work reshape who they know themselves to be.

[38:50]
Rapid-fire close. Heather names integrity as the leadership trait she values most; adaptable as the word for a high-performing team; Excelsior (a Stan Lee catchphrase meaning “ever upward”) as her word for pressure; “do a little a lot, not a lot a little” as the best advice she’s received; authenticity as the most valuable kind of difference on a team; and Black Panther‘s T’Challa as the comic book character every leader could learn from.