08/09/2026
Normally, I go for a good psychological thriller, and sometimes even a good spicy book, but I do love a good self empowerment book also.
I want to highlight two books I’ve been reading recently. They are written by someone who is very close to me, Erica Rooney. She is the author of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors and the AI Gap: Women, AI, and the Next Great Leap Forward.
Glass Ceiling and Sticky Floors is one of my favorites as this is not only a book, but a podcast. It’s all about figuring out your limiting ways and toxic behaviors that have you stuck and how to break through them to your best potential. She goes over theories to help with this along with telling you about how she’s been on top in corporate, but then how it affected her at home life. She gets real and raw and is very relatable. And then on her podcast, she talks to incredible women from all over the world and how they’ve got to where they are and how they deal with everyday BS of living in a male dominated area
Let me preface this next one with Erica is an AI Expert and she uses it in non traditional ways that helps her do everyday things. Her other book, the AI Gap, is actually one that is a little bit different, but still incredible! I was there at the conception of this book at a conference with her. A room, full of women, women in leadership roles and CEOs, who all use AI pretty often just to help with every day things that they do, we’re all given a prompt. The prompt was simple, “knowing what you know of me what do you think I look like?” And what every single woman in this room got back was a pale male stale guy in a business suit. This then raised the question of why not have a woman there? Why not have a person of a different color there? AI is trained on patterns that it sees every day. Women are not studied enough and according to AI apparently aren’t even capable of being a CEO role. So she breaks it down in this book about how we can break that stereotype and help these things start coming to fruition.
Also these books are from a local author, so even cooler to support! If you are not, go follow Erica Anderson Rooney 🥳
📸 by Amy Paulson | Photographer