Welcome! I’m Alison Fragale.
Let me tell you a bit about me and this community, in the hopes that you will want to stick around, and we will one day become besties.
My credentials, in brief:
I’m an organizational psychologist, professor, and keynote speaker who excels at translating behavioral science into simple, practical tips for success.
My book Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, a national bestseller, was published by Penguin Random House on September 3, 2024.
I’m also a mom of three who lives in Chicago, loves NFL Football and the Golden Girls in equal measure, and owns way too many shoes and handbags.
If you want to know more – everything from my academic work and keynote speaking to where I got married and my favorite kind of music - you can poke around my website.
And if you’re super-duper curious, at the bottom of this page I share the story of how I got to this point in my life, as it was not my childhood dream.
What I offer here:
I share science and strategies to help women succeed.
(That said, the tips I offer apply to everyone, so all are welcome!)
I’ve titled this community The Upper Hand because women deserve better than simply “leveling the playing field.”
I am here to empower women to achieve anything they want (and most certainly deserve) by giving them every ounce of science-based advantage they can get.
At least once a month, I share information that helps women be more effective or efficient (or both) at work or in life. I share everything from reading recommendations, excerpts from interviews with likeable badass women, and easy-to-implement pieces of advice.
I focus on the hot topics that are most frequently raised by the thousands of women I’ve advised or spoken with over the past twenty years.
Examples include:
The best biggest mistake people make when trying to influence
Five ways to advance your career while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office (or the DMV)
How to make it known you want to be promoted without signaling you don’t like your job
Building an effective network when you work remotely
The two questions you should ask in every salary negotiation
Productive procrastination: What to do when you’re too tired to work
How successful women self-promote (and why you should, too)
Reclaim an hour in your day by mastering these three rules of delegation
How to raise a successful adult: Teach them to negotiate well as a child
Everything I share is designed to meet four criteria:
Actionable: I give you tools and tips you can use immediately.
Evidence-based: I am an expert in behavioral science so you don’t have to be. I explain the why behind the strategies.
Entertaining: I love to tell stories (mine and others). I’d like to think I’m what you’d get if your favorite professor and favorite comedian had a very fashionable baby.
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.
What you get when you subscribe:
If, like me, you aspire to an empty inbox, it might seem counterproductive to subject yourself to receiving more emails. But here’s how I see it. Email is never going away, so our only option is to fill our inboxes with the right kind of messages. For me, that means fewer Bed Bath and Beyond coupons and meeting requests, and more learning and laughter.
My aspiration is for these posts to be an informative spark of “Hells Yes” in your otherwise dreary online to-do list. And since I’m only writing once or twice a month, if your inbox has 30,000 messages in it it’s really not my fault.
Free subscribers get access to my monthly posts, filled with science, strategies, and stories to give women the upper hand, as well as access to exclusive presale offers and events for my forthcoming book, Likeable Badass (oh yes, there is merch).
But wait, there’s more. For the every 1000 subscribers who join this community of rockstars, I will select ten (10) to receive a 30-minute video chat with me. We can talk about anything you want - a challenge you’re facing at work or home, an upcoming negotiation, your favorite Golden Girls episode, etc.
This is my way of saying thanks and interjecting a little fun. Who doesn’t love a good raffle?
Want to supercharge your success?
If you’re looking for even more support, and Alison QT, consider becoming a paid or founding subscriber.
All paid subscribers receive:
Access to monthly AAAs (Ask Alison Anything): You submit your burning success questions and I’ll record the answers in a video sent to your email (kind of like xoxo Cody, if you happen to be a Peloton fan).
An opportunity to empower another woman: For every paid subscription, I will gift a second paid subscription to another woman. I primarily offer these subscriptions to women in the job search process, women of color, women who lack the financial means to afford a subscription on their own, and military members or their spouses (active duty or veterans).
My heartfelt appreciation for supporting my work.
In addition to these benefits, founding members receive a VIP Likeable Badass Book Box including a signed copy of Likeable Badass and exclusive Likeable Badass merch! These book boxes are only available to members of Team Likeable Badass and founding members of The Upper Hand.
Know of another Likeable Badass who would love The Upper Hand with Alison Fragale? Send them a gift subscription!
How I got here (only for the very curious or those stuck in an airport with a long delay):
If you’re wondering how someone grows up to be an organizational psychologist who specializes in women’s success, here’s how it happened…
I started my career as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. I quickly discovered I didn’t enjoy consulting, except for one thing. When our clients would inevitably resist our attempts to change their structures and processes, I would get curious. How could I convince Joe on the shipping dock to try a new trucking company? Why was Mary ignoring 76 requests to share the sales data with us? I started putting myself in the head of my audience and experimenting with different ways to get them to do what I wanted.
I loved it. And I was good at it. Soon, my teams started using me as “the influencer” – sending me to get our most difficult clients to do things they didn’t want to do.
That was my first turning point. I wanted to understand the science behind my strategies. So I left consulting, got my PhD in organizational psychology, and became a professor specializing in negotiation, influence, power, and status.
I built most of my career speaking on these topics to audiences of mostly men, either in my MBA classes or in corporate audiences.
But it was always the women in the audience who sought me out – to ask for advice about their career challenges, to ask for survival tips from a fellow working mother, to have someone reassure them that they could overcome the latest roadblock.
This was my second turning point. I realized in these conversations that women needed advice and support that they weren’t getting elsewhere. And I loved helping them. These conversations gave me a chance to share both science and my own lived experience. And I thrived on the awesome victory updates I would receive from them – sometimes years after we chatted – telling me that I gave them confidence and tools to make the ask or do the thing. Many told me that “they channeled their inner Alison,” which is the best compliment I’ve ever received.
And that, my friends, is how I became a professor who uses behavioral science to help women advance.
I’ve loved every single minute of it.
And I’m grateful that path has brought me to you!
Cheers to success, friends!
Xoxo
Alison
