Shake it off: What Taylor Swift can teach us about being ‘fearless' industry leaders

Nashville, Tenn. — In a packed conference room at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel on Nov. 12, plastics industry enthusiasts Mercedes Landazuri and Lynzie Nebel delivered an energetic presentation called "The PlastChicks Eras Tour: Mastering Communication to Shake Off Career Challenges," a nod to Taylor Swift's record-breaking international tour. The breakout session was one highlight of the two-day Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum, hosted by Plastics News and Rubber News, in Nashville.

Landazuri and Nebel first connected over a phone call — "like a platonic Love Is Blind for the workplace," they joked — and now they host an award-winning podcast called PlastChicks, sponsored by the Society of Plastics Engineers. Landazuri is the market insight manager and North America team lead for Ampacet, while Nebel is an upstream hardware engineer for Cytiva.

The morning workshop blended the "iconic eras of Taylor Swift's music career with essential communication strategies for women in male-dominated industries," the duo explained. Attendees drew parallels from Swift's career to the challenges women face in the workplace.

"Participants will leave feeling empowered, inspired and ready to write their own success stories in their respective fields. … It's time to make the whole place shimmer with your confidence and skills," read the session description.

Landazuri instructed the crowd to take out their phones, text a friend or colleague, and share something they admire about the person.

Next, Landazuri and Nebel had the audience write a note to their younger selves and identify something they admire about them that they should nurture — "something that you might have lost along the way," they said. "What would you tell her?"

"You can't spell 'awesome' without 'me' / I promise that you'll never find another like me," Swift sings on "ME!" from 2019's Lover album.

The duo then asked audience members to identify something unique about themselves now as it pertains to their work. "Write yourself an attagirl — something you're great at, something someone else has said you're good at," they encouraged.

Swift's fourth album, 1989, marked her first official transition into pop and symbolized a rebirth of her artistry, Landazuri said. The media were taking digs at her personal life, but what "emboldened" her to continue to fight, Landazuri said, was being surrounded by her "squad" of A-list friends. It challenged the narrative of pitting women against each other, Nebel said.

"It's important to build a network of like-minded, supportive women," Landazuri said.

The pair had the audience make a list of their personal squads. "Who's mentored you? Who are the people that you want to support? It can be five people; it can be 50 people," they said. Then, they had the attendees take a selfie with their lists.

"It's important to just shake off the haters," Landazuri said, referring to Swift's song "Shake It Off." (She also shared how Swift's then-record label wanted the song to have a fiddle on it, but Swift stayed true to her vision of a non-country album — a reminder for attendees to hold firm to their own goals and values.)

The speakers quoted the speech Swift gave at the 2016 Grammys, where she won for Album of the Year: "I want to say to all the young women out there: There are going to be people along the way who try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday, when you get where you're going, you will look around and you will know it was you, and the people who love you, who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world."

For Swift's third album, Speak Now, Landazuri and Nebel emphasized the importance of advocating for yourself and speaking up for others when you see credit being stolen.

The speakers mentioned the Matilda effect, a term coined in 1993 by Margaret Rossiter, a Cornell University historian of women in science, to describe the systematic suppression of information and bias against recognizing women's contributions to STEM and attributing the work to men. Rossiter named it after Matilda Joslyn Gage, a lecturer and activist of women's right who first described similar biases in an 1870 essay.

"When you notice a man take credit for a woman's idea? Speak now," Landazuri and Nebel said.

Sister albums Folklore and Evermore were created during the height of the pandemic and released in 2020. Swift took a step back from autobiographical lyrics and created fictional characters and storylines.

"Our brains are hard-wired to follow the thread," Nebel said, mentioning how dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin, neural coupling and mirroring influence the brain.

Landazuri and Nebel interviewed scientist Pavani Cherukupally, who used polyurethane foams to separate droplets of oil from wastewater, for their podcast. "Her idea didn't gain any traction until she referred to it as a sponge. You can leverage storytelling [and analogies] to get your important ideas out," the duo said.

The two told audience members to collaborate with four or five fellow attendees, choose a work project or concept that others might find difficult to understand, and explain it through storytelling and analogies. "Make a sponge story," they said.

Landazuri and Nebel used Swift's 2024 release, The Tortured Poets Department, as an example of what not to do in the professional sphere.

The album comprises 31 songs with a run time of more than two hours, with critics saying it was overindulgent and could have been trimmed down. The session speakers recommended the audience to provide less information for a better value. "Too much information interferes with our ability to process it," they said. "Irrelevant information and weak arguments reduce the weight of your overall argument."

The interactive assignment for this era had the audience choose a work project or obstacle, brain-dump every single idea that supports the argument, then narrow down to two or three points. "Challenge your inner tortured poet," Nebel said.

The two played the song "Fortnight" from the album, and the audience all sang aloud while writing.

"She's open. She's bold. There's no second-guessing," Nebel said of Swift's second album and the most-awarded country album, Fearless.

She won her first MTV Video Music Award in 2009, for "You Belong With Me." The moment was ruined when rapper Kanye West jumped on stage, took the microphone and declared Beyoncé had the best music video.

"Despite her winning her first VMA and multiple Grammys for this album," Nebel said, "she must have experienced imposter syndrome, right? Well, we don't call it imposter syndrome. We call it bicycle face."

Some 19th century doctors had warned women of a seemingly terrifying medical condition called bicycle face, or the unconscious effort that maintaining balance on two wheels results in a clenched jaw, flushed cheeks, bulging eyes and general weariness.

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel," suffragist Susan B. Anthony said in 1896.

But bicycle face and imposter syndrome aren't "syndromes," they said, adding that they are just "strategies used to hold back women" rooted in misogyny. "It's not all in our heads," they said. "It's a structural inequality."

Later on during the awards show, when Beyoncé won an award, she invited Swift back to the stage to let her finish her speech that had been interrupted. "It actually became a beautiful moment," Landazuri said. "[Beyoncé] stood back and let Taylor Swift have her moment to shine."

Nebel was named to PN's inaugural Women Breaking the Mold class of 2015, and Landazuri was honored for the same program for 2024.

From 'bicycle face' to 'the Matilda effect,' one Breaking the Mold Networking Forum workshop blended Taylor Swift's album eras with approachable workplace wisdom