One recent night at the Oakland Children’s Hospital Research Institute, women were not talking about children, but rather the challenges women face in reaching leadership positions. While women tend to be at the center of healthcare decisions for themselves and their families and represent 73% of medical and health services managers, only 4% of healthcare CEOs are women. Dr. Kimberly Horton (above), COO of Kaiser Vallejo Medical Center, opened her keynote acknowledging some of the steep differences in pay and leadership roles across many industries as part of an ongoing series conceived and hosted by Kaiser and Skanska. She touched on different ways men and women’s brains work and how we can use this understanding to better communicate in the workplace. Kaiser and Skanska are developing a fireside chat series to discuss some of the challenges women face in reaching leadership positions and how best to overcome them.