There’s a script most of us absorbed without realizing it.
Be grateful for the offer. Don’t rock the boat. You don’t want to seem greedy.
For women — and especially for Black women — that script is doing real financial damage. Not because of a confidence gap. Not because of a mindset problem. But because of a system designed, deliberately, to keep women underpaid and thankful for it.
‘Tine Zekis has spent her career dismantling that script one negotiation at a time. She’s the founder and CEO of Getting Black Women Paid, author of Overcoming Imposter Syndrome at Work, and a former high school math teacher who pivoted into tech, tripled her teaching salary in under five years, and now coaches other women to do the same.
She joined Nicole on Hello Moxie for one of the most honest, practical conversations we’ve had about money, worth, and what it actually costs to stay quiet.
Women aren’t underpaid because of a confidence problem
The most important thing ‘Tine said in this episode isn’t a negotiation tip. It’s a reframe.
“We are taught our whole lives to be grateful. Don’t rock the boat. You don’t want to sound greedy. But this is your life. And when women earn more, our communities do better.”
That shift from I don’t want to seem difficult to this is my life and my community, is where the real work begins. Not fixing yourself. Naming the system.
The math that should make you angry
‘Tine walks through a scenario in this episode that’s simple, quiet, and infuriating.
You and a male colleague both get offered $120K. You say yes. He negotiates and lands at $128K. You’re now $8,000 apart — on the same team, at the same level. Every raise, every bonus, every percentage-based increase from that point forward widens the gap.
“You find out the guy sitting next to you, with the same level of experience, is making more. And that gap just gets wider and wider.”
That’s not bad luck. That’s a structural outcome, and the only way to close it is to negotiate every single time, starting from the very first offer.
Key Takeaways from ‘Tine Zekis
1. Your average is your floor. When ‘Tine’s bootcamp told graduates what the average starting salary looked like in their market, she decided immediately: that number is my minimum, not my target.
2. Get off the phone. When an offer comes in, you don’t have to decide on the spot. “Thank you so much — I’d love to see the full benefits package and get back to you” buys you time, keeps you calm, and lets you do the math before you commit.
3. Negotiate as collaboration, not confrontation. The script that works: I’m so excited about this opportunity. In doing my market research, I was hoping for closer to X. How can we work together to get there? It’s your first collaboration with this team — show them how you work.
4. If they punish you for advocating for yourself, that’s data. ‘Tine coached a woman whose offer was rescinded after she negotiated. Her response: Thank goodness she doesn’t work for them. A company that punishes self-advocacy at the offer stage will punish it everywhere else too.
5. It’s not imposter syndrome, it’s imposter systems. The structures that exclude women and people of color send daily messages that you don’t belong. “You have your eyes open,” ‘Tine says. “You’re seeing people give you messages every day that you don’t belong, and you’re being asked to call that a syndrome.” Naming it as a system problem changes the solution entirely.
On Maya Angelou and doing it anyway
When Nicole asked ‘Tine about a woman in history she admires, she chose Maya Angelou — not just for her grace and courage, but for something far more specific.
“Even after 11 books, Maya Angelou said she still thought, ‘They’re going to find me out now. I’ve been running a game on everybody.’ To hear that from someone you look at with such admiration normalizes the experience. Even someone like that has these feelings, and works through them, and pushes through them anyway.”
That’s the through line of this entire conversation. The fear doesn’t go away. The doing it anyway is the point.
“Moxie, to me, is audacity. Having the audacity to ask for more, to show up as yourself — all of that.”
