Much has been said about the toxic, sexist work environments that women endure. I have been fortunate to have encountered very little of this; most of the men I’ve worked with have been great people who have treated me as an equal. Even so, there’s a cost to being an only. Many of the primary teams in my career have been me and a bunch of guys (great guys) – and so is my household.

I used to keep track of my record for “number of men in a meeting without another woman but me”, and topped out at 25. During that particular meeting one of my male colleagues asked me at lunch – “hey, did you realize you’re the only woman here?”. Yes, sir, I did.

I joined a software startup as the first data scientist and the first woman in the product and engineering department. I was on the department leadership team with several really wonderful men. It was a great experience. A year or so later when we hired a female head of product management who joined that leadership team meeting for the first time that I was surprised at the sudden sense of relief at no longer being the sole woman. I hadn’t ever realized the underlying loneliness of being an “only”, no matter how welcoming the men around me, until it was gone.