Emma Grede said the quiet part out loud — and people lost it.
When the entrepreneur behind Skims and Good American suggested that working from home could be holding Black women back professionally, the internet reacted the way it always does when someone says something inconvenient: with outrage. But here's the thing — almost no one actually argued she was wrong.
That tells you everything.
More than 600,000 Black women were pushed out of their jobs in 2025. Remote work, for many of them, wasn't a lifestyle choice — it was a lifeline. So the backlash makes sense. The timing was terrible. But the discomfort people felt wasn't really about Grede's point. It was about what her point implies: that the system still works the way it always has, and flexibility doesn't change that.
Proximity is power. That's not new.
Marketing executive and entrepreneur Lola Tomorrow cut through the noise quickly: "Black women cannot afford to not be in proximity. We're already in a position where they don't want to give us access."
That's the real conversation. Remote work didn't create unequal access to opportunity — it just removed one of the few tools people used to compensate for it. Showing up, being seen, building relationships in real time — these have always mattered more for people who don't get the benefit of the doubt by default.
For Black women in corporate spaces, visibility has never been a given. It's something you earn, maintain, and can lose without warning.
Millennials are caught in the middle — and they know it.
This is the generation that bought into hustle culture, ran themselves into the ground chasing it, and then finally exhaled when remote work gave them an out. Now someone's telling them that stepping back from the office might cost them? Of course that stings.
But two things can be true at once. Remote work genuinely improves quality of life. And in many industries, the path to senior leadership still runs through relationships, sponsorship, and informal access — none of which happen naturally over Slack.
Tomorrow is clear-eyed about this tension. She's not nostalgic for the old way. She's just honest about how it works. "If you've never been in a position where you wanted to get to the next level corporately, you probably don't understand what she's saying."
So what do you actually do with this?
Grede raised the problem. Tomorrow offers something more useful: a strategy.
"Relational currency is going to be key to the next level. Every next level in life and in business will be introduced to you by a person."
That doesn't mean dragging yourself back into an office five days a week. It means being intentional — showing up in the rooms that matter, building real relationships instead of transactional ones, and creating visibility that isn't dependent on a physical desk.
"You just cannot sit at home behind a computer all day, every day, and expect promotion and growth," she said.
That's not a condemnation of remote work. It's a reality check.
Success on your own terms — but with your eyes open.
Tomorrow's own definition of success has shifted. She's moved from chasing a salary number to asking a very different question: how much can I build from a place of rest? That reframe matters. Because proximity may still shape opportunity, but it doesn't have to dictate everything.
The outrage around Grede's comments was understandable. But outrage doesn't change the mechanics of how corporate advancement actually works. Knowing how the game is played — and deciding how you want to play it — does.
As Tomorrow put it: "Don't just tell me I'm doomed. Tell me what to do with this information."
That's the part of the conversation worth having.