Join us for an exciting night with authors
Amanda Holden & Stefanie O'Connell
discussing their new books
How to Be A Rich Old Lady
& The Ambition Penalty
to be held at Solid State Books on H St. NE
Tickets with, AND without a book are available here!
Join Stefanie O'Connell and Amanda Holden for funny and thought-provoking readings and conversation about money, power, misogyny, the state of the world—and how to build your wild, beautiful life anyway. Bring your questions, your friends, your stories about how your ambition has been penalized, and your "rich old lady" dreams for your future.
HOW TO BE A RICH OLD LADY
Amanda Holden spent years working in investment management, where she saw exactly who gets access to the power, ease, and opportunity money can bring—and it wasn’t people like her friends. She also saw how the financial system is designed to feel exclusive and confusing, and how it blames individuals for economic problems they didn’t create. So, Amanda left her finance job to launch Invested Development, a financial education company where she has taught more than 25,000 students how to invest with radical clarity, accessibility, and joy.
Here, all her expertise is packed into a guide that won’t feel like getting cornered by a crypto bro. Instead, it reads like a text from your smartest friend: “Let’s figure out money, so we can stop thinking about money.” Because this practice isn’t just about planning for your wild and glorious future—it’s about the relief of knowing you’re doing everything you can right now.
How to Be a Rich Old Lady is a step-by-step road map to financial freedom. Not for the sake of chasing numbers in a spreadsheet, but to build a life that feels secure enough to dream into. Maybe your Rich Old Lady is wearing belly chains at the beach, tanned and wrinkly and totally unbothered. Maybe she’s befriending the birds at her cozy forest cabin. Maybe she’s leaving $500 tips on her diner coffee. Whatever your vision, this approachable guide to investing will help you build a plan to greet her with confidence and genuine hope for tomorrow.
THE AMBITION PENALTY
For women disillusioned by the failed promises of girl power, a data-driven guide that reveals the hidden forces still fueling gender inequality at work.
We spoke up. We took charge. We asked for more. But where has it actually left us? Not only are generations of women more burned-out than ever, but the gender pay gap has barely budged in decades.
In The Ambition Penalty, journalist Stefanie O’Connell presents a deeply researched and sometimes shocking look at the ways women remain passed over and excluded, not for a lack of ambition but because of it. She calls it “the ambition penalty”—the sum of the financial, personal, and professional costs women face for daring to want more.
The Ambition Penalty dismantles the myth that women are less ambitious than their male peers and debunks common claims—like women aren’t confident enough and don’t negotiate enough—used to justify stubborn gender gaps in power. This book reveals why decades of educational gains and empowerment messages have not translated into corresponding advances for women at work or at home.
The Ambition Penalty gives women the talking points they can use to call out these biases and lays out proven practices for leaders and allies committed to cultivating environments where women’s ambitions are supported, rewarded, and celebrated.
Amanda Holden is the founder of Invested Development, a financial literacy business through which she has taught over 25,000 students, mostly women, how to invest. Before becoming a leading voice on women and money, she earned degrees in economics and communications from UCLA and worked in investment management. Her book, HOW TO BE A RICH OLD LADY, came out in January and was an instant National Bestseller. Known online as @dumpster.doggy, Amanda also shares her activism work and signature secondhand "trashion" outfits.
Stefanie O'Connell is an award-winning journalist and author of THE AMBITION PENALTY: How Corporate Culture Tells Women to Step Up — and Then Pushes Them Down. Her work dismantles the myths keeping women from equitable pay, leadership, and power—one data point at a time. With bylines in Slate, The Guardian, Bloomberg, CNBC, Glamour UK, Newsweek, USA Today, and Business Insider, Stefanie exposes how power and gender collide to keep women "in their place." @stefanieoconnell