Rebecca Norlander is a renowned technology leader and Chief Product Officer at Verific.AI. Rebecca tells her story from when she was a Group Manager running the release of Windows XP SP2 during a white-hot security crisis. A senior executive demanded she withhold the update from millions of users. She said no - in a room full of people who outranked her, with her job on the line.

Rebecca talks about what it takes to stand your ground when the stakes are real: knowing where your line is before you walk into the room, being clear on your principles, building executive air cover in advance, and accepting that sometimes you'll be wrong - and that's okay.

Plus: being one of the few women in a 50-person engineering team, why fit matters more than cool projects, and what her mother's mechanical heart valve taught her about falling in love with technology.

Laser Focused is a podcast for founders and tech leaders navigating the hardest moments of leadership—the ones you can't talk about with anyone. Host Mark Alcazar sits down with operators who've been through the fire to share what they actually did when everything broke. 30 minutes or less. No frameworks, no theory—just honest conversations and practical wisdom. New episodes coming soon.