Women continue to face alarmingly high levels of burnout — the extreme circumstances of working and surviving during a pandemic, some workplace experts warn, has cost women their ambition. Overall, nearly half (48%) of women describe themselves as "very ambitious" when it comes to their career, and ambition among women of color is even higher, according to a Momentive/CNBC poll of over 5,000 women conducted last month. Women aren't losing their ambition — they're rejecting a narrow definition of ambition as the pursuit of money and power and writing a new one. But after spending the first 10 months of the pandemic working 85-hour weeks at a pharmacy in Los Angeles, Ismail realized her dream career wasn't sustainable. "I realized the career markers I used to strive so hard to achieve aren't worth sacrificing my mental health for."

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