Tag Archives: woman

Women Making An Impact

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I spent some time remembering all the women I am grateful for who have made an impact on my life—my mom (who was my biggest fan and I miss deeply), my nana (who loved me unconditionally in a way few humans know how), my daughters (who continue to teach me about being a woman), my good friend Carol (who inspires me when I start to doubt myself), and so many others.

Then, I started thinking about the amazing women across the globe making a significant impact on our world. Women like Donna Berber with her Glimmer of Hope Foundation bringing water to communities across Africa, Marianne Williamson running for political office and changing the conversation from them and us to we, and so many other amazing women. I wondered how much greater impact could these women make if more people knew about their work, and how many more women are there that I don’t even know about.

When Ella Fitzgerald could not get booked at a coveted venue in 1955, Marilyn Monroe offered to sit in the front row every night Ella played–to bring in the press for the club and get Ella booked. It worked and Ella’s career took off. Who knows what would have happened without the help of a sister!

When women support each other great things can happen. So add to this conversation on my Facebook page and spread the word about a woman who you admire making an impact on our world. Let’s give these women the spotlight they deserve. Can you imagine the difference we could make if we women began a concerted effort to support and promote other women?

Start here, start today!

Educating Girls Worldwide Matters!

This week Ann Cotton, an amazing role model for women about making a difference, received the WISE (World Innovative Summit for Education) award for her role founding Camfed, and organization that has helped millions of African girls stay in school.

Ann started Camfed in 1993 to create sponsorship to a few dozen girls so their families could afford to keep them in primary school. Today, it is estimated that over 3 million students benefit indirectly from Camfed’s activities, which include financial support of students, teacher training, and mentoring community activists — all with the goal of giving all children access to primary education (especially girls who still rank well below boys in completing primary school in poor countries).

Some might ask why I focus on empowering girls and women and why educating girls around the globe is so important. This past fall, I found out why this matters at Just Like My Child’s gala event, which raised money for the Girl Power project. Here are a few reasons:

51% of the world’s population are women and 64% of illiterate adults are women.
More than 100 million children remain out of schools and 66 million of them are girls, half in the sub-Saharan Africa.
When a girl educated for 7 years or more, she marries 4 years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
Empowering women and girls raises economic productivity and reduces infant mortality. It contributes to improved health and nutrition, and increases the chances of education for the next generation.
When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90% of it into their families, compared to 30-40% for males earning income.
When a woman is financially independent, she can stand her ground, speak her voice, her children are stronger and healthier and the state of the world improves exponentially.
Education has proven to yield larger impacts than any other form of aid and assistance for men or women. With education sexually transmitted disease, including HIV, go down, early pregnancies decrease, and income potential increases.

I leave you with these words from Nelson Mandela:

“No country can really progress unless its citizens are educated.”

The Power Is In Your Hands!

“The power is in your hands. In order to change anything you must be clear about your options—steadfast and persistent.” I love this quote from Maria Gamb, best-selling author of Healing the Corporate World.

In her recent article in Forbes, Maria directly rebuts Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comment “that women should trust karma instead of asking for pay raises.” Although she notes he apologized for his comment, she aptly points out he may just have verbalized what many men in leadership positions silently hold true.

Maria gives statistics that completely shocked me a few years ago when I learned about them at Harvard Business School’s W-50 ceremony (celebrating 50 years since women were able to attend my alma mater). Yet, once she states the facts of our current position, Maria quickly turns the conversation to what you can do to get paid equally to your male counterparts.

This is so important it needs to be said again, and again until women truly get it. Yes, men still, in this day and age, often believe women should not speak out and ask for a raise, or somehow might not need the training from some coveted project because in the long run they are going to leave to have babies. But more importantly, YOU and only you control your place in these statistics of women getting paid lower than men. You have to ask.

One of my fellow Harvard alumna, Sheryl Sandberg, has been speaking out about this in her book, Lean In. She told us at the women’s reunion that at Google and Facebook she finds that men ask for raises and promotions in staggering quantities more than women. In fact, her not-so-comic story is that if she posts a job with 10 qualifications women will wait until they have those 10 qualifications plus two more before applying, while men will apply with three of four of the qualifications and sell her that they can learn the rest on the job. THEY ARE NOT AFRAID TO ASK FOR WHAT THEY WANT AND BELIEVE THEY ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE JOB–REGARDLESS OF THE “FACTS.”

So what is it you wish someone would acknowledge you for? Go tell them about you, rather than wait for them to notice. Go check out the going pay for your job description at Glassdoor, Salary or Payscale and then ask for a raise if you are being paid less than you are worth. (Make sure you update your job description to everything you do, not just your title, before you compare.)

Women, we are settling — you and I. It isn’t someone elses fault any more. It is time we see ourselves as amazing and then become willing to sing our own praise and ask for what we are worth.

Here are some great exercises to help you start to notice and feel your own value.

First, begin to journal all the things you are good at and all the things you have accomplished in your life. You may only have a few things you can think of at first; however, if you do this everyday for a month you will start to remember all sorts of things you can be proud of. Make these two different lists — one about your skills and one about your accomplishments. When you remember something you accomplished, like a product launch or fund raising event, then also notice what skills you had that helped you be successful. Add them to your skills list, even if they are already there note them again with the nuance of that project in mind. Remember to include skills like the ability to juggle conflicting priorities (work, grocery shopping, kids soccer practice, and a business meeting), or maybe to orchestrate amazing events like last Thanksgiving dinner, or being able to run your family’s needs on a tight budget without your family feeling poor. Really open your sites to all you do.

The second exercise is read your list daily to really change the inner dialogue from one of self-criticism to one of praise.

Lastly, after you have improved your sense of self worth, draft a new resume highlighting all the various skills you possess, projects you have successfully completed, and responsibilities you have or have had.

I bet there are a lot of things you could do with a skill set like the one you have and now see more clearly! From this place of seeing your own value, you can now start to dream BIG about the things you might want to do next.

If you are looking for other support in becoming more confident in your ability to do great things check out my free downloadable excerpt from my upcoming book, Be A Female Millionaire, or listen to my Feminine Balance audio series — especially the one on embodying your power.

3 Ways to Leverage Employee Engagement for Career Growth

Are you a go-getter career woman, who somehow keeps moving so fast you leave a wake behind you instead of a following of supporters and a network of people you can tap into?

You are busy getting ahead in your career. You probably stay late and work weekends to make sure your projects come in on time and with all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted.

But do you take time to notice how much you engage your employees?

When I first moved through the ranks of IBM, I was loved by my bosses because I got things done, got them done on time, and could be counted on. My peers disliked me most of the time because my achievements routinely made them look bad. It was a hard lesson I had to learn—gaining people’s support at a peer level actually could be as important as those above you. In fact, I later learned that my teacher’s pet mentality was costing me more than I knew.

But my saving grace was I always listened to and took care of my employees. I made sure they got projects they wanted, got opportunities to shine, and loved what they did. When they didn’t enjoy their job we worked on designing a new angle to the job that improved their satisfaction or I got them transferred or promoted into something they would love to do. I was hard in reviews and made sure employees knew where they needed to improve, yet I always was fast to praise what they did well. My relationship with those who worked for me is actually what helped propel me at IBM, later in the cellular industry, and finally in my own companies.

Today, it is called engaging your employees. Nicole Alvino wrote a great article on why it pays to engage your employees in Forbes. What you call it does not matter. The three keys to creating a great employee base that promotes you as a boss and your company’s brand are the same.

First and foremost, listen. Knowing how employees feel about their jobs, about the company, and about you will only come through listening. Not during an annual review where you officially ask them, but over coffee or lunch. Notice whom people listen to and follow, then talk to that person. How much do you know about the people who work for you? The bosses who know the most about someone’s personal life are also the bosses who know what will inspire and motivate someone. Get involved with your people, not as a weekend drinking partner, but as someone who truly cares about them beyond what they can do nine to five.

Create goals and even jobs together. Solicit ideas with your employees rather than just give them a job. This second key to employee engagement is easy, but often overlooked due to time and budget constraints. We think we cannot afford to take the time or probably cannot do what they will suggest. However, when people feel ownership of what they are doing they produce better results in less time. I have always been amazed at the solutions my employees find to challenges when I turn it over to my team, rather than give them directions on what to do. Sometimes they come up with ideas we cannot afford or just won’t work, but the times they come up with a winning solution it is always better than anything I had yet conceived—usually at much less expense or much higher returns. Bottom line? Participation creates results.

Lastly, the key to successful teams is honest and detailed feedback. When employees do not know how they are doing, they drift. Even though it is hard to give someone a negative review, it is tens times easier than firing them. And any disgruntled employee barely doing their job will sooner or later quit or need to be let go. We all know the costs of employee turn over—hiring time, training time, efficiency curve, the list goes on and on.

Although it is important to have regular reviews that employees can depend on; it is equally, if not more important, to give immediate and frequent feedback on the little tasks and projects as they progress or are completed. Don’t wait for a formal review to call someone aside and let them know what a great job they did, or how you would like to see things improve on the next one.

Even critique can inspire an employee if you do it with an attitude of concern and desire for the employee’s best interest. And this brings me full circle to my first suggestion to engage your employees. Listen. When you are giving reviews and critiques you are not interested in excuses and employees should know you do not want them. Yet, you are interested in how the job or project is going for them. What would make it more interesting for them? What are their goals and how could you develop projects that help them achieve those goals?

Give yourself a review, today!

How well do you engage your employees?
When was the last time you listened to their input?
How much do you know about your employees outside of work?
How many jobs are being done that employees have helped design and how many are handed down to them?
Do your employees know what your immediate goals as a company are?
Could they talk about the company’s mission? How involved are they in formulating your company’s goals?
How are you at giving employees constructive feedback?
Do you have objectives for their jobs they know they should meet?
Do you praise employees when you see something they do well?
When was the last time?

Don’t put your personal review off until tomorrow. Improving your ability to engage your employees can make or break a small startup, propel an established company to significantly higher profits and make everyone’s job more rewarding—including yours!

Woman in a Man’s World

Can you imagine being the first women in venture capital? To put this in perspective, today after 30+ years of women in venture capital there are fewer than 4% of senior VC’s who are women! Now imagine, again, how out of place Kathryn Gould must have been in these early years in a man’s world.

Kathryn gave the commencement speech at University of Chicago this year, and if you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend reading it. She has been on the investing side and the entrepreneur side, and shares some wonderful advice. These are some highlights of her speech. These are really great gems of wisdom for anyone, especially a woman entrepreneur in her first start up.

1. “So, about your adventure: should you have a plan? Maybe. But don’t follow it. Planning prepares the mind, and chance favors the prepared mind, but chance usually messes up plans!”

2. “Don’t be afraid to take a step down” (Kathryn left as marketing manager for a $100 Million business to join Oracle, a $1 Million business.) I agree, if your intuition says it is a good idea, but all the outer world says “no stay at your good job”, chances are it is time to take a leap. I talk about this often. When I left IBM to join a small start up that later became what we know as the cellular industry, no one thought I was making a wise choice. But my intuition said jump!

3. “Build Your Skills Not Your Resume.” We live in a work world of resumes, but not once you become an entrepreneur. When you are starting your own business, you will be doing jobs from janitor to book keeping at times. Broaden your skills at every chance you can, before and after you take the plunge.

4. These are some gems she learned along the way:

“How to cold call –adrenaline, real time, 3 seconds to grab their attention—learn this!”
“Also the adage As hire As, Bs hire Cs—absolutely true—be careful of the company you keep.”
“What goes around comes around. Help people with their careers, their ideas, contacts—and I’m serious, good things come back years later.”
“I also learned that the first time without a paycheck is a little scary.”

5. “Find Your Obsession.” I should put this at the top, the middle and the end. Without a burning desire for achieving something you will not have the needed fire to fuel your path as an entrepreneur.

6. “It’s Not the Calls You Take, It’s the Calls You Make. You are the creator of your destiny. In whatever business you’re in, there is always so much coming at you that you can stay insanely busy just responding. Don’t do that. Always think about what is your agenda, what do you want to make happen, what do you want the future to look like. This is not so easy.” I think this might be the number two reason people fail at start-ups or careers. (The number one reason is not having a goal they truly are passionate about.) Years ago I moved my family to the country. Initially there was no cell phone coverage on our land and although we installed a phone line, we worked on one side of our 88 acres and lived on the other. Our one land-line phone meant we were away from the phone most of the day. When our answering machine broke people became irritated they could not leave us messages–playing the now familiar electronic version of tag, your it. However, I found such freedom in not responding to everyone else’s requests that I stalled considerably getting a new machine. I recognized in that experience the perpetual vortex of being sucked into other people’s priorities, and the power of stepping out of it.

I leave you with Kathryn’s ending remarks:

“Break rules, find your obsession, be extraordinary!”

From Harvard to my Heart!

Our daughters need a new paradigm…

(EXCERPT FROM UPCOMING BOOK: Dancing With Our Daughters.)

Years ago a group of moms and I formed a mother-daughter group to empower our daughters as they became women. My upcoming book gives mothers of daughters a prescription for keeping their relationship with their daughters vibrantly alive during adolescent and teen years. This excerpt from the book chronicles my journey through career, motherhood, and my newfound delight in being a woman.

From MBA to mom—from Harvard to my heart!

Many of the moms in our Dancing With Our Daughters group came from successful careers and high-profile lives. Prior to embracing the feminine aspects of myself, I worked as a high-flying business executive. I earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and was on a high-roller management path in the telecommunications and computer industry. IBM bought my company and I quickly earned a place in their grooming field for top management. Then I was seduced away from my fast-track management career at IBM to be Director of Marketing at a small start-up company that evolved into the current cellular industry. Life was good for my ego. I competed in a masculine world with masculine ways and succeeded. I had a bet with one of my male Harvard classmates as to who would be on the cover of Fortune Magazine first and I seemed closest to the goal.

In 1990, I left my career when my first child turned three. I loved being a mom and had been struggling to be super mom and super executive. With a strong nudge from my husband, I jumped full-time into motherhood—a tough transition. I had never before even considered being a stay-at-home mom. Giving up the boosts to my ego from my career and being all right with cleaning, cooking, and changing diapers was a major course change. No one thought I would last—not my husband, my mom, my friends, or me. None of us anticipated the unfolding of my own soul as I reclaimed parts of me I had disowned to be powerful in a man’s world. In 1989 and 1990, I cried and lamented the loss of my “power.” In 2007, when my husband and I talked about the potential of my going back to work, leaving the life I had built with the kids– I cried even more.

When I first left the business world, after staying home for a month I was appalled at how “unproductive” my days as a stay-at-home mom felt. I was accustomed to being a corporate executive with agendas and meetings and a secretary and employees and plane flights and more meetings and deadlines and press conferences. It was all very important. I had long lists of to-do’s that I ceremoniously checked off in order to feel good about myself. When I chose to leave all that and stay home with my first child, at the end of the day I could not figure out how I had been so busy since nothing seemed “done.”

In my fit of despair about how useless I was, a good friend told me, “You’re accustomed to being productive. You’re now being fruitful. Productive people can count their worth by what they accomplish each day and week. Fruitful people are like farmers planting an orchard. Trees take tending and bear fruit many, many years later. Only with patience and inner knowing can one take on the task of being fruitful. Your rewards are not today or tomorrow, but oh will they come.” And oh, was she right! The fruit of watching my son and daughters today as they live their chosen lives and being their friend and confidante is the most rewarding gift I have ever received.

I enjoyed both the power of being fully invested in my career and the glory of being fully invested in my family. Each blessed and served me. My path now is to learn how to integrate the gifts I received reclaiming my feminine nature back into a position of strength in the world—not to forsake the feminine to be powerful, but to embrace my true feminine power. That has been my goal for our Dancing With Our Daughters group: to empower our girls to be fully feminine and fully powerful. They no longer need to fade into the background of someone else’s story to be feminine or to hide their femininity to be powerful. The new paradigm our group strove to foster is both—is balance, is bold acceptance, and is empowerment.

Dancing With Our Daughters has been the planting of great trees. The fruit has been in our girls and unexpectedly even in ourselves. Our girls have grown and are growing into women with minds of their own. They have become women who respect themselves, women who can say “I love myself enough to make choices that are kind to me.” Along the way, each of us mothers also grew, recommitted to ourselves, and found new strength in being women.

Our daughters—yours and mine—need new paradigms.

I encourage you to form a group of friends with young daughters—for them and for you. Form it exactly to your liking. Dancing With Our Daughters will give you ideas and inspiration. You will give yourselves your own form and your own path. You will bless your daughters and yourselves, now and in years to come.

The mothers you’ll meet in this book have struggled with issues just like you have. We created a forum to help our daughters find their inner strength as women. We found a way to support our daughters’ and our own exploration. We molded a structure and rhythm that helped our girls traverse the pressures of our culture, their own inner innocence, and their blossoming womanhood.

This book is our gift to you, that you might be inspired to find your own form and process to dance yourself and your own daughters through this uniquely personal journey of being feminine in the twenty-first century. May you find in the process blessings and jewels as bright and deep and profound as we have.

What are you excited about?

“What are you most excited about right now?” What a great conversation starter! This article by Kate Northrup really highlights my mantra–do what you love, be passionate about what you do, find goals that inspire you and every thing else will fall into place.

Give yourself permission to create a beautiful vegetable garden feeling as good about it as running a multi-million dollar business. And give other women permission to do the same every opportunity you get. Reminding each other that we are valuable in the small things we do, not just in our public successes helps us stay out of overwhelmed and under-inspired lives. My favorite thing Kate wrote is:

“THE ACT OF PASSIONATE CREATION ITSELF IS WHAT GIVES AN ENDEAVOR MERIT — NOT ITS VALUE IN THE MARKETPLACE.”

We women have been running the race to prove we are worthy of equal pay, equal opportunities and equal respect for so long we have forgotten to check in with ourselves and make sure we are doing what we love.

Really take in what this says. “The act of passionate creation…” When was the last time you did this? The more often you create with passion, the more alive you will feel. Guaranteed. “…is what gives an endeavor merit” Not what other people think. Not how much you get paid for it. Not whether anyone else acknowledges it at all. Nothing in the outer world can give value to or take value away from your passionate creations. They have intrinsic value because you created them with passion.

What are you excited about, today?

Equality

I love this quote from fellow Harvard grad, Sheryl Sandberg:

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half of our homes.”

Statistically, we are a far distance from this goal since under 20% of countries and companies are headed by women and possibly fewer homes are run by men.

Yet, maybe the first place we can find equality is in the small realm of our own home and family. If each of us discussed with our partners a new plan that empowered us both, balanced the supporting chores like shopping, cleaning, and cooking between us, and the children felt equal involvement from both parents across the car pools, sports meets, and homework, plus financial and other major decisions were made through discussion and collaboration — then we would be creating a microcosm of the world we want to create. From this environment our children would be learning to expect and replicate equality in their outer world.

And what about our internal landscape. Do we give equal weight to our own feminine and masculine sides? Do we nurture ourselves? Do we listen to our intuition? Do we take time to ensure our own bodies are not polluted and abused? If we balanced our inner masculine and feminine how might that improve our intimate relationships, our families, our daily world?

Maybe we are closer to achieving this outer goal of equality than we realize. Maybe it will require some honesty about our inner landscape. And maybe the result won’t be men running half of the homes and women running half of the companies and countries. However, it must be that women feel empowered to create a life they choose and that the companies and countries they run, if they choose to, will listen to their feminine wisdom–not expect them to behave like men. It must be that men are allowed to be fully engaged in their families, expect to pick up half of the “home making” duties, and are empowered to bring their masculine strengths to the running of a family home–not behave like a women.

Whatever the current reality is; we can change it. Women and men will hold equality in leadership–it is possible. It will take women finding our voice, speaking our truth, and expecting others to listen. It will require listening to their truth. It will require vision, courage and determination. And most importantly, it will require women honoring women–in all walks of life, in all positions, in all ways. If we were boldly supporting each other, no man or organization could keep us down. And from a position of strength we can better learn to honor our male colleagues in a way that empowers greatness in us both.

When we learn to honor each others’ strengths, invite other people’s wisdom into the conversation and look for collaborative solutions–we will find our world gentler, more enlivening and prosperous!

Isn’t that the goal, really?

Creating our own “Good ol’ Boys Club”

Do you work hard and have great ideas but just somehow feel like you are swimming upstream or just don’t quite get where you thought you would? Do you question your abilities, your credentials, and maybe wonder if you really have what it takes? At a Harvard conference last year I learned some things about women and success that just might change your trajectory!

I spent two days at Harvard Business School reconnecting with classmates and getting to know others as 800 women (and a few brave men) gathered to celebrate 50 years since women were first admitted to HBS!

It was a powerful group of women — full of life, wisdom, and ability to make things happen. We laughed at stories from the early days, were inspired by women who have shaped our world, and were informed by new research about the state of women’s lives and careers.

What struck all of us was how far we had come and yet how much had not really changed in many areas. Robin Ely, HBS Professor and Senior Associate Dean, showed research about where Harvard women are today. I was overwhelmed at some of the statistics about the world my daughters face. Somehow being highly educated, having a successful career, and tucking my head in my own family and business life has left me with the illusion that women are getting close to parity with men in areas of influence.

I learned this is not true. We only hold few spots at the top of corporations — a percentage that has remained flat for the past 10 years, few are heads of state in world governments, and a mere 4-7% of venture capital funds go to women entrepreneurs, despite the large influx of deals presented by women. Why fifty years after entering the Harvard business school do we still hold so few positions of influence?

If you speculate, like I did, that many women leave the workforce to pursue family – the research says 90% of women surveyed were still in careers. We cannot point there. We can also no longer point to less opportunity in education. In fact, more women graduate with high-level degrees than men today. So what happens?

Two critical things that you and I can influence are paramount to what we found.

First, men have years and generations ahead of them willing to mentor and help them move ahead, get a deal, and fund their ideas.

Women, ironically, do not use their gift of connecting when it comes to business and government. We choose to “earn” our way, prove our worth and ensure we are confident before we proceed – rather than ask for a favor.

In fact, Sheryl Sandberg’s talk pointed to the idea that women will go for a promotion only when they meet all the criteria (maybe even a few extra) whereas men will go for it when they meet 20% of the job requirements assured they will learn the rest! Men will use their contacts, after hour gatherings, and other venues to get promotions, funding, and basically advance their career.

Men are also more willing to bet on each other with their checkbooks. And they fund people they are more like – white males.

So our task – yes you and me, is two-fold:

Join groups, make contacts, and find other women to become your “good-old-girl” network. Start to look at other women as your source of power. And for the love of God, start asking for what you need. Call on other women (or men), ask someone to mentor you, write that letter or make that phone call asking someone to give you money for your idea or to help promote it. Stop waiting until you’re sure you or your project is a completed masterpiece.

Second, start to look for ways to empower other women and younger women.

What do you know, what can you share, who can you mentor? Rather than continue to push in on the existing power structure, we women need to change the game. All new innovation from the Declaration of Independence or Facebook changed the game – they did not just incrementally make email better, or improve the monarchy!

Join with me. Join with other women. Ask for help. Give help in money and time to other women.

Let’s change the game!

Quiet Revolution

Change the game, not who you are!

Sometimes the best strategy is not to fight for a change to the problem or to expect those in control to change their mind.

When Gandhi wanted the British out of India he did not try to go to war with the strongest empire in the world at the time.

How many slaves were freed through the Underground Railroad well before law freed the rest?

How many small acts of faith did Mandela use to overrule apartheid?

So maybe the answer to women only getting 7% of Venture Capital money or less of Investment Banking money is to change the game—rather than fight the status quo. Maybe the answer to so few women Heads of State, CEO’s, Board of Directors, and other positions of influence is NOT to change who we are and be more like men! If in the last 50 years this is all the progress we have made despite the numbers of women MBA’s, the number of women entrepreneurs, or the number of women Investment Bankers, and the number of women graduating college—than becoming more assertive or confident is not the solution. Looking at the world through new lenses is.

Rather than try harder, work longer, and change more to be like men—lets look at the inherent strengths of being feminine and use these things to make a difference.

What are these feminine strengths?

The art of collaboration
Community building
Large results with many hands contributing small efforts
Rallying large numbers of supporters
Finding solutions
Mentoring and encouraging

The Internet and social media have given rise to many new ways of business—changing forever traditional marketing, sales, order fulfillment and raising capital. These changes provide a remarkable platform for women to make a difference in the funding of new ideas, new businesses, new non-profit organizations, and to market directly to each other. Women comprise over 80% of the purchasing power in the United States even though we represent less than 15% of the heads of corporations making the products and services we buy.

The time is ripe for change. Women are more educated, have more resources, and have more time than ever before in human existence. We can be the change we are seeking in the world by starting a new paradigm.

Think big. Think bold. Think of what you would like your community, your country, and your world to be like. Let’s cease putting another moment of energy into what is wrong and what we do not like. Let’s create the world we desire. Let’s create a balance of power shift so subtle, so substantial, so sweet that once it is obvious what happened even those who would fight us today will be happy we did!

Join the conversation. What does your utopia look like? What small change can you initiate? What would you do if you felt you could, if you felt no glass ceiling, if you had all doors open wide?

PART OF INFLUENTIAL WOMEN, INC.

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