International Women's Day | MentorCloud We Community

Be lucky to be here today.

Beautiful, Chelsea. Thank you. All right, so we are T minus two minutes. I'm just going to quickly share my screen. So the order will go. Yasmin, Sarah, Ravi, Chelsea, Lakshmi, Suzanne Kim, Molly, Sneha, Denise Auburn, Ravi, Yasmin, and finally, Sarah again. All right, and what I'll do is I'll introduce each one of you before you go into your share share of wisdom, and then we'll have about four minutes of Q and A. Kali, I'm going to ask you to look at the chart at all times. If anyone is asking questions, just ping me to make sure we don't miss that. And we are T minus one minute. I'm super excited.

Hey, Debbie, do you have a word for us?

I think she's on mute.

You're muted, Debbie.

You're muted.

Here I am.

I remember in the late 60s and early 70s, I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia, and I remember marching A against the war, and B, for women's rights and abortion rights. Abortion was legal in those days, and I knew people who died from having them. So. And we're back here again, and I'm. And I'm.

Cleanest word I can come up with is I'm angry over that. And I'm thinking that women need to get out and start kicking butt and taking names.

Love that, Debbie. All right, Susan. Oh, Susan.

Go.

Possibility. My word is possibility. There is so much potential for us to make a positive impact.

Awesome.

Right, here we go. And we shall begin.

And the dogs are my life the silent ones on my body the women will be my soldiers with the weight.

Of life on their shoulders Drink until you've had enough.

I'll drink from your.

Heart.

I will be your warrior.

I will be alive.

I'm gonna actually invite everyone to just stand up for two minutes and just dance because it's International Women's Day, and.

We'Re here to celebr.

The sea waves are my evening go and the sun on my head is my crown I made this queendom on my own and all the mountains are my throat Drink until you've had enough I'll drink from your heart.

I will.

Be your warrior.

I will be your lamp.

Beautiful.

I love it. Doesn't it feel so good to move and just dance away on this International Women's Day? I love it. Well, welcome, everyone. It is such an honor to host all of you today. We are excited to welcome you to our WE Global event to celebrate with us and hear from such inspiring female entrepreneurs, women leaders, authors, Writers from all over the world. In fact, today is also the holly celebration, which is colorful and symbolizes unity and peace and coming together. And so there we go. This is exactly what we're doing today. Before I go into our incredible speakers, I would like to actually welcome Ravi, our fearless leader, to share a few words and we'll go from there.

Wonderful. So I would like to introduce myself as the odd man in, in this, in this beautiful community of women from all over the world. This is the second time it's happening to me. I was a speaker at the World Women Economic Forum and There were only 10 men and a thousand women. So I feel special today. And it's really an honor. It's really an honor to be with all of you and to really do what is right, you know, for the times that we are in. You know, I come from the Indian heritage where the women have always played a very big role in shaping of families, shaping of societies, shaping of policy, shaping of kingdoms. So I think, you know, your time has come. It was always there, but your time is now to grab it. Like somebody said, you know, kick some butt. So that's, that's the message I gave at the World Economic Forum. And I think, you know, the women from all, from all the women that have empowered me, you know, my mom, my aunt, my sisters, my teachers, my mentors, is just amazing how they have always been inclusive, very supportive, always, you know, came up with, you know, ways that are positive, the net outcome is positive. And because that is the natural ability of women to always think inclusion, to always think growth, you know, to always think selflessly. You know, I've seen, seen my mom, you know, feed a family of seven people when we didn't have, you know, enough money in the family. You know, so it is just amazing to see people do so many things selflessly just for the family to flourish, for the, for the society to flourish. And you know, one word that really inspired me recently when the Indian government, you know, presented at the, at the un, they said the, the new world should be women led. So this initiative that even though, you know, I'm here as an odd man in it is for really empowering women who are already empowered. You know, all, all the women have some amazing unique gifts that men cannot match. So it's, it's time to further empower so that women can achieve and give birth to not just humans, but so many new solutions, so many positive solutions that are good for society, good for the climate, and good for the planet as well. So I welcome you all to this wonderful celebration of all the women who came before us to make this day possible for all of us. And I'm really honored to be one among all of you, and I wish you all a wonderful time ahead and a great discussions. We came up with these V talks, and I hope they become, you know, a. A platform for women to come forward and share stories that inspire other women to sort of, you know, speak up and step up to achieve their full potential. So truly glad to be here. Congratulations. And I'm looking forward to listening to all the wonderful speakers.

Thank you, Ravi, thank you so much for your words of welcome. And I am so delighted to introduce Sarah Hakim, who I had the pleasure of meeting in a very serendipitous way in Costa Ric. She happens to be Moroccan as well. She's a certified hypnotherapist and coach with a deep background in the creative arts. As a professional singer, songwriter, and actress, she teaches us. She teaches us how to understand and hack your brain for more freedom, awareness, and love and fun. Her specialty is to work on identity, self, love, self, stress management, beliefs, communication, and intuition. She eventually just helps people reconnect to themselves, to others, to their life, to their purpose, and the truth of their heart. There are no words to describe her, really. Sarah, the floor is all yours.

Wow. It's funny how. And I feel like a lot of women are like that. When I heard you read about what are my gifts and what I share with the world, it moved me to tears because I feel like this is a common concern. I see in my clients that women do not see themselves.

And I think it's. Ravi was saying that women are really selfless. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful gift. But today I'm gonna try to allow each and every one of us to also remember to nourish ourselves first. And the more we give to ourselves, the more we can give from our overflow and to always, always reconnect to our hearts first and then allow other people to connect to their hearts. And this is how we can build a better world. This is how we can create a world that is more equal, loving, harmonized. So instead of speaking about myself or giving advices, I want to invite you all to participate to open this beautiful movement that's launched today. So I come from the creative arts, and I've learned that music is one of the most powerful tool to connect the self and to connect to others. So today I'd like to create a mantra that we can all sing together. That's Going to help us connect to our hearts, to the heart of the purpose of this beauty, beautiful community that's being birthed today. And to connect us all together. So before we do that, we're gonna do one little exercise all together, okay? We're gonna hum just to warm up the voice. And also the humming actually allows you to connect to you humming. You use it across cultures, okay? People, monks, for example, use the humming, and they say that humming actually connects you to source or to God. It's the primordial sound. But everybody also hums when they eat something they really love or when they make love. We all hum. So it's also the sound of pleasure and love. So today we're gonna try to hum all together, to connect to self, to connect to God or universe or source, whatever you believe in energy and to connect to love and pleasure. Okay, so we're all gonna hum.

You can follow my lead with your microphone off or on. You're welcome to hum along. Or if you're not comfortable, you can keep your sou off. It's totally okay. So those who want to put the mic on, you can hop in. So we're just gonna go and really feel the humming in the gut. Okay? So really feel like you're humming and vibrating with your whole body. Feel it moving down your mouth, your throat, your heart, your stomach, and deep, deep, deep into your belly.

Okay?

So we're just gonna take all together, deep inhale.

And exhale and a hum.

Beautiful. So beautiful.

We're going to do another one.

We're going to put both our hands on our hearts. We need to connect to the energy of the heart altogether. So we connect to our hearts and to the heart of every participant. We're 34, right here across the globe. We're all going to connect to the heart energy. Okay? So we're going to hum. And you can think of something that brings you so much gratitude and love. It can be your favorite meal, your favorite person, your last orgasm, a project, anything that brings a lot of gratitude and love, okay? And pleasure. And you're going to hum with that energy again. We take a deep inhale together.

Next, out on a hum.

Wonderful. The humming also has this wonderful power of calming the nervous system and soothing the vagus nerve. So all this all together, we also just balance our nervous system, harmonize. It's beautiful. So I'd like to create a mantra for us all for this beautiful event today and for this movement that is being created today to connect women, empower women. So I would invite the Creators of this movement to maybe come up with. I see. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you.

So intention setting is an extremely powerful tool that can have ripple effect on our lives and on the lives of everybody we touch. So today we're going to set an intention and chant it as a mantra altogether. So what is this intention for today's event and for this movement that is being created? So maybe Yasmin can go or have you.

Just name.

You don't have to sing it. Just say the. The intention. And I'm going to create a mantra.

Beautiful.

I'd say community.

Beautiful.

Something else.

Mutual support.

Mutual support through community. So we're going to sing. Mutual support through community. Gives me chills. Really moves me. This is so beautiful. Okay, so it's pretty easy when you want to do it for yourself at home. Just. It's not about thinking, it's about feeling. So. Mutual.

Support through community.

I'm gonna sing it again. Mutual support.

Community.

One last thing, and then you're gonna sing along. Mutual support through community.

And those who want to sing along. I'm gonna count two, three, Mu.

Beautiful. One last time. The hands on the heart. Let's connect to the energy of everybody here. And also all the souls that are not here yet, that we haven't met yet, but that are gonna support us or that we're gonna support and that are gonna become part of this beautiful community.

One, two, three, Mu.

Through community.

Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. If this beautiful seed in the center of your heart. And may this intention blossom through the most beautiful garden. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. What a gift you are to all of us.

Chelsea Baker. Regarded as one of the UK prominent business mentors, Chelsea has mentored hundreds of businesses and individuals and worked on leading government mentoring projects. She founded national mentoring day in 2014, which was inaugurated in the House of Lords and has grown it to be an internationally recognized awareness day. With over 250,000 organizations around the world taking part annually. And of course, Mentor Cloud included, the initiative is now celebrated worldwide, supporting all forms of mentoring across all sectors and shining a spotlight on mentors and mentoring initiatives making a difference. Welcome, Chelsea. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Yasmeen. Thank you.

So wonderful to be here today.

Can you hear me? Okay?

Super cool. So thank you.

This is.

This is just amazing to be here today to celebrate International Women's Day. You know, I can't.

I've worked with Mentor Cloud.

I've seen the impact of Mental Cloud. Now I can't wait to see the impact of the We Empowered Platform. This is exciting today. So congratulations to you all on the launch and here we are. You know, it's so wonderful to be having a celebration. We're singing, we're dancing. It's just beautiful because today all I've seen is facts and statistics on how many years it's going to take to close the gender pay gap and the.

Lack of women on boards and the.

Lack of women and CEOs. Whilst this is important research, when you focus on the negative and the lack of something, it brings about more. Focus on the lack and you know, as the chief executive of National Mentoring Day, I have seen, seen the difference that mentoring has made to women especially. I have hundreds of amazing success stories. You'd be here all night for weeks on end if I was to tell you them all. But the difference that mentoring to make can not only be life changing for the person, for the individual, for the person, business, but sometimes, and I've seen it many a time, it can save mentoring can save someone's life. So what have I seen with mentoring? I've seen my mentees triple in confidence. I've had senior executives that I've met, many of them who are being held back by their, you know, horrendous fears of public speaking. And once I've mentored them and showed them how to be a great speaker, they flourish in every aspect. And this is down to mentoring. Mentoring builds confidence. It provides endless opportunities and solutions to change the world, for women to change the world. And this is why I'm excited today for the launch of the Women Empowered platform, because this platform can enable serious growth and success. So I really want to focus on what we're doing here today, women supporting women and all the abundance that this brings, you know, it's especially as a mentoring element here, you know, it's just wonderful because mentoring work, everyone has skills, knowledge, experience, wisdom to share as a mentor. And this platform enables that to happen and provides the resources to do so. For me, a true woman raises off another woman. And I just want to say, for me, my message today is let's get raising each other, let's get supporting each other more. Because when women get together, miracles happen, companies are born, solutions are provided and change happens. So thank you all, let's have a wonderful event today. Happy International Women's Day.

Beautiful, Chelsea, thank you. Thank you.

And I'm going to introduce you.

Yasmine, please.

Yeah, I always forget to introduce myself.

So, yeah, let me do that. I've had the pleasure of working with you now for quite some time. And you're a native of Morocco and of planet Earth. You are passionate about connecting people and bringing cultures to encourage a more peaceful and caring world. You launched Voyage, a platform that connects people from around the globe for one on one meaningful exchanges to foster global understanding. And you are also the steward for the we movement that we're here today for. So over to you Yasmine.

Thank you. I actually, I was talking to Chelsea, he's like, what is steward? I'm like executive director does not sound relevant. I'm like, I'm a steward. I mean it's not about me. It's a co created energy. Like we're building this together. It's a movement. So we're moving away from the more traditional way of doing things into co creation and collaboration and at a global level. So it's an honor to be here. And speaking of stewardship, one of the stewards I recently got the pleasure to meet is Lakshmi Khoran. She is an entrepreneurial leader. As you can see, she's at the International Space Station already. She has experience in the philanthropic, business and nonprofit sectors. Leading with intellectual curiosity and empathy, she has helped purpose driven organizations set big visions and deliver large scale impact. Currently she is a co founder of lunarc, a literal moonshot to democratize space exploration and development. Previously she was the co founder and CEO of Future Frontiers Institute, which is a nonprofit organization incubated within the Space Portal Office at NASA with a partnership agreement to advance the Artemis mission. Lakshmi, all yours my dear.

Right, well, hello everyone. Thank you Yasmeen for inviting me and for being a co creator for LunaRC and Ravi as well. Thank you for, for inviting me to join this group. Hi everyone. Happy International Women's Day wherever you are. I thought I'll take a few minutes just to share a little bit about my journey and then I want to, you know, I've benefited so much from coaches and mentors throughout across continents and so I just wanted to share a couple of my learnings before inviting all of you to join the literal moonshot. So I was born in India, but I've spent most of my life in all over the place. Sort of nomadic but not really. And through that journey had the privilege and the opportunity to work in multiple sectors. So I've kind of been an IT.

Pharma, philanthropy, social innovation and now outer space.

But I've always thought of my careers, careers not as ladders, but I could define myself as like a trapeze artist, you know, someone who is kind of swinging from one because oftentimes I get asked, you were doing this, and now you're doing this, and what's going on? And. And. And to a third person, it probably feels like, you know, random, but. But there's always been a thread of a North Star that's kind of guided me through all of these. And what really motivates me is, is I. I love being in the edge of possibilities. I heard that word so many times from so many of you in. That kind of just brought a smile to my face. We're probably in a kindred group here, and I've always wanted to, you know, I kind of have a math brain as well as an art brain, but the math brain wants to solve problems, and the bigger the problem, the more excited I get about the chaos we'll be walking into.

So that's kind of been the journey. But as you can probably tell, I've needed a lot of help, because every time I'm swinging, you need someone else to lend a hand to pull you on to the next platform you're getting onto. And the coaching that I've received have shaped so much of understanding myself, but also bringing that to deliver the results I want to see in the world.

The three kind of.

Tips that I. And practices that I use that I want to share today, particularly with this.

Group.

Are, you know, I think, specific to how women might think about leadership and. And how we can help each other, but also kind of leads into the invitation to the moonshot. So here goes the first one that I learned, and I, you know, I come from a South Asian culture and several South Asians here. And so I think I've had the benefit of having liberal parents, but the societies weren't as liberal.

The.

One of the few things that I learned later on in life is to give myself permission to dream big. And as I started to work around the world, I realized it wasn't just a very specific challenge for South Asian women, It was a challenge for women.

When you work with kids and when you were a child, oftentimes people come and say, what do you want to be when you grow up? And you're like, I want to be an astronaut, doctor, engineer. And if you actually look at your own life chart, at some point, people stopped asking you that, and then they kind of say, you know, it's. It's.

I always.

I imagine this. I'm a kind of a visual person. I imagine this like a, you know, a heavy blanket that you get put on. You know, that that kind of forces you into a mentality of upper Limiting. And, And I think that just kind of guide becomes something that you hold on through throughout life. And. And when I was.

Getting coaching in my 20s and started to kind of realize this, I realized how freeing it was to push that and what upper limiting does and what it stops you from and what the possibilities are if you're able to punch through it. So that was the first thing I wanted to share. The second.

And I've kind of coined this, this term, it was taught to me differently. On your North Star, you know, I mean, I. I was often asked, what's your passion? What are you passionate about? What. And when I was coaching women as.

Well.

I often found it's not that people don't know what they're passionate about, actually. You may initially kind of be like, I don't know. But then you do some exercise introspection, you actually know. But actually what you don't want to do is to share it widely because there is a strong judgmental factor of, like, what you, you came from this family, you ought to be doing this or what? You, you got kids.

What do you mean?

You want to go off and be a pharma salesman, you know, you know, whatever that is.

So I started to think about. It's not about knowing your North Star. I mean, I think that's important, but I think a bigger part of it is owning your North Star. Because if you don't nurture and own what your subconscious truly yearns for, it'll never get nourished and fed. So I think that's just something. And in the term, I've often been asked.

When are you going to settle? As if, like, what does settle mean? And I think the term settle really is like, you seem to be off doing random things. Lakshmi, you're now thinking of going to space. What's going on? When are you going to get. When are you going to conform? So I think on your North Star was something that I've always held whenever I was scared, nervous that I'm leaping off, you know, another trapeze and reaching for something else. And then the last one, you know, I was, I was kind of thinking, how do I introduce this? And then. And then Ravi did it for me.

So.

Thank you, Ravi. We didn't talk about this before, but you did it.

Lead with or lean into empathy? I've always had a spiritual practice from a young age. And I think later on I, you know, I developed this, this practice of bringing empathy into the work. And I was in tech and I was in the corporate world, and and 20 years ago, to have growth in it, you had to embody very different ways of working. You know, cutthroat, directive, you know, be the boss. And now, though, it's kind of nice to see that tide shifting. You see articles on leadership saying the top five things are, you know, what they call the feminine leadership trait, Empathy, being. Being one of them. And what I found for myself when I started to own it and practice it openly is it comes naturally to us women. It's the flip side of, you know, the first one, which I talked about upper limiting. In most cultures, women are nurtured to actually be more empathetic. So actually we could own that part of what we are cultivated from childhood, because it's a very powerful tool to support us in what we want to see out there. All right, so then. So these were the three things I wanted to share. But then I was thinking, okay, well, I'm sure some of you are thinking, okay, what's this got to do with the moonshot? Lakshmi, like, bring it together here. Okay, so I want to say welcome to the moonshot. And I tell you what the big dream is before I invite you to join.

I'm sure you've read this. You can't escape this news. There's a space race. There are rocket ship going. They're all going to go colonize the moon. Countries are doing this now. There's always been a space race, but what's different now is it is the gold rush. The commercial sector is significantly incentivized to join the race because rare earth metals, plentiful, abundant, and, you know, there are no owners you have to deal with. You just have to go and take it.

So there's a race.

It's not inclusive. It's literally like maybe 10 people, maybe 20, making decisions in closed rooms for something that is, I wouldn't even say belongs to humanity. It's just been there, it's there.

And so the. The big dream that a bunch of us, Yasmin included, kind of set forth to say, is it possible.

To democrat. Democratize the space race? You know, is it possible? Ask the dream. Okay, what's the North Star? So we said, okay, we're doing this. What's the North Star? Let's beg something that literally most people would come out and say a million ways in which that's not possible. So he said, what we need is a global space initiative that transcends borders, races, privileges, and actually allows for every human should they choose to be a part of it. As it is, you could Be like, wait a minute, how would you do? Where's the money? What's the structure? How are you going to bridge the digital divide? Yeah, we get it, and we're going to have all the people here help us overcome it. But the point of this is the North Star is possible, and we're going to peg to that one because in the absence of that, history will repeat itself. It'll be a rinse repeat. We're going to have the same. You know, I always say, and it's one of the worst things to imagine, but the worst thing to happen is to have a juvenile detention center on the moon. That would be the worst possible way this could play out.

So how can we lead with empathy? And I think this is where several of you who spoke before me, and it's so beautiful actually to see all those words pop up is.

How do we lead with empathy? How do we make this more inclusive?

How do we build a community.

By.

Inviting, by allowing people to participate and step in from wherever they are.

With.

The means and the resources and the limitations that they are. So the poorest child in Somalia is going to be a part of this moonshot. So how are we doing that? We said the first mission to the moon, and it has to be something that captures the attention of those in power and privilege, is let's collect art exhibits from around the world or artistic expressions. It can be in a rural tribal area, draw on the, on the floor, take a picture, and it goes to the moon. We're going to send it to the moon. And how are we doing this? We already have a lunar lander. We've got a lander that leaves earth May of 2024. It's going to go to the moon. And we would like to have 8 billion submissions. And those would be ideas and visions of what it means to be an interplanetary species, what it means to have Earth as home, what it means to be a community. Now, here's the thing, right? It's, we're saying dream art. We feel that is something universal wherever you are, however wealthy you are, whether you're literate, illiterate, rural, tribal, urban. And what is that? What does that mean for you to feel empowered, to say, wait a minute, I don't have to be the richest man, but I can actually envision something for humanity and it will land on the moon. So that's the campaign. We're launching it next month and we've got about 20. It's all voluntary, by the way, I should say this. All voluntary group of people who have multiple day jobs coming in. And it is that mutual support and community. But in pursuit of something that is inclusive at a global level and redefining the concept of what agency and empower means where every individual can actually step into that space. I got the two minute warning. I'm going to stop.

Beautiful. Lakshmi, I have. I have one question for you. What has been your biggest challenge as a woman in space?

Actually so far? Not. Not much because I've only been in this space for three years. I kind of barged my way in to a room and Ravi was talking. It was kind of funny. Ravi, you said you were one of 10 people in a conference for a thousand women. I've been in many. On the flip side, the only 10 women in a conference of a thousand. Space. You know, it's a space conference and. And the only, you know, sometimes only woman of color.

So.

So it's fortunately. And this is again why we kind of started this, right. I've had the privilege, I am extremely privileged to be in a room where I can actually set policy for space. And then I'm looking around and saying, wait a minute, we actually need a million people in this room. And how do we break. It's not even a table. Like just take the roof off and the walls.

And how do we expand it? So. So not. I haven't really faced any of those yet, Yasmeen. And I don't plan on.

I love that. That is the spirit. Thank you so much, Lakshmi, for your beautiful talk and I'm sure all of us here are very inspired. And without further ado, I have the pleasure of introducing Suzanne Sabat, who is an incredible woman first and also very accomplished. She's the.

Global commercial services at American Express. She serves on many boards. I think it will take me about an hour to list them all. She is on the board of Wex, a global payment company, Bumby HR Services and of just high growth companies from around the world. She's an advisor to several financial services clients. Also co founder of the Conscious Business Leadership Academy and educating CEOs of mid sized companies on the principles and practices of conscious capitalism. Thank you so much, Suzanne for being with us today. The floor is all yours.

Well, thank you so much, Yasmin. And it's such a privilege to be here. I'm so happy to join all of you and not only be inspired, but hopefully have an opportunity to inspire as well. So did you know that for every woman that got promoted last year, two women left their roles, goals.

Women leaders are Leaving their companies at a much higher rate than men. In fact, at the highest rate since McKinsey started its women in the Workplace study.

So a few weeks ago, a friend of mine, Abby, called and told me about her first year in her new job. She was hired for her expertise and unique background in customer success. She was so excited to bring her skills to this great new team and really impact customer experience. Yet despite her diligence, getting up to speed, and learning from her new teammates, she kind of felt alien in the culture. Even after a few months, Abby got the feeling that her leader didn't really trust her in the same way that she relied on the folks with more tenure. And Abby told me that she started to doubt herself. She really felt the sting of the skeptical response to her ideas. Her enthusiasm when she started the role morphed into fear and worry about how her boss and colleagues thought of her. And she became reluctant to volunteer for extra assignments. She avoided sharing her ideas that might impose change on a group who seemed pretty comfortable with the status quo.

So she called me a few weeks after her first anniversary on the job and shortly after she gave her notice. Can't say that I blame her. We talked about how things might have turned out differently. It's pretty clear that her leader could have embraced Abby from the start as a strategic advantage. And. And she could have taken Abby under her wing, or she could have assigned her a peer mentor to help her learn the cultural nuances. She might have had the rest of the team reach out to Abby or leverage her wisdom for the teens. Learning or publicly made Abby a leader of an important project. The company failed to onboard Abby and make her feel included. And it certainly failed to cultivate her differences into assets.

Now, on our call, Abby also shared some self reflection. She recalled how much time she spent turning every conversation with her boss or her colleagues over and over in her mind. She was really surprised at how insecurity and doubt just consumed her energy. And she wondered when she lost her mojo. Now, I've had this experience myself, and I'm sure many of you have had it, too. Sometimes it worked out in the end, and sometimes it didn't. Now I remember when I got my first really big promotion. I was recruited to a new division of the company, and I was new to managing a business development team. Nevertheless, I quickly decided that we needed to sign one particular account. Let's call it Blue. Blue had been a holdout for decades. My new colleagues saw me as naive. They laughed at my inexperience, and they immediately dismissed Cracking this untouchable account. Now it was clear that I was either just plain dumb or I was irresponsibly foolish. And my new boss actually told me he would fire me if I pursued Blue. I was an outsider, and boy, did I feel like one. I was consumed with worry that my career trajectory would come to a very abrupt halt. All the excitement about my big promotion quickly transformed into worry that I didn't know what I was doing and I was in over my head.

But what I felt most was frustration. I just knew that Blue would add a whole lot of value for our customers. And maybe, just maybe, if we thought bigger, there was a way to sign it. Adding Blue to our roster could change the very way the company was viewed and the growth potential of the whole business. How could I be the only person to see this now? My frustration fueled my determination. So I got to work. I dug around to find some data that showed just how important Blue was to customers. I used the data to project how many more customers we would attract and retain if in fact, we had Blue on board. And I created a storyline about how Blue could influence our reputation in the market and maybe even cause investors to look at us differently. I corralled a salesperson who called in a favor to get a meeting with an executive over at Blue. And after meeting with him and listening for what he valued, we tossed some ideas around. I suggested we approach the deal in a new way and bring together, excuse me, Assets we had in other areas of our company. So maybe we could create a little more value for Blue. Armed with a path forward that held just a glimpse of promise, I recruited a small group of colleagues who might also see the possibilities.

As a reconnaissance team, we worked under the radar and later expanding the effort. As we gained some momentum, we finally landed the biggest deal in the history of the company.

Now still to this day, biggest deal in the history of the company. By that time, signing Blue was no longer viewed as a foolish idea, but rather a strategic imperative. And the results surpassed even my own expectations by a factor of 10 and changed the trajectory of the company's growth. Now, this very clearly could have gone in another direction. Blue could have shut the door. I could have lost my job. Gosh, I could have lost my job for insubordination, for just trying. Or most likely, I could have tabled the idea, gotten bored with a lack of vision, and decided to leave the company.

Now, the difference between my approach and Abby's approach to a challenging situation wasn't about smarts. It wasn't about skill. She's clearly smarter than I am, for sure. And it wasn't even about confidence. The difference was in my belief that what I was doing was essential to the company moving forward.

Now, when we're a toddler, we don't take our first steps because mom or dad or both are cheering us on. Now, it is very likely that at least one of them is really encouraging, for sure. But we take those steps for one reason, and that is because we want to move forward. We want to get from here to there. And at some point, we figure out it's faster on foot than on our hands and knees. And we keep trying. Whether or not we have a cheerleader, we take those steps because we are focused with pure, clear intent.

I didn't want to sign blue because it would impress my boss. I intended to change the value we gave our customers. And Lucky, luckily for me, the clarity of my intent broke through the noise of my own insecurity that I was in over my head. My pure intent not only fueled my energy and creativity, it also attracted and fueled the creativity and energy of others.

Case in point, Lakshmi. That just spoke to us. So what is intent? I will tell you what it is not. It is not about pleasing others or changing how you were viewed by others. Intent is how you want to make an impact. It's how to do something that matters. Here's what I mean. When interviewing for a role, are you worried about whether or not you'll impress the person on the other side of the table? What if you intend to share some new idea on how the company might grow? Would that change your approach?

When speaking in front of a group, is your focus on impressing the crowd? What if you intended to inspire one person in that crowd to think differently? When coaching a colleague, do you want to show that you got the answers? Would your actions change if your intent is to make that one person feel seen and heard in that moment? When pitching Investor, do you feel that you need to focus on what happens if they decline? Oh my gosh. What if they say no? Or do you intend to recruit another believer in your company's mission to make a positive impact?

See what I mean? Intent reframes the challenge, and it just might put your worry about other people's opinions on pause. When you feel ignored, dismissed, or excluded, let that spirited intention remind you of your power. That's why we started this session with Sarah talking about intention. When you feel insecure and lack confidence, let the powerful intention drown out your doubt. My friend Abby concluded that if she shifted her Focus from influencing how she was being viewed to creating and executing her vision for a better customer experience, she would have spent her mental energy very differently. Now she probably would have ended up leaving the company anyway because they were not good to her. They might never have bought into her ideas. However, she likely have suffered less self doubt and worry and maybe even gotten a win or two with her energy and creativity fueled by the passion of her intent. Let me be clear. I am not telling you to be more confident or to believe in yourself. Rather, I am suggesting that you believe in what you are doing and why it is important to and the significantly positive difference that it can make. If you do that, confidence will find you. So why are women leaving their jobs? There's a whole host of reasons. One reason surely is they don't feel like they can make an impact. Let's not let it be for lack of being intentional about what that impact could be.

Wow.

So, so incredible. I would like to maybe invite Ravi to ask one question to Suzanne before we move to our next speaker.

Actually, I'm, I'm, I'm left, you know, speechless because.

I've never heard the, the true meaning of intention in such a powerful way because. So Susan, what gave you the confidence?

Right.

When all the odds are against you're in a very, very large company filled with men, what was it? Or was there a person who said, Susan, go for it, or was it your inner voice? It's what you did is very, very, very hard.

Well, you know, Ravi, I think it is no harder than what all the other people on this call face every day. When we care so deeply about something, whether that be our children, whether that be the space race, whether that be about having women feel empowered, whether that be about building a community, all of a sudden, all of our self doubt takes the back seat to that mission, to that purpose, to that North Star.

And the North Star doesn't always have to be the North Star. It can be the next star on the way to the big North Star. And I think that.

If we spend more time really thinking about why as opposed to who and what, then confidence will follow.

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Suzanne, for being with us today.

Of course. Thanks for having me.

All right. We have the pleasure of having Kim Fulshear. I hope I said your last name correctly.

You did, yeah.

Amazing. She's. I was just introduced to her a couple weeks ago by Ravi and I was just immediately captivated by who she is and you'll soon discover why. She's a motivational speaker and business Coach. She has written many, many books. One, the remodel your reality, seven steps to rebalance your life and reclaim your passion. And she's also the producer of get your groove back, which is an on demand coaching program for women. She's a Silicon Valley veteran. Kim has founded three companies and acts as a board member and angel investor. She delivers inspiring keynotes on the scientific fundamentals of performance and empowerment and coaches female executives and entrepreneurs from around the world. Welcome, Kim.

Thank you so much. Can everyone hear me okay?

Yes.

Amazing.

What a powerful kickoff to listening to these amazing speakers that have shared their wisdom with us. In the next 15 minutes or so, what I'd like to do is dovetail a little bit off of what each of the other speakers has contributed. And I definitely want to inspire you. But more than that, I want to instruct you. Empowerment is this concept we all talk about. Like it is this thing out there that could be granted to us or not. When really, scientifically speaking, behaviorally speaking, empowerment is completely within our control and is about how we manage three things. Our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. There is a term called agency. Agency just means you are in charge of you and power and empowerment. How powerful you feel, how much power or influence you're able to assert in your life has to do with the level of agency you have with yourself. Are you in control of you? Sounds very simple. And it is very simple to understand. In practice, it's very difficult because we are conditioned socially to be reactive creatures. And agency requires intent. It requires a deliberate intention, as Suzanne was just so beautifully talking about. So today, what I'd like to do is give you a formula. Literally. I call this practical magic. It is an empowerment formula. And I want you to think of empowerment not as a noun, but as a verb. This is something that you do.

Empowerment is about what you think, what you say, and what you do. Those three components and how you're using those tools on a daily basis actually determine how much agency you have and therefore how empowered you feel and how powerful you are in your ability to impact your environment. We've talked a little bit about true north. And so for this next 12, 13 minutes here, I'd like to suggest that we use agency as our true north. If you have a compass, literally think of agency as your true north. And then you've got your thoughts, your words, and your deeds. These make up the compass of empowerment. So first, let's talk about your thoughts. So thoughts are things. Scientifically, a thought is not an invisible component. It is a piece of energy that actually kicks off biochemical changes in your body. With your thoughts alone, you can send yourself into a fight or flight stress response, or you can turn on your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the calming system in your body. So your thoughts are very powerful. And unfortunately, most of us have been societally conditioned to be in a level of survival with our thoughts where we're wondering what someone thinks of us, wondering if we're good enough. Wondering, as so many of our speakers have talked about, as Lakshmi was talking about, whether or not someone will think we're crazy. Like, please let someone think we're crazy, right? So for our thoughts, I have just this very fun little metaphor I use, and I think about these two voices, right? We have little angel and a little devil. We have our bestie voice, and we have our frenemy voice. And when I'm working with a client, what I typically will do is for 30 days, have her notice which one of those voices are talking to her more. We all have an ongoing dialogue going on in our head. And what we want to do is understand that when we give the power of our thinking to our frenemy, you know, that person who pretends to be our friend but really isn't, she's telling us why we can't have what we want. She's making sure that we worry about what someone might think. She's causing us to put our energy into things that do not get us the results that we're looking in our life. She makes us play small and scared. That is frenemy. Bestie. We've all had a bestie is the person who says, you can do it, give it a shot. As Lakshmi said, take the jump, right? That is bestie. And what I find, even with very powerful, accomplished women, is that frenemy usually speaks to us more than bestie does. Unless and until we have decided we're going to take control of that little voice in our head. And I see a lot of you nodding because awards, academia, kudos, none of that replaces that little voice inside every single one of us that says, am I good enough? Do I matter? So one of the things when you're taking control of your own empowerment is that you must take control of your thoughts. And the easiest way to do that, the most fun way I found to do that, is just to pay attention to which one of your voices is driving your bus, which one of your voices is in charge. And when frenemy is in charge, you will never live into your potential. And you're probably going to feel pretty cruddy along the ride. So the first thing we want to do is take control of that voice in our head, and we want to start listening to Bestie more than Frenemy. And I have a really fun little game that I use with our brains. We have these things called neural pathways. And the thoughts we habitually think, the habits we've habitually conditioned, they become these neural pathways in our mind. Think of them like roads. And so if you've got this habit of always listening to frenemy, it means you've got a super highway in your mind that is designed to hold you back. When you start to replace the voice of Frenemy with the voice of Bestie, what you really are doing is carving out new road, right? So you're trying to leave the superhighway and go to the dirt road. And one of the easiest ways we can do that is by interrupting our pattern and by making something funny. So I have something called mental muzzle, and it is just like it sounds every time I hear my frenemy talking to me. And I teach this stuff. I've been doing this for more than 25 years, and she still talks to me, right? She talks to all of us. So when my frenemy comes up, I will simply have my bestie say, no, no, thank you. Don't want to play with you today. And I mentally visualize putting a muzzle on her. It feels so incredibly satisfying. And if you do it a few times, and it's actually a brain hack, right? It's a little pattern interrupt. And it helps you to transition from the superhighway to the dirt road. If you do it for 30 days and you do it at least a couple times a day, you'll find that that dirt road becomes paved. It becomes a new neural pathway that you begin to automatically use. So empowerment, something you do, not something you have. And the first thing you want to do is take control of your thoughts by putting your bestie in charge instead of your frenemy. Okay, everybody with me. The next thing we want to do is take a look at how we're using our voice. Our words are so powerful. And I've even witnessed a couple of our speakers when we give them kudos. We find that women have a very hard time just saying thank you. Yes, I did that. That was amazing of me, wasn't it?

Right?

We have a very hard time doing that. So first we wanted. I definitely want to encourage you, always take the compliment. But even before that, the lesson today, when we're talking about the most important thing you can do when you're taking control of your voice. I want you to stop speaking your own limitation. Stop talking about why something can't happen. Well, I really want to have this best selling book, but you know, that doesn't happen to many people. You know, it's like a one in a million. Do you find when we're talking with women about big thoughts, big ideas, big vision, there is room in that conversation. In fact, many times we almost feel like maybe we should speak about our limitations because that makes us seem more relatable. But the problem with that is two things happen. First, when you're speaking about your limitations, there's something in your brain called sensory acuity. Sensory acuity is a tool that helps you recognize in your environment something that is important to you. There's way too much in our environments for us to take in on a daily basis. And so our brain learns to filter based on what we have told. It is important. And the easiest example I could give you is think about a time when you bought a new car. You probably thought about that new car before you purchased it, and then you probably noticed you're seeing that car everywhere. Was that car just manifested because you started thinking about it? No, it was always there. Your brain just hadn't noticed it because you hadn't told it that it was important. And so what happens is that the words we use, the conversation we have, that actually focuses our sensory acuity. And so when you're talking about why you can't have what you want, your brain's going to go, okay, you can't have what you want. Here are all the reasons. And it's going to serve you up proof. The beautiful thing about sensory acuity is that if you start talking instead about how you could have what you want, or maybe one person who knows someone, who knows someone who could help you get what you want, then all of a sudden your brain is going to start serving up solutions. So our empowerment formula is what you think, listen to, bestie what you say, speak for yourself, speak on what you want to attract, don't use your voice to hold yourself down. And then the third component of our formula is about our behavior. And this is going to sound so incredibly elementary, and yet it is a very difficult thing to do. You must behave for the results you are seeking or they will not be yours. Said another way, if you line your behavior up with the results you want to create, those results will be yours. It is just a matter of time. But what we typically will do is talk about what we want, and then we behave. Instead of responding to our environment, we behave reactively. And life becomes this little game of whack a mole, right? Like, we've got this guy there, this guy there, this guy there. Like I said, I wanted to eat for my health, but you know what? I'm busy and there's candy right here. So let me just stuff my face with sugar and keep going. This happens, right? So you must line your behavior up with the results you're seeing seeking in order to have that. And here's the other dirty little secret in there.

You can want something with all your might. Your why can be so strong and makes you sweat. But if you are doing something that is opposing the result you're seeking, you cannot think your way out of it. And I've never worked with a woman. I have more than 12,000 hours of coaching, all with female entrepreneurs and executives and artists and authors, and I've never met a woman who didn't have one behavior that held her back from everything. I call it our kryptonite. You know, kryptonite rendered Wonder Woman and Superman powerless, no matter how amazing they were. We all have a kryptonite. And if you're doing. If you are, if you are hanging out with your kryptonite, it really doesn't matter what you think, because you're going to be in a tiny little room, powerless, because you've given your power to that kryptonite, right? So I just want everybody to think right now, you don't just say it out loud, but you know what your kryptonite is? You know, maybe it's, you have to be right and maybe you want to be loved, but dang, you will fight to be right even if it alienates the love, Right? That. That's a very common one, right? You want to be fit. But man, that extra two hours of sleep and the five times you hit that, that alarm clock, that just kicks you off in a different direction. Everyone has a different kryptonite. We all know what ours is. And your kryptonite doesn't make you bad. In the Hero's Journey, there is no story that involves the empowerment, the animation of power of an individual unless and until she overcomes some challenge. Or kryptonite is some challenge that your soul is here to overcome. Let's wrap this up.

You are in charge of your empowerment. Getting paid the same as a guy, having as much representation and leadership, that's equality. That's not Empowerment. And we must each take charge of our own empowerment in order to participate in the movements that would give us equality. But table stakes. The foundation is about managing our own power. And just like Dorothy with the ruby slippers, my darling, you have had it all along. True north is agency. I am in charge of me, period. What you think, listen to bestie. Muzzle frenemy. What you say, accept compliments, speak for possibility. When you hear yourself saying, oh, no, no, that wasn't a big deal, or talking about why you can't have what you want. Muzzle it. Muzzle frenemy. Muzzle speaking against yourself. And finally, what you do matters and what you don't do matters. Align your behavior with what you want to accomplish, and it is yours. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Kim. I feel it was truly meant to be that I actually met you at an event so serendipitously. Thank you so much.

Yes, Just two weeks ago.

So here you are.

So it was all meant to be.

Amazing. Thanks for having me.

Of course. It was wonderful.

I have to say this in. In India, we say no in our. In Sanskrit, manasavacha, karma. So your thoughts control your. Your words and your words control your actions. And I can. You just elaborated on. On the importance of it to, you know, to truly build agency, which. Which ties with the intention because it won't happen if you don't have the intention, like Susan explained. And to connect it to what Lakshmi said, make agency or North Star and then everything else will fall in, fall in place. So I hope it works for men too. So I will practice that.

Hello, Kim.

Amazing. Absolutely fantastic.

Love, so much.

Thank you.

So I have a question for you. What is the one thing that you wish you knew when you started your journey?

Oh, goodness.

I wish that I knew I was going to fail many times. And that failure.

Was not something that defined my worth, but that failure was directive.

Something that really could be used as feedback to define my next steps.

Fantastic advice.

Thank you. Wow. Couldn't agree more. Thanks.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kim. Such a pleasure. And.

And.

All right, onward we go. Our next guest of honor is Molly and Yana, who's not here, but she is because her spirit is always with us. Molly and Yana are the co founders of Meet yout Magic. Yana, having led, I'm sure you all know Simon Sinek. Start with why she led DOT for over a decade. And Molly, having been in the first hundred employees of a Dropbox as an operational lynch pin, combined forces together in 2020 to create meet your magic. Their serious business chops can combine with grounded spirituality and relational expertise to create the ideal conditions for entrepreneurs, coaches, CEOs, artists, and change change makers and everything in between to get the courage, choice and clarity they need to take their shot. And I can attest to that because having done Meet yout Magic Workshop, I had the inspiration to launch my crowdfunding campaign that was successfully funded when I finally asked for help because of the support from Yana. Molly, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, Yasmine. Hi, everyone. My colleague Yana is for sure here with us. She's kind of my little yacht on my shoulder right now.

Our whole our life's work is that we all might have the privilege of doing our life's work and that we all might have the privilege of getting to our final breath on this earth knowing that we did what we came here to do. And Kimberly, even though you're off camera now, I'm looking at you because agency is the North Star. You took the words right out of my mouth. And for our offering to all of you today, Yana and I wanted to give you our single most effective tool for staying present and working through anything that is in between you and what you came here to do in the name of agency. So if you feel comfortable, I invite you to close your eyes. If you would rather not, you can just let your gaze go down so that you can be in touch with yourself a little more fully. Feel your feet on the ground. Feel your seat on your chair.

Take the deepest breath you have taken all day.

Find yourself right here, right now.

And then go back to the last time you didn't feel like yourself.

Maybe it was this morning over coffee. Maybe it was two weeks ago with a family member. Maybe it was in a meeting and you're having this experience of someone says something to you or something happens and you're watching yourself behave in a way, way that you don't want to. You're being somebody. There's a version of yourself expressing itself that you're like, I can't stop it, but I don't want it. What's happening? And I can't quite get myself out of the loop of whatever I'm in.

Maybe it's a conversation with a loved one.

Maybe it's the moment you walked into your boss's office or a colleague's office. Maybe it's an argument. Maybe it's a small, tiny thing that you just completely overreacted to and you're like, what is happening.

This.

In this moment? Where you feel not like yourself.

Your whole body, your whole nervous system and your whole being is hijacked by a part of you.

Your present adult self is not in the driver's seat of your Maserati because let's be honest, you're a sports car.

Someone else is in the driver's seat. It might be a rebellious 16 year old, it might be a 3 year old, it might be an overconfident 22 year old, but whoever it is, it is not you in this present moment.

And what if I told you that a version of this is happening to you and everyone you know? At least half of the day.

We are not in presence. We are not in the present moment. Our system is hijacked by a part of us from long ago that is screaming for our attention.

Go back to that moment where you did not feel like yourself.

Then go back just a little bit further.

To right before you started to not feel like yourself. You probably felt something in your body. A racing heart. Charge, Heat, sweaty palms, Adrenaline, Sadness, numbness. There was a body signal that was there waiting for you. Someone was tugging at your sleeve inside of you saying, I know something about this. I have a message for you.

Lock in to recognize this signal.

As.

Your internal wisdom having a message for you. You know something about what's about to happen. You know something about what's happening to you and you don't want to miss it. And that's the moment to hit the pause button.

Take a breath.

Go all the way in and say, hi, who are you?

It might sound a little funny, but often a voice will answer. Sometimes it's little. Sometimes it's three or four or five. Sometimes it's 16, sometimes it's 20. Sometimes you're not sure what age she.

Is.

And they usually answer. And if you lean in and you say, I want to know.

I want to know the message you have for me. You will have access to some of the deepest wisdom of your entire life. Because this part of you imagine it's a four or five year old that has been tugging at your sleeve. And you say, I felt you tugging at my sleeve. What is it that you want to tell me? She might say something like, I don't think we can trust this person. Or I'm worried about what's going to.

Happen next.

In this moment. This is when you as the adult have agency. You have the information from within to become curious about your outside world. You know what's happening for you on the inside and you have taken the sensation of the body and Allowed it to percolate up into the mind so that you can give words to your experience now you can communicate about it, you can get curious about it, you can reveal it to your co workers or loved ones. You now can use your words to talk about your inner knowing.

Thanking this deep wisdom, thanking it for giving you so many signals.

And.

Saying thank you for showing me all the options that I have in this moment. This is the single greatest tool to know where your boundaries are, what your deep knowing is of who you are and what you want to do in the world, how to make decisions and how to come back to the present moment.

Taking one final deep breath as you bring yourself back into the room, opening your eyes, saying hello to all of the other people here.

After we went on a short journey.

This in my, in my practice is something that we did every single day for two years. We spent one hour getting curious about what was happening in our internal landscape. I have met hundreds of parts of me, hundreds of expressions of looking at a calendar and being like that meeting stresses me out. And then being like, why? Who knows something about why this is stressful in here? And the information that I have access to when I learned how to listen to the signal, I feel stressed, I feel nervous, I don't want to go, I don't feel like it, I feel overpowered, I feel afraid, I feel like an imposter. These are all signals for me to get very curious about what I know and then to find a way to help this part rest. Because usually it's an unmet need and usually they just want to be listened to.

We use this with people to help them decide.

Everything from small decisions to understanding their leadership style, how to navigate through conflict, what they stand for in the world, what they won't tolerate, what they are a stand for in their everyday life with their families and their businesses, how they will present themselves if they want to be on social media or not. Lots of parts of people have many opinions about many, many things. And if you have big initiatives, big goals, big dreams, which it seems everyone on this call does, and if you're ready to take your shot, this is your secret weapon for working through your blocks and finding all of the answers that you need from within. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you.

Wow. Thank you. Thank you, Molly, you're amazing.

Kali, I would like to actually invite you to ask Molly a question because this is very aligned with how you yourself every day.

Wow. Molly and Yana.

So I wonder.

What kind of action or muscle that you may feel when it sounds like you're trying to align and communicate with your physicality and your emotion and your mind. Is that a muscle that that hour a day practice brought you to?

It's a very good question.

But the setting aside the hour a day, I don't know if it's necessary, but what it gave me was.

A dedicated time to listen to myself, which is something before that moment I feel I never had time for. I was in back to back zoom calls. I had everyone else's schedule prioritized before mine. I had to be in a lot of different places. I had all these responsibilities and carving out time over and over and over again. To listen to myself at the beginning of the day about what was going to happen that day.

Made it possible. And I think it is a muscle, which is what you're pointing at, made it possible for me to get these.

Downloads very quickly. So if I'm transitioning and I'm between meetings and I run to the bathroom, I can have a little conversation with myself, get a little, little wisdom and show back up at the meeting now where I, I really did need to carve out the time to listen to this and honor and trust in the wisdom that my body and my inner knowing had.

That's amazing. I mean, I feel like that's, that's the only way I can be present. So thank you so much for, for that energy and tools to get there.

Thank you, Molly and Yana.

So we had actually the pleasure of hosting Sneha Shah a couple months ago at one of the WE monthly trainings that we host within the WE community. And it was really incredible to hear her journey. She is a technology and innovation executive at Coca Cola, which I'm sure you've all had at some point. Her mission is to bring meaningful technologies to life that drive growth and improve the lives of team members, consumers and customers. So if you have questions around transforming teams, building technical capabilities, driving growth and innovation, well, all you need to do is listen to Sneha. So we have, we are so honored to have you with us today.

Again, all you, thank you so much, Yasmine. I am just incredibly honored to be here today with all of you. Last time I was with you, Yasmeen, I had a terrible, terrible cough. I don't today, so I'm healthy and good, but happy and international. Women's Day to each and every one of you. It's just been such a pleasure getting to know Ravi and Yasmeen over the last several months and just want to thank all the speakers that Just came before me. You know, I'm actually quite humbled to be amongst this group of real change agents, real women and real change agents in our world. And so I was thinking last night about, you know, what am I going to talk about today and what's my theme? And one of the first things Ravi and I actually talked about is our families. And I actually had a chance to meet his daughter and was just so inspired about what our next generation of females are going to do in this world. And, you know, one thing we have in common is we. We both have daughters. So actually, last night I was really inspired by my own daughter. Her name is Ahana. And what we do every night is we do two things. We write in this little journal, which I'm going to show you in a minute, and then we talk about our dreams. So dreams is the theme for today, and I want you to just, oh, no, it'll have to replace my face. But we write in this little journal and it's. Hopefully you could peek at it, but it's called between mom and Me. And funny enough.

The page from last night was, this was a question. And we basically ask each other questions and write to each other in this journal. So the question was, dear mom, do you think I will accomplish my biggest dream? What advice do you have for me? So here's what I wrote down, and this is 9:00 clock at night. I'm very tired. So it's not brilliant literature, but what I wrote was, there's no doubt in my mind that you will achieve your biggest, most amazing dream. You are kind, diligent, hardworking, creative, smart, courageous and collaborative. What are my tips? My tips for you are the following five things. Ask for help, AKA mentorship. But in simpler words, ask for help. Work with others, combine passion and purpose. Have fun, work hard. And then in underlined words underneath, never give up. So.

What I believe is the true role of a mentor is to help people achieve their dreams. Big or small, wild or crazy. That is the role of a mentor. And I take that to heart because last night I realized I'm my daughter's first mentor. Okay, so with that, I've had a chance to mentor a lot of people throughout my life and career. And I've also had the privilege of getting great mentorship throughout my career. And one of the key things was like finding the right mentor at the right time. In the first half of my career, I worked for a company called General Mills, and you get assigned a mentor, and it was my first kind of interaction with Anything that was formally called a mentor. And frankly, my mentors were nothing like me. I work in the field of technology and innovation, and most of my mentors that were assigned to me were males. They didn't have working wives. They had no experience with my. You know, that was relative to my experience. And so it took me a lot of time, and I actually learned a lot from those people. So not taking away anything like that, but the finding the right mentorship and finding the right relationships was something that I didn't realize I needed to do till, well, probably halfway through in my career. So just wanted to share that so story with you so you guys could see that to me, there's an evolution over time of who you need in your life. Right now, I'm my daughter's only mentor, probably maybe her teachers and a few others, but I hope to help her find people who can help her along her journey. So I just wanted to also share just a little bit more about some of the things that I've been learning about at Coca Cola and. And how we're evolving our approach in the field of mentorship and really finding ways to impact women in their careers. What we're finding, similar to what a few of the other speakers were saying, not only are women leaving the workforce at double the speed, they also face very unique hurdles in the workplace as well as for advancing their careers. So it's not all about career advancement necessarily, but we do see that once females get to a certain level in the corporate career ladder place, they start to face these specific unique challenges in order to then move or step change their careers. And so what I've recently been thinking a lot about is the difference between mentorship and sponsorship. And so I just want to leave you with that concept that as you seek relationships, you know, one, there's, you know, friends and mentors and peers. And that's all a very important level of. You need to have a certain level of trust and a level of interaction with folks that play those roles in your life. But finding a sponsor, someone who understands your ecosystem, understands what it'll take to be successful in whatever that dream is that you have, and helps you actually navigate the complexities and champions you to get to that next level or to have people take a chance on you, is slightly different and nuanced, but can have an even greater impact on you. So one of the things that I would encourage us to do as a community is help each other through mentorship and sponsorship. And so when you come across other women in your life or People you're trying to help, think about what your role can actually be. Is it just general advice or navigating, or can you activate, help enforce, help support that person to get to that next place and enable them to take that risk? So that's something I'm learning a lot about, is the concept of sponsorship. The other new thing in the last few years that I've actually really learned for myself at the place I'm in, in my career is the role of reverse mentorship. Because the world is changing around us, so we as women can learn just as much from people who have nothing to do with our industry or field or people that are three generations younger than us. The learning is two way, and I think that's really important for us to not just take from these relationships, but to give as well and learn from those relationships. So I wanted to also highlight that concept. And then the third concept that I wanted to talk about was really how we go back to our values and purpose. And how do you do that in a way that connects you to people that live your values and your purpose? Because every day that we work and we work towards something or making the world a better place, we want to make sure that as we're doing those small steps, we're using our time with intention. Because time is one of our most valuable assets that we have here. So when I think about my time, it's really about. I think about work, life, balance, and all the different things that many women face every day. But more importantly, I think about where can I act with intention? Where can I have the most impact with that time, and does that time align with my broader purpose and what I'm trying to do? Yasmeen rightfully said that my mission is bringing new technologies and innovation. That's a little bit more from a, I guess, corporate and company perspective, which is absolutely true. But even bigger than that.

I want to help enable others to do the same. Because the world, the change we are facing today in our world, it's very complex. Many of you are facing the impacts of, whether it's geopolitical tension, inflation, climate issues. There are a number of challenges in our macro environment. And figuring out that North Star that was mentioned earlier, or that purpose will really help anchor us and help us move forward as a community. So those were the three kind of things that I wanted to build on in terms of mentorship. But then you might ask, okay, well, what does this have to do with dreams? And one of our, with my daughter, actually one of our favorite. Sometimes we come up with big things. Sometimes we come up with very small things. So a dream can be as simple as, hey, I want to go to Disneyland next week, or it could be a way to change the world. So to me, you never know exactly where your next step is going to take you. But each next step will open up doors to.

Further opportunities. And so if I go back to the advice that I gave my daughter, the other thing, which I didn't say in writing, but each of us is writing our own story. So one of the things that I thought about in terms of the values and purpose piece is what is your unique story? And you're never going to find somebody who has the exact same track, because we're all different and unique on different dimensions. So you really do have to find what works for you, what challenges you personally are facing, and then how that actually correlates to what it is you want to do, who we need help from. So with that, I'll just say, enjoy the moment. I'll read you a couple lyrics. So our favorite song between me and my daughter is actually a song called A Million Dreams. There's a couple different people who've sung this song, but we like the version by Pink because we like her as an artist. But I'll just leave you with a couple lyrics from the song. So the main chorus goes. Because every night I line bed the brightest colors fill my head A million dreams are keeping me awake I think of what the world could be A vision of the one I see A million dreams is all it's going to take oh, a million dreams for the world we're going to make I cannot sing it. I'm not that good at singing, so I can read it as a poetry. And, you know, I think that the. The most amazing thing about today on International Women's Day is that we can all learn from each other, hear stories, share, and then just take a moment to enjoy what is good and what is positive. Because the challenges are immense ahead of us, and every small state step we take as females will help ourselves and the next generations to make the world better. Thank you.

Wow. Thank you, Sneha. That was amazing. I have one question for you. What drives you, like, in terms of values? Like what. What would you say is your one value that. That drives you every day? As a. As a mother, as a leader, as a woman, as a wife? Just what is that one value for you in the spirit to get to know you better?

Yeah. Thank you. I would say most of my motivation and values, they come from my Parents. So my father came over to the US from India in the early 1960s.

And really.

His values were simple, work hard and put your family first. And as time grew on.

I think he really put that to work here in the US and built an incredible life for myself and my family. So seeing some of the struggles he and my mother went through.

I was born in a very small town called Midland, Michigan. Very little diversity. And really their answer to everything was, work hard and it'll get better. And what I have learned over time and what drives me is that, you know, there is so much opportunity in this world. And what I really am driven by is helping people get those opportunities. So just like my father opened up many doors for myself and my siblings and my cousins and many family members, I think that we cannot take those opportunities for granted. And I really am driven by helping others see opportunities, whether it's within challenges or things that they don't know about, and just really, education, whatever it is, I do believe that there is a world of opportunity out there and just not everybody has access or knowledge of those things. And that's why the mentorship relationships are so important, because that's what's going to help people figure out what those opportunities indoors are.

Absolutely. No doubt. And so it is. Thank you, Snell. Thank you for being here today.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

Denise.

Denise Gosnell helps busy entrepreneurs and shares what she learned the hard way, that the money you make and the time you spend growing your business are only as valuable as the freedom they give you to create a meaningful life. She also learned that you can have growth in your business and plenty of free time. In fact, working less, according to Denise, and having more free time is one of the key ingredients to growing your business. Denise is a business strategist, attorney, best selling author, real estate investor, and creator of the Vacation Effect. We are super glad to have you here with us today. And please welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. It's. It's exciting to be here with everyone, all you beautiful ladies, and also Ravi. Great to have you here as well, Ravi. And you know, it's so interesting because I used to be a workaholic entrepreneur, working 80 hours a week running my three companies and three different industries. And, you know, life always has a way of giving us the lessons if we're willing to listen, right? And sometimes if we're not listening, they'll just keep throwing those lessons at us until we finally get the message. But for me, that the biggest lesson that I all that I've had in my Life was on June 20th of 2011. And that was the day that it became. It was the worst day that ever happened to me. And it turned out to become the best day that ever happened. Me, the greatest gift. But what happened that's so insightful and ties into everything else we've been talking about today is that there was a knock on my front door. We were my. It was 8 o' clock in the morning, and we were struck by lightning. There was a horrible storm going through our area, and we knew we were struck by lighting. My husband saw it hit the house. There was a boom and a shake, and the energy through the room turned on my daughter's toys. Welcome to Dora's Playhouse. Like, imagine energy passing through from the lightning strike, turning on electronics that weren't turned on otherwise. And so we didn't know if we were on fire. We just knew we were struck by lightning. And so for about 10 minutes, we were frantically looking around the house, checking to see if everything was okay. And then all of a sudden, we hear knock at the front door. I mean, it was a pounding. It was like, because the doorbell didn't work. So we go to the front door, and there's a fireman and he informs us that our house is on fire and that we need to get outside immediately. Our Neighbors have called 911 because they thought they were on, were struck by lightning. And we tried calling 911 but our phones weren't working. The cell phones were dead, the landline phone was dead. So we were just waiting to see. So what happened next was one of those, like, pit in the stomach lessons that, you know, we were talking about that I believe it was Molly was talking about earlier, like, when you listen in those moments. So the fireman said, what do you want us to retrieve in the next five minutes before your house is destroyed by fire and water? What do you want us to retrieve before your house is destroyed? That is the most powerful question that anyone's ever asked me in my life. And it's. It's one of those moments that how I answered them shocked me more than the fire itself, than being on fire. But how I answered him was that I wanted him to retrieve all sentimental things. You know, my daughter's stuffed animal, Bunny. And it was like a family member. Those of you that have kids know what it, you know, it's like to have a family member that's a stuffed animal. We had to get Bunny. It didn't matter whether the artwork and the jewelry and all that burned but you got to get Bunny, because I can't lose Bunny today. So we. We had him. Them go retrieve Bunny. My wedding photos from 28 years ago that I didn't have to digitally. And the blanket my grandmother made me as a child to teach the story of love and acceptance. It was a embroidery quilt. That's what I had them retrieve. Not the stuff that you can replace. All that stuff I'd been working 80 hours a week to pay for. And so as I stood there in my neighbor's garage watching them put out the fire, I realized that there I was, stuck in this machine of the American grind, working 80 hours a week to pay for all this stuff. Six, seven days a week that I didn't even care about and didn't even ask the firemen to retrieve. And so I. I vowed to myself that day that I'm going to figure out how to have plenty of free time and put my family and everything first, but still provide a good life for my family, too. Like how to have both, right? We both want, we all want free time and business growth or free time and good income. Not have to pick one over the other. But so that, that was like the life changing moment for me. That was such a gift. And I realized that day that we have to learn to turn that voice down on the. I believe Kimberly called it the frenemy. You know, that that's, that voice that's talking and telling you to get back to work because you're lazy. And everybody else will think you're lazy if you're not working all the time, if you're not hustling and grinding all the time. And so I had to learn to overlook that and learn how. And I actually learned how to do more with less. And. But it had to start with being honest on where I was at. And I talk about all this in my book that just came out, the Vacation Effect for Entrepreneurs.

So.

And obviously I won't have time to cover it all here in the limited time we have. But if you resonate with any of this, you know, feel free to grab that. But so part of it was I had to get clear on, you know, what do you want your epic life to look like? Like, where are you now, if you're totally honest? And what do you want your epic life to look like in these different areas? And I don't mean the epic life where you're a billionaire and you got the private jets and all that stuff. I mean the epic life, like where your life is great, you're doing what makes you happy? You've got more than enough money. But it doesn't have to be a billion dollars. Like, if I just put, you know, a million dollars and paid off all your debts in your bank account today, what would that version of you look like? What would you want it to be? Maybe it's not even a million dollars, but. So you have to get clear on that, which is what I did after the fire. And then I also realized that I wasn't. I was letting those things control me, that all those things I've always said someday maybe I'll do. I'm sure we've all had those. I now call those the someday maybes. You know that little voice that says, oh, someday when I have more money, I'll travel more Someday when I have more time, I'll go visit with my parents or I'll start that nonprofit, or I'll learn to play guitar, I'll learn another language. We all have those, right? Those someday maybes? Well, what I realized is that someday is not a day of the week. If we don't bring them into the now in some fashion, they're never going to happen. Like, we can end up being at retirement or at a time in our life when we don't have the money or we don't have the health to do those things when we finally get around to them. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to be on my deathbed looking back and going, you know, man, I wish I had gotten around to those things. I want to live my life to the fullest now. So the someday maybe idea is something that I've just become really passionate about, helping people identify all those someday maybes that you keep telling yourself that you'll do someday when you have whatever criteria met and find what version of that can you do right now and bring it into the now. Maybe it's not that, you know, three months around the world on a cruise, but maybe it's a one week cruise you take this summer. There's a version of it, if you look for it, that you can start doing right now, because a Sunday maybe is just future joy that you are depriving yourself of. And so that's one of my big passions, is helping people bring the someday maybes into the now. And then the second one that I want to just briefly cover with you because it fits in so beautifully with what Kimberly and Molly and then, you know, Sneha, we're talking about with, you know, your purpose and agency and true north. And that is I came up with a framework on how to identify what I believe is your life purpose. And if it's okay, I'll just quickly share that with you. No matter what your religious background is or beliefs are, I believe this overlays beautifully with whatever those beliefs that you might have are. Because I believe that our magnificent loving God gave us all gifts, that we, we each are unique, we each have our own gifts. And those gifts are what give God, gives God the greatest joy when we're using those gifts to make the world better. If each one of us on this call today and on this session and everyone watching this recording later uses the gifts we were given, imagine how much better we will elevate the planet together when we're all using our gifts and sharing them with the world. Like, that's the greatest version of a society I think we could ever have, right? So what if our purpose in life is literally to discover what we're best at, what we love doing, and then to use that in our day to day life as our guidepost, as the true north that we were talking about earlier and the way you could do that. It sounds complicated, but I came up with a life purpose framework that I go into great detail on my book. But the short version is what are the three things that you love doing that transcends any of your companies, any of your businesses, any of your jobs that you'll do no matter what? Mine are problem solving and simplifying the complicated, learning new things and helping others. So that transcends all three of my companies or any company I'm ever going to start. So let's say you take those three unique and joyful talents that are the gifts you, the things you love doing, and then give them a name. I call it a power word, A power one power word that summarizes everything together into one word. For me, the word I came up with was amplifier. Because an amplifier is a piece of equipment that takes in a bunch of inputs like you do when you're problem solving or simplifying the complicated. And it processes something like when you're learning new things and then it outputs something beautiful. That's what an amplifier does as a piece of equipment. And outputting something beautiful is like helping others. So what if my real purpose in life is to simply get to be an amplifier every day? And the more I am doing that, helping others, problem solving, learning new things, the more I'm living in alignment with the purpose that God created me uniquely to have and my favorite way of Putting this is, what if that's really the definition of integrity? So what I mean by that is integrity. You know, the commonly accepted definition we all think of when we think of integrity is, are you a person of your word? Do you do what you say? Can you be counted on? Right. We kind of agree that that's like the general understanding of integrity. What if another version of integrity, either instead of or in addition to that, is are you living in alignment with the version of you, with your purpose and the version of you that you're meant to be? And if you're not, what if that means you're out of integrity with yourself? I think integrity with self is greater and more powerful than integrity with other people. Because if you're not even living in integrity with yourself, how can you even live in integrity towards other people? Right? Like, because our best version of self is automatically going to be in integrity with others if we're doing the best that we possibly can and being the best version of ourselves. So I love that way of thinking about integrity and overlapping it with our life purpose. And then if you bring those someday maybes into today, you know, you can start living in and then use your life purpose to guide you. And when you make decisions in your companies, then your life can continue to get better and better. And the short version, because I know I'm almost out of time and I can't go into all of it, but it's. It's in more detail in my book, is that the way I figured out how to grow by doing less was to get out of the hustle and grind mindset and forget about the fact that we're supposed to do more all the time and just like, focus on the results of what? Focus on the few needle movers that actually matter and eliminate or delegate all the fluff that really didn't matter. Like, it's. It's where my company name, the vacation effect, comes from. Have you ever noticed how you're super productive right before you go on vacation when you get a month's worth of work done right before you leave?

We've all experienced that.

Well, what's happening is you're forcing yourself to focus on what really matters because you know you're going to be gone and you're eliminating or delegating everything else that you shouldn't have been doing anyway or that really didn't even need to be done. What if you purposely and methodically reduce the amount of time you're willing to work each week so that you got the vacation effectiveness every single week of your life. Because I believe that every single week of your life should have so much joy built in that your life feels like a perpetual vacation. That's the other meaning of the term, the vacation effect. I will stop there and open it up for whatever time we have left for a question.

I feel like Molly should ask this question because she's living the vacation effect literally in Panama.

So, Molly.

Denise, thank you so much.

I think one of the reasons why this American grind paradigm is so sticky is because it's interwoven with our self worth from a very young age and through our our entire lives. So I'm curious how either you or how you support people to unwind self worth from the 80 hour work week.

Yeah, that's a great question. And 100% of my clients in my coaching company have that problem, as I did. But I do it by tricking them in a little experiment that I have them do. I have them do a 30 day time experiment. After we get clear on where they are and where they want to go, we then go into phase two with a 30 day experiment where I ask them to work three days per week for just 30 days. And I say, pretend like you're just taking a week vacation, but we're just spreading it out over the months.

Right.

And they're all, they all push back when I get them to do it. And what happens 100% of the time is they have awareness into what you're talking about. They start realizing how guilty they feel when they're not at the office two days a week on a business day. They start noticing that voice of what are, what's my team going to think? Are they going to think I'm lazy? They start like questioning, well, what am I supposed to do with myself? I haven't had a business day off in decades. So it's like they don't know it, but I'm actually tricking them into having awareness on mindset issues. They think they're buying a business growth program, which they are, but they're really buying the mindset and a reset of the American grind and how to actually look at it from a holistic standpoint and from a results standpoint instead of a societal peer pressure standpoint. So that's a great question.

Thank you.

Thank you, Denise. That was really inspiring. And actually my word, my power word is integrity, which is staying on time, which means ending on time. Beginning and ending on time. So this means we have 10 minutes and we have three more items to go over. So first of all, we're going to hear some words of inspiration from a very dear friend, sister and investor in Voyage, Auburn Love. Then we're going to go into a demo of the we platform and I'll share more about what the. The we community and hopefully invite you all to join. And finally, we're going to end with Sarah once again to close us off into a beautiful harmony. All right, Ravi? Actually, no. Auburn, Auburn, you're on.

You are muted, so we can't hear you yet.

Six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six.

Six.