Nela Richardson of ADP: 5 Things We Need To Do To Close The Gender Wage Gap

Since women tend to take on more of the family responsibilities a critical part of supporting working women long-term is reliable and affordable child and family care. Two, transparency is an important, and often forgotten element to closing pay gaps. Information really is power and giving employees more information about the pay of their colleagues and for similar roles in their industries can help women gain negotiating power and narrow pay gaps over time. Finally, hiring more women at senior leadership positions. We see a steep drop off in women’s representation at senior levels of an organization. Having greater female representation in leadership is key to addressing pay and role disparities throughout the organization.

As part of my series about “the five things we need to do to close the gender wage gap” I had the pleasure of interviewing Nela Richardson, Chief Economist, ADP

Nela Richardson joined ADP as Chief Economist in November of 2020. Nela is the co-head of the ADP Research Institute and leads economic research for ADP. Previously, she was Principal and Investment Strategist at Edward Jones, a financial services firm. In that role, Nela analyzed and interpreted economic trends and financial market conditions and recommended investment strategies. Nela is also the former chief economist at Redfin Corp., a national real estate brokerage and technology company, where she led a team of data scientists, economists and writers to track trends in the housing market. Nela also served as a senior economist for Bloomberg, L.P., covering housing and financial markets, and has held research positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Freddie Mac.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us the “backstory” that brought you to this career path?

My origin story as an economist started my freshman year of university with my first economics class, Econ 101. I was immediately struck by how econ provided tools to make sense of both the wider world and individual decision making. Eventually, I received my PhD in econ, specializing in international finance and intending to teach at a liberal arts college, with the goal of “showing students why they should care about poor countries”.

However, life had other plans and as a new mother I made the decision to stay in DC, where my husband was based and enter the corporate world. I joined Freddie Mac as a housing economist just as the housing market was taking off in 2005, and I had a bird eye view of the housing collapse that was to follow. At Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, I researched the corporate and banking behaviors that led to the Great Recession and worked as a government economist at the Commodity Future Trading Commission right when the organization had just been handed regulatory authority of the multi-trillion dollar derivatives industry, which has been seen as a trigger of the Great Recession at the time. This experience, bookending the financial crisis, shaped how I viewed the economy, the tradeoff between policy and the economy, and how individual decision making at the corporate and household level can affect the global economy.

It also gave me an appreciation for the power of data. I firmly believe that the data and transparency can help people make better and more efficient decisions. That belief had guided me in my career ever since.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this career?

Early on when I had first joined Redfin as Chief Economist, I was interviewed for an article about economists joining tech firms that was subsequently titled “Chief Economists as the New Marketers”. Though I enjoyed the article immensely, at the time I remember thinking that economists’ roles in reaching the public is not new at all. I think economists in the corporate sector play a key role in providing data-driven insights to the public. I think this helps in all kinds of ways, including creating better economic policy and helping businesses and consumers understand economic tradeoffs. What I like most about my job is breaking down complicated issues in a way that is digestible, easy to understand and actionable for people. If marketing is connecting people with a product — I love that I get to connect people with data and insights that can help them better understand the economy.

Can you share a story about the funniest or most interesting mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I remember my first interview for an economist position. The interview was going well, until the hiring manager asked me “What do you like to do for fun?” He said that the job required working with nontechnical colleagues and he wanted to see if I could relate to a wide range of people with diverse interests.

At the time, I had just given birth to a newborn, he was about 5 weeks and I was exhausted between midnight feedings and working on my dissertation. My mind went completely blank and all I could think of to say was “I like to eat and watch tv”. Realizing how boring that sounded, I added “Sometimes I combine the two and watch the Food Network”. The interview ended almost immediately. I had been prepared to go in deep detail about every aspect of my dissertation but, as a young economists and mother, I didn’t know how, or if, to talk about the parts of my life that were most important to me. I learned that it is important to choose and employer and career that can be supportive of your life outside of work.

Ok let’s jump to the main focus of our interview. Even in 2020, women still earn about 81 cents for every dollar a man makes. Can you explain three of the main factors that are causing the wage gap?

First, a larger share of women begin their career at a lower wage compared to men. That initial gap in pay can track women through their entire careers and is hard to overcome. Secondly, incentive pay tends to be lower for women than men. Thirdly, women are overconcentrated in lower pay industries and low pay roles within industries. These trends didn’t create themselves and are rooted in practices that tend to devalue women’s work and performance as compared to men.

Can you share with our readers what your work is doing to help close the gender wage gap?

The mission of the ADP Research Institute is to generate data-driven discoveries about the world of work with the goal of making the world of work better and more productive. We use research to illuminate and track gaps in pay, promotion, and leadership as well as provide insights on the labor market as a whole. ADP’s DataCloud recently rolled out new tools that use data to help businesses in near real time analyze diversity and equity to better allocate staff resources. This a great example for how data and analytics help support better outcomes.

Can you recommend 5 things that need to be done on a broader societal level to close the gender wage gap. Please share a story or example for each.

Women’s labor force participation peaked in 1999 in the US. The pandemic exacerbated this trend of women leaving the workforce. In fact, last September when many schools and daycares were closed across the US, women left the labor force at 4 times the rate of men. The ADP Research Institute surveyed women in 17 countries in October — December of last year. We found that the strain women were feeling because of the pandemic was nearly universal.

Two thirds (67%) of the global workforce say they have been forced to make a compromise between their work and their personal life because of the impact of the pandemic, especially for women and parents. Women are also less likely than men to receive a bonus or pay raise for taking on additional work or changing roles, with the greatest gap in North America, where 62% of men received a bonus or pay raise for changes to their roles, compared to only 50% of women. In terms of the future of work for women post-Covid-19, about half believed employers accommodating the needs of working parents will cease within a year, something likely to weigh heavily in future decisions.

Since women tend to take on more of the family responsibilities a critical part of supporting working women long-term is reliable and affordable child and family care. Two, transparency is an important, and often forgotten element to closing pay gaps. Information really is power and giving employees more information about the pay of their colleagues and for similar roles in their industries can help women gain negotiating power and narrow pay gaps over time. Finally, hiring more women at senior leadership positions. We see a steep drop off in women’s representation at senior levels of an organization. Having greater female representation in leadership is key to addressing pay and role disparities throughout the organization.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

I would encourage more corporate apprenticeships targeted at underrepresented workers and communities. One of the key issues in the labor market is the skill mismatch between what employers demand and what employees are able to provide. I think creating apprenticeship programs that hire and train workers in the skills needed for the future can help bridge the skill gap, increase productivity for businesses and lead to a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite “quote” was said to me by oldest son when he was nine. During a very busy morning when I was rushing to get him and his little brother off to school and me to work, he said “Mom, you need to be like water, and let it flow”. I think of those words often when I’m trying to force something to happen or try to control and outcome. Life is unpredictable, that’s what makes it so magnificent. Instead of trying to predict and control everything, I try to make the most of the here and now and “let it flow”.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them.

Rosalind Brewer, COO of Walgreens, Gwynne Shotwell, COO Space X, Judith McKenna, CEO Walmart International, Mary Barra, GM CEO, Melinda Gates, Founder Gates Foundation, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, CEO of HCL Technologies and honestly, there are many others. I would love to host a roundtable luncheon or breakfast of female leaders in business on the leading edge of innovation in their various industries to discuss how to provide more opportunities for women and girls and create a more inclusive and equitable global economy.

Nela Richardson of ADP: 5 Things We Need To Do To Close The Gender Wage Gap was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Female Disruptors: Reagan Hales of Innovation Outpost On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your…

Female Disruptors: Reagan Hales of Innovation Outpost On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

If you aren’t uncomfortable, you aren’t growing. This was such an impactful lesson from my boss at Texas Tech. It reminds me of a Jeff Bezos quote I recently read, which was “I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” That isn’t easy, and that isn’t always what we are told, but it is so important to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable in this industry.

As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Reagan Hales.

An Amarillo, Texas, native, Reagan is the Executive Director of Innovation Outpost, a space launched by Amarillo College to foster innovation, collaboration and technology among students, residents and the surrounding business community. Before joining the Innovation Outpost, she served as a long-time executive with the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation leading marking and business development. Her experience ranges from fixed income sales at Merrill Lynch to managing public/private research projects for Texas Tech University to non-profit fundraising at the American Heart Association.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

My resume spans the map because we moved around quite a bit for my ex-husband’s job. So, I have done a little bit of everything and have gained a lot of valuable experience throughout all of my roles.

What led me to my current job was my experience in economic development at the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation (AEDC). At the AEDC, I tried to find a niche in economic development that wasn’t just about finding the largest manufacturers or organizations to partner with but finding and supporting small companies that were growing quickly.

This led me to build a huge network of people I never expected to find. From there, my network continued to grow, and I began finding people that were ecosystem builders, doing entrepreneurial ecosystem work. Through those individuals and connections, I was exposed to campuses similar to the Innovation Outpost. In Amarillo, Texas, there aren’t a lot of people with the exposure to the industry and the networks that I have, while also understanding Amarillo’s business community. That is why I fit this role of launching the Innovation Outpost. I am so glad I am here and proud to hold this leadership opportunity in the Amarillo community.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

When people think about transformation, they immediately think of technology and information. They think about hardware and software, but our approach is what is different and disruptive.

Companies have learned that regardless of how intelligent your workforce is or how intuitive the technology may be, you can’t do these massive pivots if you don’t prioritize the people behind the technology and the culture of the company. As we have seen during the pandemic, and will continue to see as we transition post-pandemic, a lot of companies fail to thrive after these forced technological organization changes. We have recognized that without focusing on the people and emotional intelligence of the workforce, technology implementations will not be as successful.

At Innovation Outpost, we address the technical aspects of digital transformation, while also addressing the fundamental and foundational gaps or issues related to human skills. We are uniquely focused on this, while others are focused solely on incubation or product development. We are committed to going a step further to ensure people advance with technology.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was 21, I was just starting out at Merrill Lynch doing institutional sized trading. At one point, I accidently put in a buy order when I should have put a sell order on a commodity. In that industry, if you made a mistake and lost money on a trade, you had to cover it out of your own pocket, and I was just starting out and only had about $5 in my bank account.

I was scared to death, and I didn’t want to tell anyone that I’d made such a huge mistake. But I had to tell someone, because I didn’t know how to fix it by myself. So, I told my boss, and by the time we’d corrected it, the market had moved in such a way that we actually made money. My boss had told me I’d just dodged a huge bullet. It was an important lesson in owning your mistakes and asking for help when I didn’t have the answers.

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

I think one of the biggest mentors I had was the Vice President of Research when I was at Texas Tech University. He was and still is one of the smartest, hardest working people that I know. He was the type of visionary that could see something into the future and distill it all down to two bullet points, then give you 48 hours to make it happen.

He recruited me to start a new division and immediately threw me into these impossible-seeming situations. I remember feeling lost and completely out of my league, but he taught me that if you aren’t uncomfortable you aren’t growing. If you’re not doing things that stretch you, you will never get to the next horizon. I realized that he was pushing me the same way he pushed himself, and he was tough, but I absolutely respected him for that. Now, I do this with the new people who work with me, because you will take so much more pride on your work if you were able to figure out problems and challenges on your own.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

It’s almost impossible to boil it down to either or. I think that any time you disrupt something, there are both positive and negative aspects, no matter how you look at it. What it comes down to is the motivation behind your disruption to determine the true value of the disruption and whether that was worth the negative aspects.

For example, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives are relatively disruptive and largely positive. However, it is the motivation the company has behind these initiatives that reveals the nature of what they are doing. If it is not a genuine attempt to improve your company, but an effort to improve your image, then that is a manipulative motivation, and that initiative will not withstand the test of time.

Another good example is when a company tries to introduce a new technology. There are positives and negatives to these decisions, depending on your perspective, but it all comes back to the company’s motivation. With new technologies, many people feel that the motivation may be to eliminate jobs. However, the motivation may actually be to eliminate medial processes to retrain and reskill the workforce for new opportunities. That, in itself, is a largely positive disruption. It is just important to remember that no matter which way you look at it, disruption will always have a positive and a negative element.

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

If this career isn’t who you are and isn’t what you love, then you need to have the guts to get out. My boss had said this to me when I was at Merrill Lynch at a time when the market was shifting quite a bit. The .com bubble had burst and there was so much change happening around me. I was also at a point where I had to make a decision about committing to this career path and really putting in the work required to move up. I looked around me and saw that the women I worked with were mostly unmarried and most of them did not have children. Even though that worked for them, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted for my life.

My boss was a great leader and a family man, and he pulled me aside and told me that if you don’t absolutely love what you are doing, then you need to do what’s best for you because it can be so easy to get sucked into a career path that isn’t right for you. I quit within 30 days with no real backup plan, just knowing that life is too short to sacrifice everything for a career that you are not passionate about.

If you aren’t uncomfortable, you aren’t growing. This was such an impactful lesson from my boss at Texas Tech. It reminds me of a Jeff Bezos quote I recently read, which was “I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.” That isn’t easy, and that isn’t always what we are told, but it is so important to learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable in this industry.

There is no prescribed path or timeline for when you have to accomplish certain things. A good friend of mine that I met through a magazine campaign recently turned 60 years old, and I often turn to him for advice when I am considering taking a new path or opportunity. He reminds me that he is over 60 and has had five different careers and reinvented himself a dozen times, and you can be 60 and get a new job and start on a new path if that’s what feels right to you. This may seem obvious to younger generations, but for many of us, we were taught to expect a linear career progression. But this advice reminds me that you need to give yourself permission to change things along the way, at whatever point in your life.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

This year, we have some big things planned for the Innovation Outpost in Amarillo, in addition to the launch of our physical space. The programs at the Innovation Outpost exist to educate and support individuals and business leaders across all demographics that are looking to transform their business or career through advanced technologies or digital transformation.

Currently, we are joined by strategist, Todd McLees, for Greater Amarillo 2025 — Living, Learning, and Leading in the Age of Transformation, a series of industry-specific workshops designed to prepare businesses for digital transformation. In 2020, the transformation of the way work accelerated by ten years and has already disrupted how we live, work, and educate. The convergence of intelligent machines and humans in the workplace is inevitable, and although the long-term impacts are still to be determined, the growing demands on every business leader make it clear we will need to shift our thinking toward transformation, innovation, and continuous learning.

These workshops initiate the discussion with business leaders to start unpacking the steps that they need to take to prepare themselves and their workforce for the digital transformation necessary to compete within their industry. We are also offering extended individual workshops with companies to assess and provide change management tools and resources that they may use to implement business transformation within their organization.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

I think that this varies a lot based on geography. I know when I talk to women in larger metro areas, the tolerance for being disruptive seems different and those communities seem to have a larger appetite for female disruptors. For me, in a smaller community, it can sometimes feel like disruption is met with a lot more skepticism.

I also believe we, as women, take on a greater emotional burden with the people we are managing. If you take a staff or an organization and do something that is disruptive, women tend to worry more about the people that change is affecting and how they will react. I want to kick people out of the nest so they can gain confidence, but I worry about how they are handling things and want to make sure they don’t feel that they are going out on a limb in any way they aren’t comfortable doing. I don’t know many men that share those same concerns about their staff.

This is a hard question for me because I don’t know many female disruptors that I can compare my experience with, which I think is one of the biggest, inherent challenges for female disruptors. Men have many networks and mentorship programs where they can discuss challenges and learn to be effective entrepreneurs, but women don’t have the same institutionalized support systems in place. I had very few female mentors and role models throughout my career, which is an example of a greater generational representation issue that is present across the board.

Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?

One of the best books I’ve read is “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle. There is one chapter in particular that has stuck with me, which I reference a lot. In this chapter, the author takes her daughter to the zoo where they see a cheetah in a cage performing tricks. The daughter goes on to make several observations about how the cheetah does not belong in the cage but is meant to be free.

It’s a powerful analogy that I think a lot of disruptors and innovators can relate to. We know deep inside that there is this fire in our bellies and at a certain point, you can no longer stay quiet or stay in your corner. After a while, you must break out and go create and do things differently than the way you’ve always known you were meant to.

Another one of my favorites is the podcast “How I Built This” with Guy Ross. He interviews hundreds of people who have started companies or developed products, many of which you immediately recognize, and asks them about their entire journey to success, failures included. Every single story includes some sort of colossal failure or massive emotional breakdown, which is important to see as an entrepreneur. Too often we see shiny success stories, however, none of this happens overnight, and it can take years to accomplish excellence or success.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I wish there was a way that we could create more financial vehicles for kids to be able to bring ideas and products to market. They have such a unique perspective on things, and they are capable, so why are we so afraid to invest in their ideas? My own girls are athletes, and they are always shopping in the boys’ section for longer shorts and looser clothes because they aren’t comfortable in the tighter, shorter clothes being designed for young girls. They came to me asking to start their own line of athletic clothes to meet that need.

I think having more entrepreneurship programs available to kids would create an opportunity for them to become entrepreneurial at a young age, so it doesn’t become such a huge leap of faith later in life. Kids have so much to offer, but we never ask them what would make them feel valued. I think with the rising rates of depression with young kids and their struggles with self-confidence, a vehicle like this would really help them build confidence and feel like they are contributing something valuable to the world all on their own.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite quote is “Ships are safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are for.” We can be comfortable and avoid getting tossed around in life and work, but that is not what people were created for. Things will get scary and tough, and you may walk away with bruises and scars, and that is fine. We weren’t made to stay comfortable and quiet, and we all need to figure out what it is we are going to contribute. Whatever that may be, you must go out and do it to the fullest of your abilities, and don’t be afraid.

How can our readers follow you online?

The best way to follow me is through the Innovation Outpost social media channels, @InnovationOutpost.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

Female Disruptors: Reagan Hales of Innovation Outpost On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Female Disruptors: Erika Lepczyk of Memore On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry

Tell everyone early — I believe I originally heard this on a podcast interview with the founders of Method. When you start a business, you are putting everything on the line. That’s hard for many people, your friends included, to grasp. Some might even be a little judgey. But by telling everyone, you are subjecting yourself to their scrutiny, which in turn, makes you even more motivated to succeed. I thought that was great advice.

As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Erika Lepczyk.

Erika Lepczyk used her family history of dementia as motivation to launch Memore, a successful direct-to-consumer CPG business offering functional blends that conveniently fill gaps in consumers’ diets with whole food nutrition, which is shown to improve cognition, slow cognitive decline and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s dementia. She is determined to disrupt America’s treat-first healthcare model by educating the masses on the benefits of preventive health measures.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

Launching Memore was a little out of character for me to be honest. I have a competitive spirit and have always been highly motivated in my career, but would have never described myself as being entrepreneurial. The turning point for me was learning that less than 2% of all dementia cases were attributed to heredity factors. As someone with a family history of dementia, this was a huge revelation for me. I had always considered my predisposition to the disease unnerving, largely because it felt out of my control. This statistic proved otherwise. I began prioritizing preventive health and sought solutions to support my journey. What I found was a market oversaturated with products touting quick fixes and miracle results. Preventive health was an afterthought. I was determined to change that. I launched Memore to help put long-term health front and center.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

Memore is dedicated to raising awareness of the preventative measures people can take to sustain long-term cognitive health. It may not sound very disruptive, and in many countries, it is not, but in America we approach health with a treat-first mentality. We are conditioned to seek out solutions that provide immediate benefits and it’s wreaking havoc on our health care system. We can drink more without a hangover, sleep less without feeling tired, and eat poorly without stomach discomfort. We have effectively eliminated the consequences that would otherwise prompt the positive diet and lifestyle changes that improve health. We aim to disrupt this style of thinking.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We are almost too young of a company for me to look fondly on any one of the countless mistakes we have made thus far haha. One mistake that I found particularly funny was with our packaging. Our box insert, designed to hold our bottle in place, was out of spec. The opening wasn’t wide enough for our bottle to fit inside. And although it had arrived a few months prior, I didn’t even realize it until the day before we launched. So, we ended up staying up all night using a box cutter to widen the opening of each individual insert. We now triple check everything we receive from vendors the minute they arrive.

Not necessarily a mistake, but something I now find funny that I didn’t at the time was when we converted our spare bedroom into a makeshift lab during COVID. The Research Campus, where we were developing the product, was temporarily closed and we just couldn’t afford another delay. We packed the room with lab equipment and product samples and continued making progress on the product. At the time, I hated it because the room was unusable for the better part of 6 months. Today, I look back on it fondly because that’s where our final product formulas were developed. I learned that when problems arise, you have to be resourceful!

We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?

We wouldn’t be where we are today without the help of the entire team at the North Carolina Food Innovation Lab; specifically Dr. Bill Aimutis, CIndy Calhoun and Joe Hildenbrand. We brought them an idea for a product and they helped us turn it into a reality. 99% of food company’s fail, and because of that, it’s hard for any unknown brand entering the industry to get any amount of respect. Ingredient suppliers for example, won’t give you the time of day. They gave us added legitimacy, helping us identify and form relationships with suppliers, educating us on all the testing and food safety requirements, and mapping out the production process, just to name a few.

In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?

When industry disruption occurs, I think it’s very rarely an all-positive outcome. There always seems to be tradeoffs. Take for example, the disruption of the taxi industry. Ride hailing firms dramatically improved access to affordable transportation. They did so, however, at the expense of small businesses and in many cases, the drivers themselves. Industrial farming greatly improved the accessibility and affordability of food, but at the expense of small farms, and, many would argue, the quality of the food itself. I think any time “disruption” results in the mass consolidation of industry participants, the outcome is generally more negative than positive, but that’s probably my small business bias showing through!

Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.

Tell everyone early — I believe I originally heard this on a podcast interview with the founders of Method. When you start a business, you are putting everything on the line. That’s hard for many people, your friends included, to grasp. Some might even be a little judgey. But by telling everyone, you are subjecting yourself to their scrutiny, which in turn, makes you even more motivated to succeed. I thought that was great advice.

Trust the process. This was tremendous advice given to me by our branding agency. I’ve applied it every step of the way. Even though I am not a professional brander, I found myself wanting to control the entire branding process. They asked me to trust them and the process, and the result was incredible. It’s a great lesson for any small business owner or early-stage startup because you can’t do everything yourself. Sometimes you need to let go and let the experts do what they do best.

We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?

When I think of what really defines Memore, it’s our preventive approach to cognitive health. I want to establish the brand as the authority on preventive health, and we do so by finding new ways to use whole foods to address a variety of chronic health conditions, like heart disease and diabetes.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?

Things are definitely changing for the better, but I would say that access to capital is far less for women than it is for men. I think this is partially due to the fact that the financial industry in general is still heavily male dominant.

I also think it’s much more challenging for women with families to pursue entrepreneurship than it is for their male counterparts. Even as family dynamics are changing, the expectation is still that women are supposed to be the primary caregivers. Because of that, we take on an unequal amount of the responsibilities, further straining our time.

Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?

Diet for The Mind by Martha Clare Morris made a huge impact on my thinking. She was really the first to identify the connection between food and brain health. Her book, which summarizes much of her research, was my primary inspiration for formulating Memore. The main research finding was that the MIND Diet was shown to be effective in slowing cognitive decline and reducing Alzheimer’s risk by as much as 53%.

I also loved Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. Most books about diet or lifestyle are highly opinionated because diet culture is extremely competitive. The Blue Zone books are anything but. The author finds areas with a high population of centenarians (people over 100) and dives deeply into their lifestyles to determine why. I found the lives of so many of those centenarians to be so inspirational. It really motivated me to prioritize the things in life that I value most like family, positive social interaction, spending time outdoors, and traveling.

If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would inspire a preventive health movement. We spend over one trillion dollars a year on preventable chronic health conditions in America and it is threatening to bankrupt our health care system. Yet the effects extend well beyond the financial implications and onto the families of the patients themselves, many of whom experience failing health as a result of their caregiving efforts. It’s a vicious cycle and one that I would love to break. There is an obvious case to be made for getting registered dietitians more involved in our healthcare system.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style

Maya Angelou

I aspire to thrive in all things I do. Sometimes I will feel like I’m not thriving and I’m merely surviving, but I try to take every lesson, every opportunity and every encounter in life as a learning experience. I’ve shifted my mindset to think more positively in the past couple of years and am trying to give myself more grace. While on this ride, I’m just trying to enjoy it! With a little and a lot of passion, compassion, humor, and definitely some style.

How can our readers follow you online?

Instagram: @erikalepcheck

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erikalepczyk/

Female Disruptors: Erika Lepczyk of Memore On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.