Regularly move your body and eat fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Taking the time to look after, and be in, your body will support you to get out of all the head thoughts, which is a support for physical and mental health.
Tara is an embodied business mentor, holistic health and wellness coach, author, illustrator and the founder of Empathpreneurs®, a business service for empath entrepreneurs.
Her work involves guiding sensitive and empathic entrepreneurs to create businesses they love on their terms, by healing and releasing any blocks, and aligning with their creative power.
She is the author of four books ‘Embodied — A self-care guide’, ‘Embodied Business’, ‘Embodied Creation’ and ‘Embodied Wealth’, plus the creator of the ‘Embodied Wisdom’ oracle deck.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I first began working in and with businesses over 20 years ago, working my way up in PR and marketing with global corporations and brands in the travel and tourism industry. I then started working in business operations, HR and new business development as I wanted to learn behind the scenes of how businesses worked knowing that I wanted my own business someday.
I have also been a virtual assistant and events manager, worked in food events and catering.
In all that time, I found myself hustling a lot, pushing, ignoring my body and I started to get burnt out, had a number of health issues — mind and body. So, I re-trained as a holistic health coach, which was my first business. As this evolved I was still doing a number of jobs in marketing and business admin, and wanted to bring it all together (along with the health and wellbeing as it’s essential to business), as I found I enjoyed doing all the various parts, and felt there must be a way to combine it all.
Then one day I had the magical idea to create something which leans on all my varied experience, and brings a holistic approach to supporting others with their businesses.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
The most interesting thing that has happened in my career so far was feeling that I should totally let go of my first business as a health coach, even though I had just written my first book all about self-care and linking to my work then. It seemed so counterintuitive, but it was such a strong feeling that I honoured it and did let it go.
I then spent a few months in that space in between, wondering what was next. Then suddenly one day, the idea for my current business came in a flash, linking all the different parts of a business to the chakras, and still including wellbeing (along with a holistic approach to business).
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
There have definitely been a few mistakes, but I think one of the funniest (in hindsight) was in my early days in my new business as a business guide. I was sharing a free online session to invite people into a paid programme, and I had music playing for part of it as my work includes visualisations guiding people into their wisdom. Needless to say when I started to share more about the programme, after the visualisation was over, and make the offer, the music was still playing lightly in the background. Even though I had stopped sharing sound it still drowned out everything I was saying and nobody could hear a word I said. I couldn’t even see people typing in the chat to say they couldn’t hear me, as I had a slide covering it. So, I went through my first selling experience with nobody hearing a word I said. It was totally mortifying at the time and I was so embarrassed and annoyed at myself.
It taught me a lot about my own inner resistance to selling, and there was a part of me that didn’t want anyone to hear what I was saying. I’ve since done a lot of work here and had support. I also learned to double check all my tech beforehand, and make sure things are working, or how they work!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are many people who have supported me in my business and I have had (and continue to have) some wonderful mentors and peers throughout. In all honesty, the person who has supported me throughout is my dad! He has read every single one of my email newsletters, he has believed in me and encouraged me to keep going even when there’s been seemingly nobody else. He’s the first person to have read the first draft of all my books and oracle card deck. He has just been there for me. Having that one person has made the biggest difference overall. Just having a little bit of feedback is invaluable and knowing that there is one person out there who believes in you, even if it is your dad, has kept me going.
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
Listen to your body and its guidance. Pay attention to how you feel and do what you can to support yourself (or get help) to feel good. Our bodies are always talking to us, letting us know what’s going on inside and how they are. We are taught to ignore them and push against them, so we often don’t even recognise or receive their messages until it’s too late and we are burnt out or have other health issues.
You can start by looking after your body — physically and mentally, by eating well, moving regularly, getting into nature and incorporating practices which support your mental health such as journaling, meditation, sharing with others etc. As you do this you form a strong foundation from within and you are then also able to tell more easily when something is off or doesn’t feel good, and can change it or get support sooner.
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
Listen to the people who work with and for you. Ask them how they feel and do what you can to support their needs (in ways that are realistic but also compassionate) in a working environment e.g. honouring the need for rest. Real human connection which includes care and empathy is what we are all after. If we feel seen and heard, we feel like we belong, which creates a much more inviting and supportive work culture.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.
I find with health it often comes back to basics and really establishing a strong foundation from which to grow and add to. When you have this solid, healthy grounding in place, you are able to do and be more, and when things aren’t great it’s often less overwhelming to ‘come back’ from. This takes prioritising your wellbeing and supporting yourself with small regular things that add up. These can fit into your lifestyle and needs. I would personally do the following:
Regularly move your body and eat fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Taking the time to look after, and be in, your body will support you to get out of all the head thoughts, which is a support for physical and mental health
Regularly de-cluttering the mind can support mental wellness, as thoughts, especially negative ones, tend to spiral and make things appear much worse. This can be done by journaling and getting everything out, or talking to someone you trust.
Getting into nature as often as you can is a huge support for mental wellness. Again it takes us out of the spiral of our own inner chatter, and connects us to the natural environment which is also grounding and calming on the nervous system.
Nervous system support is also super helpful for mental (and overall) health. So many people live in stressful situations often with many demands that their nervous systems are on high alert. So doing what you can to support your nervous system will be a huge help. A couple of things that can help here are doing yoga postures with stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and meditating. Rest is also included here, as it is so important for regenerating and resetting. A way to rest is to reduce the amount of stimulus in your life — coming in and going out. Slow down, say ‘no’ more, put more boundaries in place if needed, and allow yourself to just ‘be’ when you are able to.
Finding and having an outlet for your creativity is a huge support for mental wellbeing as it allows you to connect to something beyond the day-to-day. I truly believe that everyone is creative, it is an innate part of our being and expression as humans. We have been taught that creativity needs to look or be a certain way, which is why so many people believe they aren’t creative. But actually creativity is an expression through you, and can take any form that appeals, e.g. drawing, painting, cooking, writing, pottery, dancing, acting, gardening, singing, colouring, moving, sewing, etc. There is no limit and it’s about letting yourself do it in a way that feels good to you, and is just for you (which can change later if you want).
How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?
I would invite them (with support and guidance if needed) to look at what they are consuming when it comes to information. Social media is of course a huge trigger for mental health issues, so I would recommend curating their social feeds as much as possible to include things that are positive, motivating, feel good, inspiring and supportive of good mental health. Even though it might not seem like it, small things which are negative can build up and add to the overall picture of mental wellbeing being. It’s so easy to spiral and be impacted by what we are consuming, and with the information overload out there it is so important to be mindful of this.
The other thing that can help here is to reinforce positive self-beliefs and thoughts regularly (with support from parents/teachers/family members etc), so that there is a healthy positive foundation being put in place. This will help when/if the negative beliefs, comparing to others, and other things come up which affect mental wellbeing.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer.
This book totally confirmed what I had been feeling intuitively in my body and how the working world (in particular) needs to catch up and honour the varying monthly needs of people with a menstrual cycle. Reading this book gave me some added permission to really trust my body and its needs in accordance with the menstrual cycle and how it feels each week. When I do this I am able to be much more productive in my life and business, and able to work with my body not against it.
This is not to say those who don’t have a menstrual cycle aren’t included. They absolutely are, even if we have different hormones, we are all still human and NOT machines. We all need to pay more attention to the needs of our bodies and do what we can to work with them and not against them, which will have positive effects all around.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start 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. 🙂
Connect to your body every single day. Our bodies are so wise and always on our side, guiding us and letting us know what’s going on. If we spend more time in and with them, learning to trust them and listen to their messages, we truly can feel amazing and be all we are capable of.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
My favourite quote at the moment is ‘Slow down to do more’, as this has changed my life and my business. Rather than forcing, pushing ahead and taking action because that is what we have been taught, slowing down and doing less (even though seemingly counterintuitive) is actually more productive.
When I slow down I am more in tune with my intuition and know when something is right for me, or if it’s not, so I don’t do things that I often end up resenting, which used to happen in the past, as I was almost on autopilot saying yes to everything.
As someone with a menstrual cycle my body also needs to honour the seasons of rest in addition to action. If I push against this I end up burning out and feeling so out of balance. Whereas if I honour the times of rest, I am actually able to do, be and give more in the times when I am being called to take action.
This way has supported me in letting go of my first business, and then slowing down entirely to create the space for what my current business is today (as I shared above), which I don’t feel I would have been able to do if I had been pushing and trying to do things to be busy, productive and fill the space and my time.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Women of the C-Suite: Vera Modenova of Flowwow on Five Things You Need to Succeed as a Senior Executive
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Not everyone wants to climb the career ladder and you need to recognize it. Throughout my career, I have encountered several cases when a person took a managerial position and did not want to go higher professionally as they were okay with their current level. It always hurts me that it is not possible to unlock a person’s entire potential, but sometimes you have to accept it: it is much more important that a person enjoys the work they are doing.
As a part of our interview series called “Women Of The C-Suite”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Vera Modenova.
Vera Modenova is a 28-year-old COO of Flowwow, who started her journey when she was 21, handing out leaflets at the exhibition. Vera transformed from an inexperienced student into an ambitious COO with a “growth hacker” mindset. Her perseverance and burning desire to help local brands thrive is what drove her to grow the international team from 6 employees to 150, build the customer support department from scratch with a 98% of customers’ satisfaction rate, and manage operational processes to expand Flowwow internationally.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! 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?
Since childhood, I was an energetic girl with tireless curiosity and creativity. As a 14-years-old, I strived to earn extra money; I was eager to be a professional photographer at the time. From being a sports photojournalist at football matches to selling photos on riverboats and leading corporate photoshoots, I received genuine satisfaction from the process. At the age of 16–17, I would run away to nightclubs without telling my parents: not to hang out with friends but to work as a photographer. In my student years, I was still on the lookout for part-time photography gigs as I wanted to be independent.
Perseverance and determination were the core elements that have contributed to my career and brought me to the COO position: Flowwow is a place where it is possible to fulfill my boldest ideas and ambitions.
Even now, when I am on maternity leave with a month-old child, I am involved in the working processes because I know a lot of exciting things are coming, and I want to direct my energy towards achieving them together with the team.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
It was at the start of my career when I joined Flowwow in 2014 as a 21-year-old student. My friend and I worked at the exhibition, handing out leaflets. One day, the company’s founder was looking for a person to cover a support manager position for a day — we played “rock, paper, scissors” with my friend, I lost and was the one to help out in the office. This exhibition became a turning point in my career: this is when my Flowwow chapter began. From that moment, I poured my heart and soul into the company; combining work with studies and exploring a whole new world of Flowwow, I have learnt how to lead projects, what conversion is, why unit economics is important, and much, much more.
I have been working at Flowwow for 8 years now: I have built a customer support department from scratch, and we have expanded to 24 countries with the team. It is just the beginning, and I am extremely grateful to all the people who believed in me and gave me a chance to fulfill my goals.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. 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?
If the following situation has never happened to you, you might know a colleague who had their microphone on at the wrong time during an important meeting. Once I participated in an interview while taking my dog to the dog wash. When I was at the reception, my microphone accidentally turned on, and everyone at the meeting heard me saying, “I have an appointment for grooming.” The interviewee did not pass the test, and I now check a hundred times whether my microphone is actually off.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I joined Flowwow as a student with no relevant experience, and there was one person who influenced me and greatly contributed to my development: Andrey Makeev, Flowwow’s co-founder. Working odd hours, I spent days with him; Andrey introduced me to a world of startups, unit economics, metrics and the product. Brainstorming the startups’ development, working 24/7, coming up with ideas to improve Flowwow during our get-togethers at the bar — it was a fascinating time that contributed to my growth as a COO and a professional. I am pleased to say our relationship with Andrey has transformed into a lifelong friendship.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?
When forming a new department, I had a choice: hire a new head or promote a team leader. The team lead did not want to move up as the new range of duties did not interest him much, so we proceeded with hiring a new team member. Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to each other after half a year because we had a mismatch in values and an approach. By that time, the team lead changed his mind and decided to take on new responsibilities. He has built a new department from scratch and has been actively developing it for more than a year.
Looking back, I reckon I could have made a bit more effort in promoting the team leader to the department’s head position; however, I realize it was a good lesson that helps me fulfill my employee potential as an executive.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Most of our readers — in fact, most people — think they have a pretty good idea of what a CEO or executive does. But in just a few words can you explain what an executive does that is different from the responsibilities of the other leaders?
I believe the key factors that distinguish a C-level executive are a strong sense of responsibility and tireless initiative. For instance, I’m eager to help my employees grow within the team, but I often see how they are afraid of making independent decisions, even when it comes to completing the simplest tasks. In some cases, it is enough to have an encouraging chat and reinforce the idea that one should not be afraid of making mistakes. That being said, I get very upset when it is not possible to help the person unlock their full potential.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a CEO or executive? Can you explain what you mean?
I often came across the thought that a CEO/executive is a God who cannot be disturbed. A good C-level executive, in my opinion, is a person who knows how to find common ground with their employees and build trusting relationships. If your manager is an unattainable link in the company’s “communication chain,” you should reevaluate your choice of a workplace.
I do my best to have open communication with the entire team: whether it is a technical support specialist, a leading backend developer or a marketing director, my approach stays the same. If the head of the department does not share the same attitude, they will not stay in our team for too long. We followed this rule when there were 5 of us, and we continue to follow it today — when there are 150 team members.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women executives that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
To be honest, I did not notice any particular challenges to this day. I was lucky enough to be in a supportive environment where men taught me how to run a business, manage operational processes, and lead a team. I am a believer that, if you have the determination and skills to build the departments from scratch, achieve new KPIs, and expand the company globally, you will become an executive in a man-dominated industry.
What is the most striking difference between your actual job and how you thought the job would be?
I have a feeling the COO position is one of the most absurd ones in our industry. On the one hand, C-level executives are expected to have primarily managerial skills: it may seem that C-level is all about delegating and focusing on your responsibilities. In reality, however, you tackle various tasks regarding the product, data, and team on a daily basis; you are at a C-level because you can effectively solve unconventional issues and adapt to the changing environment. Beware: if you do not have hundreds of employees, and the company has the startup spirit, you will not be able to delegate 100% of the tasks.
At the beginning of 2022, I was sure I would fall out of the usual work pace as I was expecting a child in the third quarter. Even though I hired new people and delegated tasks as much as possible, I found I could be in a “supervisor” mode only for the first month.
As we are entering new markets, workflow requires the most of my attention: it is essential to have a C-level person who knows all the operational processes inside out, from backend development to the marketing strategy.
Is everyone cut out to be an executive? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful executive and what type of person should avoid aspiring to be an executive? Can you explain what you mean?
Talking about traits, I will start with perseverance — for me, it is the core of any business leader. When I started my career at Flowwow, I was not the type of person who could sell anything. When you start building a product, it is essential to gather feedback and implement it to meet customers’ needs; however, you should know how to work with complaints and not take negative feedback personally. When I was responsible for attracting new customers, our co-founder would always address mistakes I made during cold calls. He even wrote them down on sticky notes and put them on my laptop. No jokes! I found it to be an insightful approach that worked for me. Then I moved on to selling: making a sale after 20 calls brought me into a euphoric state. I am 100% sure it was perseverance that helped me keep plugging away at my goals.
Always talk with your colleagues. I have to be frank with you: I do not particularly like communicating. In my ideal world, people are substituted by robots, whose work is analyzed based on reports and profound analytics; however, it would not work for a lot of positions. You should help every employee dive into the processes until you realize they have outgrown you in the field; it is particularly relevant if your employees are managers with soft skills.
Trust. Since it is impossible to replace 100% of people with robots, it is important to trust people. You cannot be everywhere and supervise each task. Your team must work independently — and for this, it is necessary to give them freedom.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Throughout my experience, I have come up with several pieces of advice that could have assisted me in my job when I started:
Not everyone is like you. In my world, responsibility and initiative are a must for any person; however, I soon understood that people are divided into performers and independent workers. It is important to accept that you need both. In some situations, it is easier to formulate a transparent technical task and give it for execution, but sometimes you need a person, to whom you can say: “Mari, you need to do it — I do not know how, but you need to.” Then, a person will take over and come up with an incredible result.
Back up words with numbers. I had a relevant case that was very painful for me. I hired a sales manager who did not show any results for half a year. He wrote reports of such beauty and confidence for months, which I read — however, I did not delve into the operational part of the department he was building. As a result, we lost six months and, eventually, an employee. The new department was a complete mess, and all the processes had to be rebuilt. However, it was a lesson for me to back up beautiful words with beautiful numbers.
Not everyone wants to climb the career ladder and you need to recognize it. Throughout my career, I have encountered several cases when a person took a managerial position and did not want to go higher professionally as they were okay with their current level. It always hurts me that it is not possible to unlock a person’s entire potential, but sometimes you have to accept it: it is much more important that a person enjoys the work they are doing.
Delegate. I reckon it is a common problem for all managers. If your company is not a startup, and you still spend 12 hours a day at work, you need to urgently revise the processes. Even if everything suits you, the team may experience serious issues during your week-long absence. That is what has happened to me: I handed over 95% of my tasks, and within a week there was already a backlog of cases for several days ahead. It is important to distribute cases and objectively estimate your resources so as not to be a bottleneck in the entire company’s development.
Finding a good team is the bane of your professional existence. Believe me on this one — if you have a professional team that you trust, take them with you to new projects.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
My husband is developing a business that lies at the intersection of IT and medicine. That is why I know perfectly well how unideal the healthcare industry (in any country) is and how much can be changed to save lives and increase the average number of years lived, not to mention their quality. Most likely, I would start a movement to fight the most common cause of death, cardiovascular diseases. A simple installation of defibrillators in places of large social gatherings with an accessible manual can reduce mortality from an unexpected cardiac arrest by 30%.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would be incredibly happy to meet with Erin Meyer, author of “The Culture Map.” Flowwow is currently making its first steps in entering markets in other countries. Whether it is about uniting sellers from different continents or making friends with customers all over the world, we strive to find common ground with people from various countries and backgrounds — and make them fall in love with our service.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Develop a talent pipeline in your community: As an entrepreneur, connect with cannabis community groups to find employees that have the skill sets you need — and understand the culture and product.
As a part of my series about strong women leaders in the cannabis industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Carmen Brace of Aclara Research.
Carmen Brace is an emerging trends expert with vast experience at the intersection of cannabis, wellness and the consumer packaged goods industry. She is a breakthrough strategic thinker with a successful career at the forefront of global CPG brands and entrepreneurship into emerging wellness trends.
Her futurist mindset and pioneer work ethic led to founding one of the first dedicated cannabis consumer insights companies, Aclara Research. She published the first studies on cannabis and wellness in 2017, identifying CBD as an emerging functional food ingredient.
She is a member of the Illinois Governor’s Committee on Cannabis and Health, serves on the board of directors for Chicago NORML, is an expert witness for the Illinois legislature and a featured speaker across many of the industry’s top conferences.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to the cannabis industry?
After a 20 year career in traditional CPG sales and consumer insights I took a year sabbatical in Spain and Mexico to explore how insights were applied across the globe. This experience led me to think about cannabis.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I quickly realized that the most valuable cannabis consumers were using cannabis to solve health and wellness needs that impact over 100 million adults. It was not about getting high, it was about getting well.
I fielded the first study of cannabis and health care in 2016 and predicted that CBD would become a functional food ingredient. At that time many didn’t believe my prediction, but it was spot on.
My foresight led to new partnerships, clients and legislative work in Illinois. And that work has directly led to more people realizing that cannabis use is driven by consumers that seek to improve their wellbeing and health.
This experience has taught me to persevere, to never give up and to take action in accordance with my convictions.
It has taught me that you must know your great skill and place big bets on yourself, no matter what. When you are ahead of the crowd, there are few that can validate your vision, but you’ve got to move forward.
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?
I had to laugh at myself when I began shopping in dispensaries and had no idea what “flower” was. But I caught on quickly! It’s important to be willing to learn and ask questions.
Do you have a funny story about how someone you knew reacted when they first heard you were getting into the cannabis industry?
It made me realize how effective the stigma of cannabis had been on the American psyche. Colleagues that I truly respected made comments about ‘doobies’ with odd facial expressions when they found out I was working in cannabis. People never questioned what they had been told about cannabis, which was a bunch of lies.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I am thankful to have a community of business leaders across the CPG industry that have opened doors for me as I built a team and consulting practice in cannabis and emerging wellness trends. It’s not easy to start a business as a self-funded entrepreneur and few people understand how tough it is. I’m grateful to have clients and friends that have given me spot on counsel when I needed it.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m interested in Global cannabis markets and emerging wellness trends. This year, I’ve spent most of the year in Latin America, learning more about legalization and market structure. It’s helpful to have a global perspective on the industry to see what may develop.
Ok. Thank you for all that. Let’s now jump to the main core of our interview. Despite great progress that has been made we still have a lot more work to do to achieve gender parity in this industry. According to this report in Entrepreneur, less than 25 percent of cannabis businesses are run by women. In your opinion or experience, what 3 things can be done by a)individuals b)companies and/or c) society to support greater gender parity moving forward?
This is all about access to capital. We’ve got to have capital to grow the business, and women and Black people are not getting the capital. 19% of cannabis businesses are owned by women and less than 2% are Black owned. Few women and far fewer people of color have access to the funding needed to scale a business.
There is one tradition in the funding community that hold these groups back from significant revenue growth –
The “Friends and Family” round.
Many women — and many more people of color — do not have access to family and friends with sufficient capital to raise a $500K seed round. And if the raise is for a plant touching business, capital requirements may exceed 8 figures.
Family offices and VCs are not in the business of seeding unfamiliar entrepreneurs with seed capital. These people live in a world where that task is completely attainable. But for many women and especially POC, it is not.
This is the greatest impediment to entrepreneurship. If we don’t have the initial capital to prove out the MVP, we will never be able to grow revenue and jobs.
You are a “Cannabis Insider”. If you had to advise someone about 5 non intuitive things one should know to succeed in the cannabis industry, what would you say? Can you please give a story or an example for each.
Know your regulations: working in US cannabis is similar to working internationally — the markets (states) are completely different.
Know your legislators: Develop relationships with your elected representatives that are writing the regulations that will impact your business. Regularly give them advice.
Develop a talent pipeline in your community: As an entrepreneur, connect with cannabis community groups to find employees that have the skill sets you need — and understand the culture and product.
Conduct market tours once a quarter: No matter what you do, consumer demand is the driver of the industry. Keep up with product and retail innovation through regular market visits.
Monitor the types of cannabis companies that are successfully raising capital: Subscribe to Pitchbook or New cannabis Ventures to understand capital flow shifts.
Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the cannabis industry?
Being on the leading edge of the fastest growing industry in the US
Cannabis is a $27 billion dollar industry in 2022 — the fastest growing industry in the US and it’s still federally illegal. Starting a cannabis consulting business has been a rollercoaster. It’s exciting to see the innovation, understand the history and grow the infrastructure of the industry for the last seven years.
The opportunity to help people understand the health benefits of cannabis
Over 62% Americans are more concerned about their health post-pandemic. People want to improve their well-being. It’s fun to educate people — consumers, legislators, clients — understand how these insights inform their work as the industry evolves.
Uncovering a level of resilience that I didn’t know I had
Being an entrepreneur in any industry isn’t easy — but cannabis has unique challenges. It’s satisfying to remember the successes and struggles that have led me here today.
Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to reform or improve the industry, what would you suggest?
The most pressing concern is to release the 40,000 people that are in prison for non-violent cannabis possession charges out of jail. And expunging everyone’s record of cannabis possession.
Most of us have read the history and know that cannabis criminalization was led by 2 political leaders that codified their racism into legislation — Harry Ainslinger and Richard Nixon. They knowingly lied about cannabis addiction to make it easier to imprison people of color.
With this history, we can’t allow anyone to be in jail for using cannabis. And now it’s the fastest growing industry $27B in the US.
From my home in Chicago, there are over 100 stores that sell cannabis or CBD products stores within 10 miles. Their shelves are loaded with flower and beverages and topical creams, which I can walk in and legally purchase in less than 5 minutes. Why do we have 40,000 in prison for convictions that are based on outdated laws that are in no way reflective of the current industry reality.
What are your thoughts about federal legalization of cannabis? If you could speak to your Senator, what would be your most persuasive argument regarding why they should or should not pursue federal legalization?
Many legislators don’t know the history of cannabis and why it was placed on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. I’d start there.
And I’d keep talking to legislators about cannabis and health. Cannabis is an effective solution across health conditions that impact over 100 million adults. And right now, I’d focus on women’s health. Cannabis has shown to be an effective remedy from Autoimmune diseases which impact over 23 million people — and 82% are women. Clinical research on CBD and other cannabinoids will lead to more effective medications with fewer side effects.
Today, cigarettes are legal, but they are heavily regulated, highly taxed, and they are somewhat socially marginalized. Would you like cannabis to have a similar status to cigarettes or different? Can you explain?
Cannabis must be treated differently because cannabis doesn’t kill people. It’s been used since 2900 BC as a health aid. Unfortunately, this changed in the 1930s and 1970s due to the successful efforts of Harry Ainslinger and President Nixon who both chose to criminalize cannabis –I n order to codify their racist beliefs into legislation for personal gain.
In order to fully activate the power of cannabis as a health aid, regulatory treatment needs to be similar to health protocols and structure, not products that can cause sickness and death with prolonged use.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I’m a fan of Daniel Burnham, who was an early futurist. His 1909 Plan for Chicago focused on transforming the city from a transportation hub to a culturally relevant, beautiful and business friendly city.
“Make no Small Plans; They Have no Magic to Stir people’s Blood. Make Big Plans, Aim High in Hope and Work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency.”
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I’d lead more colleagues to be the Buddha in the Boardroom.Nany of us realize that we can lead profitable businesses that do good in the world — by identifying scenarios where all can win together. Decide to win and commit to finding solutions that honor all stakeholders.
Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you only continued success!
Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Christina Rebel of Wikifactory On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Make your mission your glue with co-founders. Most startups fail because the founders give up. What keeps us motivated is having a purpose deeply embedded in our founders’ DNA. Our glue has been our mission — we are building an infrastructure, not an application, and we are socially driven.
As a part of our series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Christina Rebel.
Christina has worked at the intersection of digital fabrication, social innovation, and sustainability. As co-founder of Wikifactory she has grown the community to over 140,000 designers and engineers from around the world working on physical product innovation. She is also leading Wikifactory’s contribution to the EU-funded program Critical Making to promote diversity and inclusion in hardware development.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
My interest in technology sparked around the age of 7. I was testing any software available on the market in the form of CDs, whether CAD design, spreadsheets, games or animation. As new hardware began to flood the markets, I would tinker with whatever I could get hold of. Growing up in China in the 90’s meant that over the years, I’d come to see how globalised production was transforming the markets and consumption worldwide. I had access to the brands and software the world was consuming at marginal prices from the street markets. Seeing how a new technology would first launch in China, gather critical mass in Europe and suddenly become part and parcel of society, made me wonder how technology could exponentially shape our lives.
Over the years, my family and I lived in different countries that suffered significant events that both shocked their economies and startled a greater interest in how societal, political and economic systems work — from the financial crises in Argentina to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Living in many countries meant I had the opportunity to learn new languages like Chinese and Arabic, which I now appreciate for helping me understand and be more empathetic to other cultures at a deep level.
With many questions about how the world ticked and with hopes of developing my capabilities in qualitative and quantitative research methods at university, I moved to the UK to study a BA in European Politics and an MA Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham. Both courses were attractive to me because they offered the flexibility to combine my interest in politics, economics, philosophy, law, and even languages.
The turning point for me that sparked my interest in manufacturing technologies and the future of the production industry was when I opened up my laptop for the first time at University. I loaded up BBC news and stumbled upon an article about 3D printing and it blew my mind. From there, I would study these disciplines with the thought that the production systems of the future could be distributed, as a network.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
At the outset of COVID, it was simply remarkable to see the network of people with 3D printers coming together to design, test, and distribute supplies. As Spain was one of the first countries to exponentially spread the virus and where the maker network was strong across the country, the online coordination they demonstrated to engage hospitals and sanitary workers in providing emergency face shields, cloaks, and valve separators through to new ventilator systems was outstanding. In record time and out of a wish to support them with online infrastructure to manage their collaboration more effectively, we launched viralresponse.io to bring our tools for free to the community driving those efforts. But it was more than just tools that were needed.
Given the emerging growing network worldwide that followed, though locked in rural Toledo I found myself distributed around the world as I spoke to initiatives across continents about their efforts on the ground. Questions would emerge like, how could Wikifactory ensure that LATAM could learn of the early efforts from Spain, before things would spread there? We started to host webinars that are still available on YouTube to bring the global community together in the discussion around the difficult questions — like how to audit open medical supplies or how to build community through resilient supply chains.
More than 5 million face shields were supplied by the network of 100,000 in over 100 countries, a demonstration of epic collaboration. What we learned was just how fragile supply chains can be in the face of shocks and agility was made possible by the effort of a productive community. The last year has only accentuated this further. We need now more than ever, to build resilience.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. 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 you first start learning how to use a 3D printer, failures are part of the iterative process of learning how to set it up for the material, 3D model, and machine settings that starts with huge blobs of strings but start to take form into precision. From this I learned the value of incremental, intentional improvements, and tweaks every day in the mastery of something. And just how, thanks to the 3D contributions of designers and engineers worldwide, I was able to learn how to take a 3D design to a product at hand.
But there was a particular 3D printed fail that I will never forget. At the start of our Wikifactory journey we tested a lot of things to raise some finance to keep us going whilst we built our MVP that we would pitch to investors. As part of this work, one of our activities included offering 3D printing courses in our early office in Chengdu. During these workshops, I would 3D print a batch of whistles that also served as a gift that attendees could take back with them. On one occasion, I was using copper filament and the 3D printer stalled halfway through. Though I cried ‘Fail!’, it took a student to turn around and say — ‘hey, it’s art, even for a necklace’, I was instantly inspired by that. The story of the failed print that in class opinion was named art, then became a special birthday gift whose receiver then proved that it could actually be functional by pure human ingenuity (it would actually work if you covered the side!). We then found out it ended up as a memento during a Glastonbury experience by one of her friends — it was simply absurd. But it isn’t just the absurdity of the story of the half-printed, copper whistle that makes me smile, it’s that you never know how far your failure can inspire you and others. Our 3D printing courses in China were short lived, but that was to make room for a greater focus on finally building the platform we always dreamed of.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Most online platforms for physical product design are just repositories to upload or download 3D files. However, on Wikifactory, not only can someone collaborate on product designs and seamlessly share files, but they can work together on product development, prototype and manufacture with other designers, engineers and makers virtually. Put simply, Wikifactory is creating the Internet of Production (IoP) which allows anyone anywhere to design and manufacture a product with just a laptop and an internet connection. It is about connecting the advances of smart manufacturing with the creative ingenuity of people. We believe it is about powering the human efforts and networks behind the designing, engineering and manufacturing of products with the online infrastructure to work together smarter, easier and faster. This enables us to gather unparalleled amounts of data at all stages of design to manufacturing, which can be used as ‘training sets’ for multiple high-value applications of AI and ML as well.
The IoP enables greater participation and accessibility, but it also opens the door for better innovation in design thanks to its ability to bring people together to collaborate on products. By giving everyone the tools to design, iterate and prototype their ideas we can attract a new wave of diverse and unique engineers into the sector. This increased accessibility means that the products being created are best suited to our society and provide fresh talent with skills and knowledge about technology and new tools that will appeal to companies large and small.
As companies embrace the opportunities available through the IoP by taking an integrated, collaborative approach, we can change the old way of doing things and create a futureproof global manufacturing ecosystem.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Earlier this year we launched our Marketplace, which completed the digital thread for design to production that enables our community of designers and engineers to connect with quality assured manufacturers from around the world to get their products to market. As such, our completely online platform is making it possible for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a hardware or product design company.
We will continue to improve the platform to help product companies iterate faster and easier on our platform. Further expanding our marketplace network with a greater penetration in Europe in terms of manufacturing capabilities and for materials to offer our European clients greater supply chain resilience. Beyond being able to be more agile when facing the supply chain crises with regionalised production, we also see an opportunity for greater sustainability and circularity as well.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in STEM? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
While things are improving for women in STEM, there is still a lack of females especially within the manufacturing industry alone, currently, only 2.7% of companies worldwide are led by women.
It has been said that companies will always be in competition with each other, but perhaps success also can be guaranteed through collaboration. If we work together to improve diversity in the industry, we all end up winning. As well as having our own personal targets or those of the businesses we work for, it is important to adopt a wider view and take steps to create a more diverse and inclusive future. Wikifactory, for example, is part of the EU-funded program Critical Making — an initiative aimed at developing systematic methods to promote diversity and inclusion in open hardware development. So, whether it is in our daily interactions with our colleagues or our involvement with wider projects and schemes, there’s never been a better time to work together to create real and meaningful change through greater diversity.
It’s also crucial that organisations start introducing initiatives for women in order to appeal to them. About two years into developing Wikifactory with my co-founders, I fell pregnant with my son. It was an exciting yet very risky period in our startup journey and we were just a team of four, so naturally I was concerned about how it would impact my contribution to our company. Choosing to be open about my own fears and discussing these concerns as a team enabled us to build a true shared belief that rather than being an obstacle to success, becoming a mother was only going to make me a more creative and agile entrepreneur. This helped cement our core values of openness and diversity plus aided our path towards finding new ways of organising ourselves to accommodate each of our individual needs and strengths.
However, many women still don’t have such benefits, and companies accommodating the needs required for maternity leave is very much a new thing. There’s still much groundwork to be done in terms of formal policies and understanding. Whilst it’s incredible to celebrate and discuss the amazing work many inspirational women have done, and continue to do, these sectors are still very much on this journey.
While it may seem daunting entering heavily male-dominated industries as a female professional, it does help to get you noticed especially when you have a message to promote. I remember when I first started out in the industry, I was often one of the only women in the room at events and conferences, but I made sure I was seen and heard. Making this entrance means you can impact the accessibility and participation of women in that sector. Showing up in the sector with a purpose will rally women and men behind the change we all want to see in our industries. Today, I find myself surrounded by truly inspirational female founders, engineers and product designers from all backgrounds and parts of the globe.
Highlighting women champions also paves the way for younger girls to imagine themselves in STEM because the bias is still strong at an early age. This bias needs to be deconstructed because I would argue that many feminine qualities can be a gift for technology businesses. Women bring a new perspective, ideas and schools of thought that are invaluable in STEM roles. So while it will take more effort from women in spreading the word and talking about the opportunities to break down barriers and perceptions about women entering STEM roles, it will ultimately be worthwhile.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women in STEM or Tech that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts? What would you suggest to address this?
Women face a lot of challenges in STEM that most of their male counterparts will rarely run into by virtue of their gender. This includes:
Unconscious bias
Unconscious biases frequently relate to identifying characteristics like gender, colour, age, and others that have little to do with how competent we are at our work. Unconscious prejudices affect how women in STEM advance professionally or the access they will have to leadership opportunities. This inturn creates the glass ceiling, something all women will have to experience and break through in order to progress.
Lack of support
One of the best methods to advance into leadership roles is by mentoring, coaching, or sponsorship, and a lot of women still lack this guidance. There is a general lack of senior-level women leaders which poses a significant challenge for women in more junior roles to seek advice on how to progress forward. Even when they do find mentors, women have to put in more effort and take more initiative to develop these relationships than their perceived male coworkers did.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?
What are your “5 Leadership Lessons I Learned From My Experience as a Woman in STEM or Tech” and why. (Please share a story or example for each.)
Find your Hub. It was in joining an innovative coworking space in London, the Impact Hub Westminster where I began to build relationships with members that shared the vision for a more sustainable, circular future for physical products. This is where I met my two co-founders and joined Espians, a Tech Agency that had supported Wikihouse in developing the software package that turned 3D models into sheets for CNC milling for affordable, custom-built housing that could be locally produced. The opportunity for digital fabrication machines to pave the way for global communities working together online, where their products could be produced by a distributed network was deeply inspiring.
Share early, share often. Writing a vision on paper might be the first step in giving your startup idea some weight, but it is easy to fall through in carrying beyond this first scary step. Striking the balance between perfect and sufficient is a tricky task, so remembering this mantra can help to remind you that the truth of whether your idea will stick is outside your door. With our first ideas penned to paper, it was thanks to a mentor from the Sustainability sector, that our first pitch landed in the inbox of Nicolai Peitersen. Nicolai had just co-authored the book The Ethical Economy, where distributed production was the subject of a key chapter. There was such an alignment in our values and vision for more ethical models of production that it was uncanny. Joining our efforts for societal and economic change through our entrepreneurial endeavours felt like the most natural thing.
Make your mission your glue with co-founders. Most startups fail because the founders give up. What keeps us motivated is having a purpose deeply embedded in our founders’ DNA. Our glue has been our mission — we are building an infrastructure, not an application, and we are socially driven.
Build Growth Teams. When my co-founder Tom mentioned his find of ‘Growth Hacking’ on Hackernews by Y Combinator, learning of these new methodologies became a real inspiration to face the challenge of maintaining growth differently. Discovering how to use experiment design to test hypotheses in marketing and to utilise data analyses to inform our product iterations was spot-on. Growth Hacking married concepts of management that I had come to learn through experience over the years with my love of science. These new methodologies were only beginning to emerge back then in 2018, but they sure helped us grow our community to over 140,000 strong.
Don’t isolate Technology from the Arts. Bridging the Arts into STEM so that it is STEAM is comprehensively a gain to science, technology and engineering. Inspiring science through literature and even theatre can only be of value to recognise that science needs to inspire, it is not devoid of narrative. For far too long have we sought to compartmentalise the world into categories, where a lab experiment has to be seen as something radically different to the perfection of a fermentation recipe because one is regarded as advances in science, and the other as home cooking of a more refined kind. The strict boxes are unnecessarily constraining, and I believe that in enthusing the next generation to connect these disparate areas of thinking, that we are more likely to find the solutions we need to current and future challenges.
What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?
It’s important for a team to feel supported and valued. As a leader, no matter if you are a man or woman, a team wants to feel that they can ask questions, be challenged and that their manager is invested in their development. With our team of five women, we were faced with a number of hurdles but together we connected the dots and found solutions for our clients in an agile way and with stellar customer support. This experience showed us the importance of the whole team feeling supported. Each individual should be given space to explore their ideas, ask questions and experiment and lean to data to help guide the path forward.
One of greatest uncertainties for any startup is how to prioritise tech, product, marketing with minimum resources, and organising this exercise in a data-driven way can breathe transparency and can help team members rally for new features on the basis of evidence. Women leaders can benefit from taking research and data analyses under their toolbelt so that we can back things up and relieve decision-making from unnecessary politics. In many contexts, we use the ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) method in Growth Hacking to team source a score on a set of experiments to be considered in a given sprint. I also find it an effective method to get team buy-in and be as agile as possible. Achieving alignment and consolidation as Byung-Chul Han, the best-seller Korean political theorist on power, is what is truly powerful — and this is something that feminine qualities can do very well in fostering. As Simon Sinek says about toxic leadership, champion those who build an environment for everyone to thrive, because they might not be the top performing, but we sure need their leadership to make things happen.
What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?
In the beginning, hire people that are better than you. You can learn with them.
Build an empowering internship programme that can offer youth opportunities to learn in the business.
Make learning a deep motivator, so that jumping in the deep end becomes part of coming out of your comfort zone.
Emphasize the greater WHY and purpose for alignment, breakdown into objectives and key results framework.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I almost went down an academic path, taking an assistant editor role for the journal for Local Economy at London South Bank University, but I came across a position to support a London-based entrepreneur Joseph Tenzin Oliver who was an early sustainability pioneer. I assisted him across dozens of sustainable innovation projects in events, fashion, food through to automotive. With the hype around 3D printing that was kicked off by the Rep-rap movement, with makerspaces and fablabs emerging as a network worldwide — we started helping companies like Daimler that wished to enthuse their companies with such inspirational spaces and a culture of product innovation. I wasn’t from an entrepreneurial family nor incentivised to do business, so I am very grateful to have been shown a path of purpose-led entrepreneurialism thanks to him.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Whilst I saw what inequality meant in practice across the world as we explored the remote areas in the countries we lived in thanks to the geological explorations of my father, it was in the summers and winters spent in rural Spain where my grandparents were from that helped me grow roots and understand inequality within my own family. Whether that be access to education, job opportunities, and cultural experiences, even as a child it was obvious that these could have such an effect in determining your life circumstances. A deep sense of responsibility grew within me to commit my life’s work to give back, to make a change.
My university degree helped me define and refine my theory of social change, but it was in the practice of my entrepreneurial journey that I committed to only work in initiatives that furthered a social or environmental impact. This is why I am so grateful to be a member of the Board of the Internet of Production Foundation. The foundation’s objective is to contribute to and support the development and continuous improvement of global and decentralised ecosystems for design and product development, innovation, as well as manufacturing. With its recent establishment together with members Andrew Lamb, Niels Christian Nielsen, Martin Von Haller, and Henrik Skovby — I am extremely motivated to help drive this mission.
You are a person of enormous 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. 🙂
From wind turbines for clean energy, water filtration systems for clean water, and agricultural systems for biodiversity — product development teams were and are tackling the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. The movement I am inspired to rally around is for universal access to the tools of creation. If we distribute access to the tools of design and fabrication towards a future where anyone that faces a problem can solve problems in their lives, then we empower local agency to have the productive tools to fabricate, test, and iterate quickly to arrive at a solution.
It is about resilient and inclusive communities where all, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, or (dis)ability, can take part in innovative problem-solving. The old adage of ‘giving a man a rod to feed him for a lifetime’ resonates with me. But it is the potential of digital fabrication to realise a more open, distributed, and circular model of design and production that has me thinking, about what if we could teach the man how to build a rod himself so that he could share with others the knowledge, and enable a whole community to feed themselves?
Can you please give us your favourite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Since I could reason with change as a child, every new adventure to a new country urged me to embrace uncertainty and challenges with hope and curiosity. I came to appreciate how much more effective it was to have an end-in-mind, over a plan. As my father always said, “The road from A to B is always under construction”.
I recently found the first career plan I ever jotted down in my storage boxes and chuckled to myself upon reading my young goals of working for the UN or becoming an Ambassador. When graduating from university with a 1st class distinction and speaking four languages I thought I could achieve my goal, but I was faced with a global financial crisis and the job market in NGOs and international institutions was heavily oversubscribed.
Thanks to this failure though, I concluded that I couldn’t wait for an organization or institution to offer me the path to meaningful work. Instead, I would set myself on the mission of creating it myself together with others that aligned with the cause. But which cause to contribute to with the thousands of social and environmental issues?
The efforts of my early entrepreneurial life in refining that end-in-mind started as broad as sustainability, and I began to need coherency and focus. In the run-up to Wikifactory, I felt that I finally had arrived at the core purpose that would be a guiding thread in every step I’d take as an entrepreneur. To realise a more sustainable, circular model of production that could empower the next generation of product innovators to distribute their ingenious hardware solutions to real-world problems. With that purpose in mind, the ‘plan from A to B’ would simply be about persistence, iteration, and greeting every day with love in my heart.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
It may be tricky to meet in person, but it would be fantastic even virtually to meet Christiana Figueres. Besides having heard wonders from people who have met her already, I’ve listened to her Climate Change podcast and would propose a topic on the Future of Manufacturing (which I saw she was missing). It’s one of the key questions to reduce carbon emissions — and it would be such a sincere pleasure to contribute to such a discussion with her and involve others in the fold to pave the way for a circular future for the industry. Who knows? Perhaps she would be motivated to have her country, Costa Rica, become the first circular country?
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Thriving As A Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry: Elizabeth Eberle of Dealpath On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Share Victories: Win as a team. There is no better feeling than assembling a smart, creative, energetic group that focuses on one goal and crushes it! It builds a strong team and company culture all around.
In the United States in 2022, fields such as Aircraft piloting, Agriculture, Architecture, Construction, Finance, and Information technology, are still male-dominated industries. For a woman who is working in a male-dominated environment, what exactly does it take to thrive and succeed? In this interview series, we are talking to successful women who work in a Male-Dominated Industry who can share their stories and experiences about navigating work and life as strong women in a male-dominated industry. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Elizabeth Eberle.
Elizabeth Eberle is Vice President of Marketing at Dealpath, the industry’s most trusted, purpose-built real estate platform, empowering hundreds of leading institutions including Blackstone, AEW, Oxford Properties, Nuveen, Principal Real Estate, and Bridge Investment Group to invest in the built world. Eberle brings more than 20 years of experience to this role, where she develops and manages product and corporate marketing strategies for Dealpath to generate company sustainability and profitability. She has held leadership roles in marketing across several industries and companies throughout her career, including VTS, Ecolab, General Mills, and IDEO.
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 childhood “backstory”?
I grew up in downtown Chicago- an incredibly vibrant, cultural mecca and wonderful city. My father was a corporate lawyer, and my mother was a creative copywriter for Marshall Fields before she stopped working to raise me and my two siblings. Back then, my dad would go off to the office and I was fascinated by what would happen at work. My mom is the most creative person I know- I often wonder if my mother had been encouraged to pursue a career what an advertising creative powerhouse she would have been. After I had my own children, I elected to keep working as I knew I would enjoy having both a family and the intellectual and creative outlet that working provides me. I am grateful every day that I get to immerse myself in business challenges, creatively solve problems and build something daily that solves real customer pain points.
Can you tell us the story about what led you to this particular career path?
I’ve always loved Marketing, starting from an early age. As a child of the 80’s, I watched a lot of TV, and particularly loved commercials and brands. My family and I would often say, “Did you see the new Coke commercial?” and talk about why we loved it. I went into advertising immediately out of college and loved working on iconic brands like DiGiorno Pizza and Gatorade. As I have continued in my career, I’ve truly enjoyed Marketing being one of the biggest drivers of a company’s financial growth and brand’s success. It’s not just about the creative output, but how marketing can serve as the strategic driver of growth for your business.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I’ve had so many wonderful career moments and stories, it’s hard to choose just one! I’ve met some really incredible people that have challenged me to think creatively and subsequently put me in positions where I had to get out of my comfort zone. One such career story is when I spent a year leading “Holistic Margin Management” for the Salty Snacks business at General Mills. I had the honor of working directly with the Chex Mix, Gardettos, and Bugles food plant in Milwaukee, WI to see how we could achieve cost savings in order to re-invest the savings back into advertising to drive top line growth for the P&L. Twice a month, I’d fly to Milwaukee, where I worked closely with the plant managers, line workers, procurement and supply chain leaders by donning a hard hat and steel-toed shoes to go hear directly from employees how different decisions and changes in packaging, ingredients, and SKU proliferation made at Headquarters had downstream negative impacts on margin management, efficiency, and profitability. I was able to take these insights by being in the plant, on the front lines with the workers to see where we could make improvements to the product for consumers, and save time and money in the production so I could reinvest the savings into topline growth initiatives like advertising and marketing to improve the overall P&L. I truly enjoyed my partnership with supply chain and manufacturing, which has made me a better general manager and business leader.
By the way, you should taste Bugles as they come off the line fresh! Absolutely delicious!
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Constant Learning & Evolution: I have taken a wide variety of Marketing roles in B2C, B2B, as well as industries such as Food, Design, Cleaning & Sanitation, and Commercial Real Estate. I often say that I’ve sold cereal, soap, and now software! I believe that by taking less traditional and interesting paths, I have become a “Great Marketing Athlete,” one who can see a business problem, define a customer or consumer pain point, and come up with solutions and messaging that help to solve those problems. This agility and curiosity have come from wanting to constantly grow and learn through new experiences.
Taking Risks: I haven’t followed one career path and have worked in a wide range and stages of companies. I’ve worked in Fortune 100s as well as early-stage start-ups. The risks I’ve taken are exciting and where I believe I’ve grown the most as a Marketer and Leader. In 2019, I moved to New York to go from Fortune 100 companies to tech start-ups. I contracted for a while with a few start-ups and learned that I enjoyed bringing my marketing toolbox from large companies and applying the strategy, structure, and frameworks to smaller, entrepreneurial companies. When I started at Dealpath, I was employee #38 at their Series B level of financing. I’ve had the privilege of growing this company 2x over my time here, raised our Series C, and just surpassed 100 employees. It’s really exciting, and I’m glad I took the leap from a big to smaller company!
Self-Awareness: To me, the biggest marker of an employee with potential is self-awareness. I am keenly self-aware of my strengths and weaknesses and intentionally hire people on my team who can elevate our game in areas where I do not have expertise. Not only that, but self-awareness holds you accountable, and challenges you to seek out others who can help you develop your weaknesses into strengths.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Can you help articulate a few of the biggest obstacles or challenges you’ve had to overcome while working in a male-dominated industry?
I actually see more opportunities than obstacles for women working in a male-dominated industry in this day and age. Within Commercial Real Estate, there is an impressive group of women who are strong leaders, businesspeople, and role models. Because we are a smaller group, I get access to this invaluable network of high-powered CRE women because we are so few. For example, I arrived early to a Real Estate Tech conference recently in New York City to help put up our Dealpath booth and had every intention of leaving once the conference started to get back to the office. But once I was there, I had the opportunity to meet with so many women in Real Estate who walked up to our booth to engage me in conversation and wanted to learn more. I ended up staying the entire two days and was able to make connections and build relationships that were really informative and meaningful.
Can you share a few of the things you have done to gain acceptance among your male peers and the general work community? What did your female co-workers do? Can you share some stories or examples?
The biggest thing you can do to earn trust with anyone is to follow through on your commitments- doesn’t matter whether the person is male or female. If you say you are going to do something- it’s simple- follow through and do it. When starting in a new organization, I like to put together a 90-day plan which entails a listening tour with the executive team, cross-functional leaders, and really everyone I can get to. I have a set list of 8 questions that I ask everyone. The fascinating part is to hear how different people in different functions at all levels answer the questions. I look for key themes, discrepancies, and the biggest areas where I can make an impact. I then create a “90-day action plan” and share it with every person I interviewed as my way of saying, “Thank you for taking your precious time to onboard me. I heard you, and here’s where I believe I can make the biggest impact on the organization quickly.” From there, it’s “go-time,” and I execute like mad to deliver on my commitments. It sets the tone from the beginning, and you gain acceptance, trust, and understanding of yourself as a leader, your approach, and what change and impact you will make both in the immediate and over time.
What do you think male-oriented organizations can do to enhance their recruiting efforts to attract more women?
Work Flexibility Is Key:Let’s be clear, there is no such thing as work/life balance, but rather there are work/life choices, and great talent is going to gravitate to where they are able to make the best choices for their current life situation. Organizations should understand that both women and men need to have the ability to go to life events. If you are a parent, you may have parent-teacher conferences, kid’s sports events, or, more often than we’d like, a sick kid. If you are flexible on working hours, I guarantee your employees will give you 120% back, and it might be early mornings or later evenings. Personally, I’ve appreciated how Dealpath has unlimited PTO and a flexible/hybrid work environment which allows me the flexibility to bring my whole self to work.
Ask For A Diverse Slate Of Candidates With Your Recruiting Teams From The Start: Like a marketing demand gen funnel, recruiting funnels start with the quality of the candidates from the beginning of the recruiting process. I always ask my recruiters for a diverse slate from the first round of interviews. It sets the tone of the search from the start and guarantees that we meet people of different professional and personal backgrounds who can bring new perspectives to our business.
Ok thank you for all of that. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
Collaborate: Working as a team is essential to a business’s success. No business, or team within that business, can run as a one-man or woman show. In conjunction with that, don’t be afraid to speak up about your ideas, regardless of your gender. Everyone has something to bring to the table, and it’s important that one feels they have the freedom to share their ideas with their peers. Historically, women haven’t had a seat at the table, but times have changed. The more opportunities we as women take to collaborate, the more we are seen and heard by our peers.
Share Victories: Win as a team. There is no better feeling than assembling a smart, creative, energetic group that focuses on one goal and crushes it! It builds a strong team and company culture all around.
Bring Creative Solutions, Not Problems: There will always be challenges that need to be faced, but the key to overcoming them is to be solution oriented. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by a problem and then create more problems in the heat of the moment to try and fix it right away. Stop, take a deep breath, and take the time to think and present a solution to the problem rather than scrambling to make it right in an instant or just focusing on the issue, which can lead to more headaches.
Radical Candor: It’s incredibly important to be honest with your colleagues, and sometimes those honest conversations can be tough. It should never be someone’s goal to dwell on a mistake. Radical Candor means you are coming from a place of caring, but also want to challenge that person to do better. I’ve made a point of instilling this idea of Radical Candor in my team, and it’s allowed us to have clear lines of communication, as well as holding us accountable for our work, without being aggressive or demeaning.
“Make The Soup Better”: What I mean by this is to respect and appreciate what has been built at a company, particularly when you first join. I had a mentor at a very male-dominated company once say to me, “The Soup here is really good, your job is to come in and make it better.” I loved this phrase because when you come into a new organization, you want to first seek to understand what has been built, what is really working, and then what you see that can elevate the team, the product, the brand, and the marketing to make it even better. By recognizing what is great about an organization that’s already in place, it makes you more approachable and more valuable to the organization from the get-go.
If you had a close woman friend who came to you with a choice of entering a field that is male-dominated or female-dominated, what would you advise her? Would you advise a woman friend to start a career in a field or industry that’s traditionally been mostly men? Can you explain what you mean?
I’ve always looked for opportunities that would yield the most growth, both personally and professionally. I would advise my friend that if the best opportunity currently presented to you has business momentum and you are going to learn a lot, then take it. Bonus if it is in a male-dominated field. That will allow her to catalyze even more change by bringing a different perspective that will make the company grow faster. My last three roles have been in male-dominated industries and companies where my male counterparts were great supporters and champions. I believe most hiring managers- male or female- want to find the best talent and have all the best intentions to hire a diverse team.
Have you seen things change for women working in male-dominated industries, over the past ten years? How do you anticipate that it might improve in the future? Can you please explain what you mean?
I have. Ten years ago, I didn’t see as much emphasis on diversity, equity & inclusion within companies from leadership or, better yet, coming organically from employees. Today, you see more leaders and teams realizing strong business results from assembling diverse teams. With these successes, more companies will push for culture, recruiting and retention practices, and employee networks that bring in a wide range of diverse experiences and people to drive exponential growth. There is still work to be done, but the conversations and openness to evolving industries, hiring, and retaining talent practices are there.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Kathleen McCarthy, who is the Global Co-Head of Blackstone Real Estate. I’ve admired her leadership style for years and have made a point of emulating it in my own leadership role at Dealpath. She’s also a great example of a woman who has been incredibly successful within the male-dominated industry that is real estate, and serves as a role model for all the other female real estate professionals, myself included.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
