Female Disruptors: Dr Grisel Martos of My Smile Miami On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
One of the biggest challenges female disruptors face is equality in the industry. My advice for women disruptors everywhere is to go for what they want in their careers and not to give up. Women should hone the skills necessary to give themselves those opportunities, such as communication skills, leadership development, and emotional intelligence.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Grisel Martos.
Dr. Martos is a Cosmetic Dentist providing services of oral hygiene and dental beautification in her clinic My Smile Miami. She has been serving the community of Miami for over two decades. She is recognized for her services over time, and her patients applaud her efforts.
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?
Thanks for having me. I was really young when my grandfather died of cancer. He had a tumor in his gums, and doctors thought his habit of smoking and bad oral health was to blame. When I grew older, I decided to save people from such a disease, and all I could think of was to become a dentist. I enrolled myself in the University of Havana for a degree in Dental Medicine and then went on to get into Nova Southeastern University’s prestigious dental school. After graduating, I didn’t hesitate to jump into my first job — opening a private office in Miami with the most up-to-date technology and equipment.
I have always been passionate about dentistry, and my main focus is to educate my patients about oral health and provide them with the best care.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
I have been helping people of color with dark gums issues. I have introduced the Gum Bleaching facility at My Smile Miami. This technique lightens the color of gums. Gingival hyperpigmentation, often known as “black gums,” is a condition in which melanin occurs on the gum tissue’s surface. It affects people of all races and ethnicities, but it is more prevalent in those with darker skin. Hyperpigmentation can occur naturally or as a result of smoking, systemic diseases, and certain medications. Hyperpigmentation is harmless and does not cause any health problems, but some individuals simply desire even pink gums, which gum bleaching can provide.
I am among those few dental professionals who have turned to the iTero Element Scanner for fast, accurate three-dimensional dental imaging. At My Smile Miami, I employ this simple-to-use scanner to get intraoral digital scans and create accurate physical dental models for restorative procedures, such as crowns, veneers, and implants. This scanner also aids me in identifying orthodontic issues and developing the most effective treatment plans for my patients.
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?
It was the second week of my practice, and I was doing a complicated tooth extraction when my cell phone started to ring. Yes, it wasn’t silent, and that too with a wildly inappropriate ringtone… “I Will Survive,” by Gloria Gaynor.
It was embarrassing. But to make up for my mistake, I broke out into the song! I tried to laugh and make it into a joke. And from that day onwards, I always kept my cell phone silent while in my clinic!
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?
Dr. Caroline Jonathan is my mentor, and I owe a great deal of respect and admiration to her. She made me realize that helping others can give you immense satisfaction and contentment. Her work ethic taught me how to stay focused on work and how to strike a balance between work and family. She is a woman of commitment, and I idolize her for it. When I assisted her, she once missed her flight to England for a very prestigious conference because she had to treat a patient with a severe dental injury in a road accident. This level of commitment to helping people is what has made an impact on me.
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?
Disrupting an industry can be both positive and negative. It depends on the service it is offering to the community. Artificial intelligence, 3D printing, Virtual/augmented reality, and the Internet are some of the things that positively impact the dental industry.
On the flip side, corporate dentistry brings about change that’s causing a lot of stress among dental professionals. This “disruption” is not so positive and cannot be ignored. It must be actively addressed for private practices to survive and thrive.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
A professor at my university once said, “A great dentist should be very detail oriented,” and his words stayed with me. While working in such a small space as the mouth, one can’t afford to miss even the smallest of details. Observation and attention to detail are what dentistry is all about. It helps to indicate some bodily ailment or a dental problem at the initial stage.
I was a timid girl, and my mentor Dr. Caroline made me realize the importance of strong interpersonal skills that make all the difference. I have learned the art of making my patients feel comfortable and putting them at ease. Being very kind and compassionate with my patients has played a vital role in making me successful in my career.
My mother once advised me always to have a great desire to learn because it makes me different from the rest, and it’s 100% true. Dentistry is an ever-evolving field, and new technologies are being introduced every day that make dental procedures more comfortable, effective, and affordable. My desire to learn and master all the latest technologies and science in dentistry makes me stand out from the rest.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Next, I am working on offering tele dentistry services. Companies like The Teledenists and MouthWatch have successfully established that providing easier access to oral and dental care is possible. Tele dentistry is significantly cheaper and allows patients to consult with otherwise unavailable medical professionals. I am currently working on creating an all-in-one tele dentistry platform that will allow patients to capture images, send relevant information to my team of dentists remotely, and do a live consultation.
As remote care’s significance swelled during the pandemic, tele dentistry is also picking up steam, and The American Dental Association has issued a policy on tele dentistry that offers guidance on the modalities that such services can follow. I believe the future belongs to tele dentistry and will eventually make it a general practice.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
One of the biggest challenges female disruptors face is equality in the industry. My advice for women disruptors everywhere is to go for what they want in their careers and not to give up. Women should hone the skills necessary to give themselves those opportunities, such as communication skills, leadership development, and emotional intelligence.
Garnering support from other women is another challenge faced by female disruptors. Women should support and empower each other, starting with their basic principles of who they are — their morals, values, and integrity. Women must be just, and humble, showing togetherness, passion, and excellence to make big things happen.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I love listening to Women of Impact, hosted by Lisa Bilyeu. This amazing show features women who have overcome incredible hardship to achieve massive success. The mission of this podcast is to empower all women to recognize that they really can become the hero of their own life.
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 love to do something massive in the field of tele dentistry, making it a thing that will no longer be exclusive to the elite. Software enhancements and developing technologies have made it easier for dentists and patients to meet on digital platforms and start connecting. I want to build an App or a web-based platform that can pave the way and turn teledentistry into a tech-centered industry. I am already working on developing a tele dentistry app that will network thousands of patients and dentists together from all over the world.
Can you please give us your favorite” Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.” And I genuinely believe in it. There were times in my life and career that seemed impossible, but these words kept me motivated and strengthened my belief.
Female Founders: Amanda Seibert of ‘Mama Sing My Song’ On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Do what you love. Starting a business will require more time and effort than you could imagine. If you love what you do, you won’t mind.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amanda Seibert, the founder and “original mama” of Mama Sing My Song. Featured in PureWow and Indianapolis Monthly, Mama Sing My Song is a company that creates personalized songs and lullabies for thousands of kids all over the world.
Expanding upon her company’s mission to celebrate the diversities of each child through song, Seibert’s debut children’s book Mama, Sing My Song: A Sweet Melody of God’s Love for Me will be released on Tuesday, September 20, 2022.
She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and three children, where they try to fill their home with songs, dance, and laughter each day.
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?
Absolutely! In my wildest dreams, I could have never imagined landing in this career path, and yet I feel like I’m doing exactly what I was made for!
I’m a mama of three, and when my first child was born, we were driving home from the grocery store and she was crying in her car seat, so I made up a little song with her name. To my surprise, she stopped crying! I sang that song over and over again the whole ride home, and before I knew it, it became “her song.” As she grew a little older, she would often ask, “Mama, sing my song!”
When my second child was born, I made up a song with his name too. Soon nieces, nephews and friends started asking for songs, and the next thing I knew, a mama I’d never met on the other side of the country reached out and said, “I hear you write songs for kids. Can I hire you to write songs for mine?”
This idea seemed so crazy to me– “I’m not a real songwriter, just a mom who makes up songs for my kids!” But I reluctantly agreed to do it. She wept when she heard the songs, and for the first time, I believed that maybe there was something special here after all.
Four years later, we’ve written personalized songs for thousands of children around the world, reminding them of their incredible worth and just how deeply they are loved. And every day, I feel so grateful to be a part of it.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Ever since I was a kid, I wrote my own little books and dreamed of being an author one day. As I grew, I quietly tucked this dream away as “unrealistic” and “unattainable,” but it was still there.
In January of 2021, I received a text message from a friend I’d gone to college with. We hadn’t kept up much in recent years, so I was surprised to see his name on my phone. The message said that he’d dreamed that he was walking out of the gym and passed a bookstore with a cardboard cutout of me, holding my new book that was named after my company, “Mama, Sing My Song.” He walked up to the cashier and said, “Hey, that’s my friend!” The book was about the importance of parents speaking words of truth and affirmation over their children, and he just wanted to share that dream in case it might be an encouragement to me.
I thanked him and told him that writing a book had always been a secret dream in my heart, but that I couldn’t imagine it actually happening. Also, I hoped there would never be any cardboard cutouts of me anywhere. Ha!
Exactly six weeks later, I received a message from HarperCollins. They’d heard about my company; how I write songs for kids and wondered if I might be interested in writing a lullaby book for kids. They wanted to name it after my company, “Mama, Sing My Song.”
My heart pounded and fingers trembled as I responded, “Yes, I’m interested!”
I think it’s amazing how saying “yes” to one thing can often lead to another “yes.” Saying “yes” to this company– even when I felt unqualified as a songwriter or embarrassed for doing something different– has opened up so many more “yeses” that I never saw coming.
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?
As an entrepreneur in a largely uncharted field, we’ve certainly had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way. At the time, most of these mistakes felt frustrating rather than funny. However, the lessons we’ve learned along the way have been an important part of getting us to where we are today.
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?
Where do I even start? I have felt supported and cheered on by so many people each step of the way! Social media can be an ugly place, but this company would not be where it is today without my Instagram community.
I used to run marathons, and there was this incredible energy as people lined the streets to cheer you on. I could literally feel the energy as they cheered my name, and it kept me going when I wanted to quit.
For the past four years, customers, friends, influencers, and celebrities have “lined the streets” to rally around our company in the most amazing way. I could never name them all, but I absolutely would not be where I am today without all these incredible women cheering me on.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
This may sound overly simple, but I think it comes down to confidence–women recognizing and celebrating their gifts rather than hiding them. As women, there’s this tendency to downplay our gifts, like “Oh, it was just a little song that I wrote. It was just a little cake that I decorated. It’s just a silly hobby; it’s nothing, really.”
In reality, I’m afraid that my best effort won’t be good enough. So, if I downplay it, then no one will be disappointed in me. No one can say it’s not good enough, because after all, “It was nothing anyway.”
There is not much that excites me more than hearing someone talk about their passions and encouraging them to go after it! I wonder how the world might look different if we simply celebrated one another’s gifts and encouraged each other to pursue the dreams in our hearts.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
One really simple change we can make as individuals is to become cheerleaders for one other’s dreams. Women, let’s support each other! Do you love baking macarons? Amazing! Spreadsheets light you up? Awesome! You’re a dancer/ painter/poet/photographer? I’m cheering you on!
Look for local opportunities or small businesses to support. Find ways to champion someone else’s dream. There are so many ways we can support one another, and I can tell you as a woman and as a small business owner, all of these “little” things make a huge difference!
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
I think women need to know: you are amazing! You have wonderful gifts that are meant to be shared! It feels risky to put yourself out there, I know! But what might the world be missing out on if you hide your gifts rather than share them? What might YOU be missing out on if you don’t try?
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
When I first founded Mama Sing My Song, I thought the real work would be writing the songs. I had no idea how little that would actually be in comparison to all of the time and effort that went into the countless other roles/tasks of running a business.
You are always “on.” No one will ever care more about your company than you. If you’re not pushing things forward, it’s not going to happen. And yet, if you love what you do, it will all be worth it.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I was a softball pitcher growing up. My dad always told me how he admired the courage it took for me to stand on the mound. It did take a lot of courage to be a pitcher– to stand under pressure, knowing that I might disappoint my team or make a fool of myself in front of the crowd, and when I did, to get back up and try again. That takes courage.
As important as a pitcher might be, you can’t win a game by yourself. We need every player on the team. I think the same is true in the business world. We all have different gifts, and each one is so important! Not everyone will want to carry the responsibility or take the risks of being a founder. That’s okay. We need every team member!
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1. Do what you love.
Starting a business will require more time and effort than you could imagine. If you love what you do, you won’t mind.
2. Do what you can.
Go after it hard. Do everything within your power to do. And then, let go of the rest.
3. Do the best you can.
Put your whole heart into it. Work with excellence, and your work will speak for itself.
4. Be patient.
Success doesn’t (usually) happen overnight. Expect a wild roller coaster and try to enjoy the ride.
5. Be persistent.
Expect to hear 100 no’s for every yes. DO NOT GIVE UP. DO NOT GIVE UP. DO NOT GIVE UP.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I never imagined how lyric and melody could make such a deep impact, but our songs are touching the hearts of children in beautiful ways, reminding them of who they are and how deeply they are loved. We’ve seen the specific effect these songs can have on children in foster care, helping rewrite a negative self-narrative and reminding them that they are worthy of love. I believe the ripple effect of these songs in years to come will be greater than we’ll ever know.
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.
One of my biggest dreams in life has always been to be a part of a movement for good, and I believe that this company is a fulfillment of that dream!
This year, we have a huge goal of giving away 1,000 personalized songs and stuffed animals to kids in foster care (with the help of donations and 10% of our profits donated towards this cause). It’s a wild goal and, to be honest, we are very far from reaching it. But I dream of blowing this goal out of the water and giving away thousands and thousands of songs to precious children who need to be reminded that they are loved.
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.
This is a tough question! One woman I really admire is Joanna Gaines. I love how she is using her gifts and passions to serve others in so many different ways. I’d love to pick her brain and hear how she does it all and what she’s learned along the way!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech: Dartmouth College’s Alexis Abramson On The 5 Leadership Lessons She Learned From Her Experience
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Always think about strategy and impact. People spend time focusing on solving the present problem and not so much the future vision. We have a new Design Initiative at Dartmouth that aims to combat this. When talking to faculty and students about design, they often say they want funding to create new prototypes or an internship to solve specific problems. That’s all great, but I like to pull them back a bit and encourage them to think about the impact that will have on the world. As our school continues to grow, it’s important to think about not just teaching better, but about lives touched and the impact we can really have. It’s about making decisions about where to go and what to do and keeping that strategy and impact in mind.
As a part of our series about “Lessons From Inspirational Women in STEM and Tech”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alexis Abramson.
Alexis Abramson is the 13th dean of Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. Prior to joining Dartmouth, she was the Milton and Tamar Maltz Professor of Energy Innovation at Case Western Reserve University and served as a director of the university’s Great Lakes Energy Institute focused on creating sustainable energy technology solutions. During the Obama administration, Abramson served as chief scientist and manager of the Emerging Technologies Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program. In 2018, she served as technical adviser for Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $1 billion effort launched by Bill Gates to combat human-driven climate change. As a leader in sustainable energy technology and advanced energy research, Abramson has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Obviously, I didn’t wake up one day and decide to become an engineering dean, but through a little trial and error, I got to where I am now. Growing up, my parents were not very tech or engineering-oriented, so I spent a lot of time fixing VCRs, taking apart toasters, and replacing door locks because nobody in my house knew how. You could say that I have always been an engineer at heart, and science and engineering grew to become a passion. As I grew older, I became excited about understanding heat transfer and heat flow in nanomaterials. I started small with nanoscale materials, then took that interest to large-scale infrastructures, exploring how to manipulate energy and heat in buildings. Buildings and efficient energy technologies are a critical part of finding solutions to climate change.
I’m an extrovert, very people-oriented by nature, but science can be an isolating endeavor, especially when you are deep into research. Because of this, during my time as an assistant professor, I decided to also pursue projects outside of the typical academic realm. I worked on economic development projects for the U.S. Department of Energy and even spent one of my sabbaticals working at a venture capital firm. This kind of collaborative work with people from disciplines and backgrounds different from my own, led me to seek out leadership roles where I could work with others to affect positive change.
I have always been a firm believer in the integration of engineering and the liberal arts. As an undergrad, I studied engineering at a liberal arts college. People might wonder what liberal arts has to do with engineering, but it’s critical that we pair engineering with humanities, the social sciences, economics, and other disciplines to create the engineers who are truly prepared for challenges we find in the real world. Dartmouth embraces this philosophy wholeheartedly, and that’s what drove me here to my current role as engineering dean.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
I was eight months into the job when COVID hit. That remains one of my more interesting stories. Like every other engineering school at the time, we were asking ourselves, “How are we going to replicate hands-on learning, collaborative projects, and research for students at home? Is that even possible?” At the time, “remote, hands-on learning” seemed a bit like an oxymoron, but fortunately, Dartmouth engineers excel at solving these kinds of puzzles. We pivoted quickly, got creative, and got to work.
For example, for a computer-aided mechanical engineering design class, we found a way to have students work in remote teams to build accurate, marine chronometers, or “sea clocks” used by ships in the 1700s to understand time, direction and other metrics. We shipped relatively low-cost 3D printers and parts to all of our students to build a chronometer that actually works. In a mechatronics course, one of our professors designed an entirely hands-on, lab-based projects. She and a team of instructors assembled kits with all the parts for autonomous, self-balancing robots, shipped them all over the world, to wherever students had set up their remote classrooms. Over Zoom, students worked on the robots right in front of her.
All engineers have to learn how to work within design constraints, and everything about the pandemic was a significant constraint. Our faculty and students found ways to leverage both technology and their own creativity to make hands-on, project-based, interactive learning possible. I was really proud to watch all of this unfold during a very challenging time.
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?
That’s a tricky one — mistakes often aren’t funny when you’re an engineer! However, this one is funny. When I was a young assistant professor, I was invited to give a talk for a non-profit organization. I asked for the logistical details — time, location, etc. I found it a little strange, as they weren’t giving me much time to prepare — just a few weeks. I just knuckled down to get ready for my talk. Then I showed up … a whole year early! They actually wanted me to speak the following year! That taught me to ask a lot of questions, to be a clear communicator, and make sure I understand everything clearly.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Dartmouth Engineering is distinctive from other schools in that, as I mentioned earlier, we place great emphasis on both engineering and the liberal arts. If we want to tackle some of the daunting problems our society faces today, like climate change, healthcare inequality, and energy access — all of which could have a technical components — we need engineers who understand both technical and human aspects of both the problems and the solutions. At Dartmouth, we start with people first. We push our engineers to not just consider the science, but also human need, community impact, and potential unintended consequences. Our students take classes in disciplines ranging from economics and philosophy to studio art and government, alongside engineering and science courses. We don’t want students solving hypothetical problems — we want to bring in elements of the real world to help them understand the societal impact they can have. Our faculty are also committed to the application side of engineering, transferring ideas from the lab to the real world. As a result, our engineering students learn to see nuance, consider multiple perspectives, and uncover potential blind spots. They know how to collaborate across teams, and hopefully, this leads to fully realized human-centered solutions that serve society.
I worry we’re not seeing this human-centered approach to engineering leveraged more often in the broader world. Science alone won’t help us solve the dynamic challenges confronting our society.
We try to remove barriers and boundaries within our school and across our community. While most engineering schools are divided into departments — mechanical, electrical, etc. — Dartmouth Engineering is not. We find this encourages better integration and collaboration. Building a strong sense of community among faculty, students, and staff, across disciplines, departments, and schools, is a big part of our human-centered approach.
If the last two and a half years taught us anything, it’s that proximity matters, collaboration matters, and answers don’t come through silos. Our school is located in Dartmouth’s West End, alongside the Arthur L. Irving Institute for Energy & Society, the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Tuck School of Business. We share a home with the computer science department. The co-location alone helps energize and catalyze more integration and connectedness, but more importantly, our faculty and students embrace interdisciplinary collaboration. From developing AI tools with computer science faculty that can better detect fatal diseases to collaborating with experts at the Irving Institute to build solar water heaters for a Ugandan school, our students have opportunities to help solve real-world problems through interdisciplinary collaboration throughout their time at Dartmouth.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I am always thinking about the future of higher education and what it will be like for a student attending university 10, 20, and 100 years from now, especially with the impact of COVID and remote learning. The pandemic is teaching us that while many learners benefit from hands-on, in-person experiences, online learning or more technology-assisted learning can better differentiate lessons for students who learn differently and also help universities reach underserved communities — people who may not otherwise have access to science and technology education.
At Dartmouth, we’re thinking beyond 2030, as we plan our future. Given what we have learned from the pandemic, we are exploring the role of technology in education and looking at ways to advance our curriculum in those ways. It’s a great discussion to have with faculty and peer institutions. We are very committed to making engineering accessible to as broad an audience as possible, which can be challenging given our campus’s rural location, and exploring how we can capture a broader audience and still teach engineering the distinctive Dartmouth way.
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?
As a society, we haven’t made the great strides I anticipated when I was a college student. My undergraduate engineering class at Tufts was about 15 to 20% female, which, at the time, was considered high. Right now, the national percentage is only slightly higher than that.
Part of the solution is making sure that engineering and all aspects of STEM are accessible to everyone, and that we are removing unnecessary barriers for people who we don’t typically see pursuing STEM. This is critical, because this is not just about diversity or representation, but about getting the best people to solve the very complex challenges we face. When you don’t have a necessary perspective to help solve issues facing women or communities of color, then no matter how skilled you are as an engineer, you will not find a solution that truly meets their need.
In addition to attracting more female STEM majors, we also need to consider building STEM skills across all majors. At Dartmouth, 70% of undergrads take at least one engineering or computer science class. I’d love to see that grow because these courses help humanities students exercise a different part of their brains, which will help them later in life. I’d be surprised if anyone goes through their career not having to think about technology.
I do feel fortunate to be at Dartmouth, which was the first university to achieve gender parity in engineering in 2016. This fall, Dartmouth will have more women who are declared engineering majors than men, and I am excited to continue building on that.
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?
When you look at the research, or even just anecdotally when you speak to female students, you will hear about “imposter syndrome.” They had it, they used to have it, or they’re struggling with it. Research shows that imposter syndrome disproportionately impacts high-achieving women and people of color. Women often think they’re the only ones in the room who don’t understand the material or can’t get an experiment to work. In conversations with women, I always address this and make sure they understand that they are not alone in feeling this way, that they have earned their place in the classroom, lab, or as a member of the faculty, and that they will push forward to be quite successful in their careers.
All students need good mentors — good mentors are key to helping students overcome self-doubt and build confidence, particularly if you are the only woman in the room. We like to think everybody is treated the same, but those of us with lived experiences know that this is not true. For example, research shows men often talk over women in meetings and are often credited, and even praised, for ideas initially presented by women. It takes both men and women to acknowledge this and work to address it.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a woman in STEM or Tech. Can you explain what you mean?
Perhaps a little less so today than in the past, but there is still concern about women’s ability to juggle family and work. Society pressures women, in some cases, not to take a demanding job because then, you won’t be able to raise children. That’s a myth to dispel. There’s a way to succeed at both home and work life. Like most things in life, it takes a lot of work, some luck, and a strong support network, but I don’t want women to rule out opportunities because of this. When my kids were young, we were fortunate to live in a place without a lot of traffic, which made it easier to get around. That gave us the ability to drop the kids off at preschool, go to work, pick them up, spend time with them in the afternoon, and finish work later in the evening. I do not want to minimize the juggle that this often takes, but today, my kids grew up seeing what’s possible for someone like me with a lot of perseverance and hard work. Today, they are proud of their mom.
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.)
Be a voracious learner. If you don’t know how to do something, always know that you have the power in you to figure it out. When I was a student working on nanomaterials in thermoelectric devices, I realized I actually wanted to do research in a more high-impact area. So, I went into building science, a field I didn’t know very much about. I kept learning and learning, and eventually worked for the Department of Energy, where I eventually became the chief scientist in the Building Technologies Office. It’s amazing where your path can lead when you become a voracious learner.
Speak up. Your voice matters. If I don’t speak up in a meeting, I often regret it. Finding out a colleague was thinking the same thing and neither of us spoke up makes matters worse. It’s important to understand that your voice and perspective matter, especially if you’re the only woman in the room. Speak up in a respectful, responsible way, even if it means disagreeing with what others in the room are saying
Don’t be afraid to push boundaries. Be respectful when you do. Embrace who you are and don’t be afraid to defy the status quo. When my son was born, I was an assistant professor at the time. I wanted to attend an important faculty, but the meeting fell around the time he would usually nap and eat. I decided to take him with me anyway. He was quiet and slept for most of the meeting, but then he woke up and needed to nurse. I went to the back of the room and didn’t think anything of it. The other women faculty in the room were so happy I did that. My son is now 17 and people still say, “I can’t believe you did that.” In the end, I wasn’t trying to hide being a woman or a mother — I was being myself and embracing work-life balance. Moments like this when women respectfully push boundaries help male colleagues understand women’s needs and see how valuable it is to have women in the room.
Cultivate a positive, inclusive and welcoming community. Nobody wants to come to work and hate it. I believe in cultivating an inclusive environment by modeling respectful behavior and finding opportunities to make sure everyone feels valued. I’ve been in meetings where someone makes a disrespectful comment and I have to respond to make sure it’s addressed before we move on. That simple action go a long way in making sure we set the climate for how our community is supposed to behave and work together.
Always think about strategy and impact. People spend time focusing on solving the present problem and not so much the future vision. We have a new Design Initiative at Dartmouth that aims to combat this. When talking to faculty and students about design, they often say they want funding to create new prototypes or an internship to solve specific problems. That’s all great, but I like to pull them back a bit and encourage them to think about the impact that will have on the world. As our school continues to grow, it’s important to think about not just teaching better, but about lives touched and the impact we can really have. It’s about making decisions about where to go and what to do and keeping that strategy and impact in mind.
What advice would you give to other women leaders to help their team to thrive?
It’s related to something I already said. To model respect and what it means to have a strong community and a positive climate. If you do this well, then everyone will want to work with you and for you. This type of environment will inspire people to do their jobs well and ultimately enable the organization to be more successful in the long-run.
What advice would you give to other women leaders about the best way to manage a large team?
Since we don’t have specific departments here, I manage a large team of about 72 faculty members. While that can be challenging, it’s allowed me to have close one-on-one interactions with each faculty. This opportunity to build close relationships really pays off. People know they can come to me and ask a question, share their ideas, and feel involved. At our recent commencement ceremony, a faculty member reached out afterwards with suggestions for inspirational messages that we could use in future speeches. I was so proud that he felt he could come to me and share feedback.
When managing a large team, you also need to take the time to say thank you and show appreciation as often as you can. I write holiday cards to every faculty and staff member, so they know how much they’re valued. Even in July, people still come up to me and thank me for the Christmas card.
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?
When I became an assistant professor, I had a bit of imposter syndrome myself. It’s important to have people in your life who are there to support you and be your cheerleader. My cheerleader was Joe Prahl, who was then chair of the mechanical engineering department at Case Western Reserve, where I started my career. He ended up being my biggest cheerleader and mentor. I remember, one of the first times I taught thermodynamics, a student who was unhappy about his grade on an exam approached me. I explained why he lost points, but he continued to argue with me and eventually decided to take it to Joe, my department chair. Joe was very clear with the student, saying “She’s your your professor, she sets the rules, and that’s that.” Knowing that Joe had my back when I needed it was helpful in building my confidence for confronting other obstacles further down in my career.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
The future of our society really depends on the integration of the human-made world and human experience. We need to make sure every global citizen understands that as part of their foundational education. I hope I’ve been able to promote that and really help our students see the value in that, and take those views and go out into the world and solve some of the hardest problems that we’re facing.
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. 🙂
First of all, I’d say bringing more human centeredness to the world — the idea of starting with people first, considering human need, and societal impact. Being at Dartmouth, it’s the world I live in, but when I venture outside of this word, I see how much that doesn’t happen. I really feel that a human-centered approach to all things in life can really do a lot of good.
The other is critical thinking — how we can all become better critical thinkers in this world. I want to inspire a movement to help people adopt a simple approach to the scientific method and apply it to everyday things, like their Twitter feeds. Right now, I see people believing everything they see or read, without taking the time to consider what may be true and investigate further. I want them to ask themselves questions as they read, go back and check a reference to determine whether the piece of information they encounter is actually fact. I think that would have an even bigger impact on our world than almost anything else we do.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
This is tricky since I have a variety of different Alexis-isms. One I often tell people is to aim for A-, maybe even B+, in the things you do. I’m not talking about in school — I’m talking about in real life. The effort that it takes to get from an A- to an A is so big that you could have expended that energy, thought process, time, and money doing other things that could also have a significant benefit.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m an overachiever — but perfection isn’t the goal. For instance, when designing energy efficient buildings, it can cost twice as much to construct something achieves the top LEED certification than it would to build one that’s one or two levels below the top. I would much rather see 10 buildings have a LEED certification with energy efficient targets than just one that’s has “perfect” energy efficiency. I know that’s controversial for a building science person to say, but in the end, we save more energy overall by spreading it out and striving for A- instead of A’s.
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 🙂
I would say Bill Gates. He actually spoke to my energy and sustainability class via Zoom not too long ago. He’s a fascinating person — I appreciate that he’s a lifelong learner, something I strive for myself. He understands tech, but his post-Microsoft life has been focused on solving some of the biggest challenges in our world. I think he would appreciate our human-centered approach at Dartmouth — combining engineering, liberal arts and human centeredness. If we were able to expand that message more and get other great engineering schools to think about how to better integrate liberal arts into their programs, I think Bill would understand it and maybe even help us reach more people.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Disruptors: Virginia Lam Abrams of Starry On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Problems aren’t always problems. One of my former bosses, Steven Rubenstein, taught me that there are always multiple solutions to every problem and that problems aren’t always problems, but also sometimes, opportunities. It’s all about your perspective!
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Virginia Lam Abrams.
Virginia Lam Abrams is co-founder and Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and Strategic Advancement for Starry, a next generation, licensed fixed wireless broadband provider. At Starry, Virginia leads the company’s digital equity program, Starry Connect, advocates for Starry in front of governmental agencies at the local, state and federal level, and engages with policymakers and the public interest community in advancing pro-consumer policies that promote competition, affordability and equitable access in the broadband marketplace.
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?
Gosh, when I look back on my career, I also wonder: How did I get here? It was certainly not a straight path!
I went to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism with the express purpose of becoming a journalist, but four internships later and graduating into an economy that was just about to go into recession forced me onto a different and, what I perceived to be, a more stable path. I ended up at a consulting firm, but after two years, I felt like something was missing. That’s when I made what was probably one of the riskiest career decisions of my life: I left a lucrative career in the private sector and accepted a public sector fellowship with the City of New York, called the Urban Fellows. I took a 75% pay cut, lived in a 9×9 room in Brooklyn, and probably ate more ramen and cheap burritos in that one year than I ever have in my life! But, it was the most consequential and the best decision I could have ever made.
I left Chicago and moved to New York City in July 2001 and two months later, the entire world changed on September 11th. I spent my fellowship year working in the New York City Fire Department (FDNY)’s Press Office, having been placed there because of my journalism experience. For three solid weeks, I helped write obituaries for the 343 members of the department that had perished on that day. It was heartbreaking and emotionally grueling work, but it had purpose and it was a crucial part of documenting history and helping families grieve. My fellowship year at the FDNY was a turning point in my career because I became hooked on public service and the need to make a meaningful impact through my work. I knew I could never have a “normal” job again.
After my fellowship was complete, I returned to Chicago to work on a US Senate primary campaign for a little-known gentleman who was running against a then little-known Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama. We obviously all know how that turned out! But, that loss allowed me to return to New York City and the FDNY for my second stint in government service. From there, I moved on to work in the Mayor’s Office as a deputy press secretary for Mike Bloomberg. After a few years, I took a break and left for the private sector again, where I had the privilege of working with the legendary Howard Rubenstein and his son, Steven, at their firm. I worked on a diverse portfolio of clients in the media, technology, real estate and nonprofit sectors, honing my communications and advocacy skills. But, the siren song of politics and government was never far away. I took a leave of absence to work on another political campaign and when I returned to the firm, was approached with an opportunity to lead communications and government relations for a disruptive streaming media start-up called Aereo.
Aereo was a critical turning point, in that it allowed me to finally “specialize” in one field. In my previous roles in both government and the private sector, you had to work across a diverse set of issues and clients, making you a “jack of all trades’’. You know enough to be smart and strategic about your work, but you never have the luxury of being an “expert” in any one industry. As the saying goes: you’re an inch deep and a mile wide. With Aereo, I finally got to be a mile deep. It was exciting to focus on one issue area and on one “client.” And with Aereo’s disruptive technology entering the market at the advent of the streaming revolution, it was a roller coaster ride all the way to the US Supreme Court. It was a formative and bonding experience for all of us that worked there.
While the end of the Aereo wasn’t what we all had hoped it would be, it did set up the next chapter of my career with Starry. With Starry, I have the privilege of being a co-founder, helping build a company from scratch to what it is today: a publicly traded company with more than 800 employees working to create more affordable, high quality broadband access across the country. It is enormously satisfying to go to work every day knowing that I have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact in an area that has become so critical to our daily lives.
Careers don’t always follow a linear trajectory and mine certainly didn’t, but I’m a firm believer that sometimes you need to zig when others zag. As long as you find meaning and satisfaction in what you do, you’re going to be okay.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
In the United States, there’s a fundamental imbalance in the broadband access marketplace. For most Americans, we don’t have a choice when it comes to who provides us with home internet service. That lack of competition translates into higher costs and a poor customer experience. Starry’s founding premise was to develop and build technology that lowers the cost of connecting homes to fiber-quality internet access, so that we can increase affordability and drive competition in the market. Home broadband access is no longer a ‘nice to have’ — it’s essential, and far too many families in the US go without adequate home internet service.
Starry developed and built our own wireless ‘last mile’ technology that dramatically reduces the time and cost of connecting a home to fiber-quality internet access. Instead of digging up streets and sidewalks to lay a physical wire to your home, we connect you via a high-capacity licensed fixed wireless signal. That means we can build networks faster, deliver high-quality service to customers, and do it all at a fraction of the cost of pulling a wire to your home. In addition to developing and manufacturing all of our own technology, we’ve built world-class cloud-based software systems that help us deliver a customer experience that is delightful — not frustrating. The mere act of bringing choice and affordable broadband options to customers and delivering a delightful customer experience is highly disruptive to an industry that has effectively evolved into a collection of near-monopolies across the country.
You add to that a deep commitment to equitably serving all our communities, including a priority to serve public and affordable housing, and you have the ingredients for positive disruption in a space that has been immune to disruption for over a generation.
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?
This is a tough one! Making mistakes is an important part of the learning process. I firmly believe that we learn more from our failures than we do our successes. Keeping that perspective helps build resilience, which is deeply important when you’re trying to achieve difficult goals.
A mistake I’ll always remember (not sure it’s a funny one!) is from my time working at the FDNY. I was responsible for helping manage some of the large-scale donations that were being given to the department from all around the country and the world and one group of school children had raised enough funds to purchase a new fire engine, after learning that so many department apparatus had been damaged and destroyed on 9/11. We organized a press event at a Brooklyn firehouse to announce the donation and I forgot to invite the local City Council member to attend. Boy, did I get an earful at the event when he showed up! I was 23, totally rattled, and had to dig deep to keep my composure. I apologized, said it would never happen again and to this day, whenever we program community events, I always make sure we invite all of the local officials!
What’s the lesson in this? Know your audience and your community and cover all your bases!
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’ve been fortunate in that my life has been peppered with so many people who have been generous with their time and their counsel throughout my career. My earliest mentor was an editor at the Detroit Free Press named Joe Grimm. At the time, he was leading recruiting for Knight-Ridder newspapers (a now-defunct newspaper group) and he encouraged me to get outside my comfort zone and apply for internships in places that I had never heard of (much less been to). That’s how I ended up in Duluth, Minnesota for a summer (Duluth News-Tribune) and then subsequently, in Philadelphia (at the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer). I’m forever grateful for Joe’s guidance and his confidence in me. Without that push, I would never have these great reporting experiences.
At the FDNY, Frank Gribbon (Deputy Commissioner of Public Information) was not only my boss, but an important mentor who helped me navigate the politics of the department, sharpen my writing skills and taught me how to be an honest broker of information, but still remain a fierce advocate and protector of the department. He entrusted me with a lot of responsibility with a simple request: if you don’t know something, ask for help. He taught me that PR is not bravado and bluster and that storytelling and context is a powerful tool. His practice of PR was grounded in his past experience as a journalist and that meshed well with my training from Medill. As a manager, he always sang the praises of his team and their work and that’s something I’ve tried to model with my own team. I’m deeply appreciative of his guidance and his honest feedback because it has helped shape my career in ways both expected and unexpected. We remain good friends to this day and that is something I’m truly grateful for.
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?
Disruptive is probably one of the most overused terms in business today. “Disruption” has an evolutionary cycle all its own. Something that initially starts out as positive disruption can easily morph into negative disruption.
Take for example the news and social media. The internet and social media platforms disrupted the traditional business models of news organizations (specifically print media). The initial disruption was both good and bad. It was good, in that these social media platforms democratized access to information globally and created bigger (and unlimited) audiences. However, news organizations were slow to figure out how to monetize this new world and struggled to stay solvent. Unfortunately, many news organizations (particularly local news organizations) didn’t make it, creating a void that became increasingly filled with less legitimate sources of information, which then was exploited and evolved into the disinformation crisis we’re experiencing today. That’s a very high-level explanation, but a very clear example of the pendulum of disruption swinging from good to bad in a very short period of time.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Know what you don’t know. My college advisor, the late Richard Schwarzlose, said to me once that it’s important to know what you don’t know. It was in the context of a reporting and writing class, but it’s advice that I think rings true in life. Know thyself and in order to do that, you have to be honest about what you know and what you don’t know. That’s why asking questions is important and why making assumptions can be dangerous. In this age of disinformation, I think it’s more important than ever.
Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of intelligence. One of my mentors, Frank Gribbon, once said this to me and it has stuck with me. It follows the “know what you don’t know” mantra, in that if you don’t know something, ask for help. Confident, intelligent people know when they need help and they’re comfortable asking for it.
Problems aren’t always problems. One of my former bosses, Steven Rubenstein, taught me that there are always multiple solutions to every problem and that problems aren’t always problems, but also sometimes, opportunities. It’s all about your perspective!
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
At Starry, we’re just getting started and we have a long and exciting journey ahead of us as a company. For me, the challenge will be how to scale the positive impacts we’ve been making through our digital equity program, Starry Connect.
There’s so much more work to be done in making sure that affordable broadband access is universally available across every US household. I’m confident we’ll get there, but until we do, I’m going to keep our focus on expanding access to the communities that need it most and raising the alarm on key policy issues that will drive competition, affordability and equitable access.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
I think for women there exists a tremendous amount of pressure to be “perfect” in every aspect of our lives and that also applies to being a “disruptor.” Women have to disrupt in the “right” way or we run the risk of not being taken seriously or creating a reputational risk that stains our careers. Not only that, we have to be career-focused, but not so much that we risk not being a great parent, a supportive partner or a productive community member. In today’s society, I’m not allowed to focus on my career at the expense of my children or partner because then, well, I’m perceived as being selfish. I can have a fabulous career, but I better not be a crap mom or wife because that’s what I’ll be remembered for.
It’s a LOT to take on, and that burden is reinforced by our society. But, it’s also often self-inflicted because women internalize this crazy notion that in order for us to be truly considered successful in life, we MUST EXCEL IN EVERYTHING.
I don’t think men have that same pressure or expectation and that’s a real luxury.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
This is a tough one to answer. There’s so much great content out there that it’s really hard to nail down one thing… but there is one book that left a tremendous impression on me: “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” by Jeff Hobbs.
This book is fundamentally about the systemic inequities that perpetuate the cycle of poverty and violence in communities of color. It highlights that access to opportunity is only one piece of the puzzle and that the absence of foundational support structures (like community and family) and the overwhelming burden of reinventing oneself and bending to societal “norms’’ that shape conventional definitions of “success” become the very traps that continue to hold people back. Solving systemic inequities and systemic disrimination is complicated and this story of Robert Peace’s life, while highlighting an individual man’s struggle, is really an indictment of our society and how far we still have to go to create an equal and level opportunity field.
A lot of this served as an inspiration for the work that we do with our Starry Connect program and how we engage with the communities we serve. We’re a broadband provider, but through our Connect program we deepen our ties to our public and affordable housing communities by bringing partners and programs that help support the overall well-being of the residents we serve. It’s not just ‘let’s sell them broadband,’ but also can we find a partner that will provide access to low-cost computers or digital literacy classes? Can we find a partner that will help us build a computer lab or community lending library to support ongoing learning for the children in the community? Can we find resources to help combat food insecurity? This ‘whole community’ approach is a signature feature of our Starry Connect program and something I’m deeply proud and passionate about and it’s inspired in part by Robert Peace’s life story.
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. 🙂
We’re living in incredibly difficult and polarizing times. It’s deeply concerning to me that our society has moved away from a community mindset to one that is more individualistic and frankly, more selfish.
If I could start a movement, it would be a movement focused on kindness and community. Much like the Japanese Shinto religion, the concepts of respect for nature, family and community-first (rather than the individual) should really be central to how our world operates. Making decisions that benefit the whole, would leave our world in a much better place than we are today. Today, we’re so focused on ME that the WE gets lost — and that’s what holds us back from making the important decisions and changes we need to create a better world for all.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Treat people the same way you want to be treated. That’s something my parents ingrained in me as a child and it’s a life lesson that I take very seriously and try to instill in my own children. Being respectful, honest and kind to others is something that will pay you back in spades. People remember kindness and hopefully, use that as an opportunity to pay it forward in the universe.
How can our readers follow you online?
I’m not very active on social media, but I do occasionally go on a tweet rant! You can follow me @virginialamnyc on Twitter or Virginia Lam Abrams on LinkedIn.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Be professional. A lot of people don’t take this industry seriously because there is still a “stoner” stereotype to it and unfortunately at times that is how people act. I have been astonished by the lack of professionalism I run into and am often told how refreshing it is to be so.
As a part of my series about strong women leaders in the cannabis industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emma Davis.
Emma Davis is a 30 year old entrepreneur who followed and combined her passions into an unexpected career. She always thought she would be a veterinarian, but eventually wanted to find a different way to help animals. Over the years she has become heavily involved in animal rescue of various species and holds multiple degrees in Animal Science. She shares about this side of her life to her instagram account @briankangal where she educates people about rescue, animal behavior and life with a wide array of species. When she isn’t working with animals and running her business Mikko’s Choice, you can find her at CrossFit trying to better herself physically and mentally.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us the “backstory” about what brought you to the cannabis industry?
When I was 21 a horse bucked me off and I got trampled. I was left with a broken and fused spine and a year long recovery — -along with all the opioids I wanted. Except, I didn’t want them. They made me feel horrible. So, I turned to cannabis. It got me off opioids, eating again and feeling as normal as I could given the circumstances. It really helped curb my nerve and muscle pain as well. That was my first clue to the plant’s medicinal properties. After graduate school, and after I recovered, I was planning to work for a wild horse rescue and advocacy group, but at the same time my wolf hybrid, Mo, was diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma. He was given at most three months to live. My brother was already in the industry running his own Cannabis delivery service. He suggested I give Mo a 30:1 CBD:THC tincture. At the time there were no pet CBD brands and if anyone was giving it to their pets, they weren’t talking about it. So, it really was an experiment. I used a human product and dosed him as I would myself, given we weighed the same. He remained happy and doing all the things he loved — -so I knew there was something to the plant and its medicinal benefits for our pets as well. Mo went into remission and lived for four more years. His vets were astonished to say the least. Between my experience with my back and Mo’s experience with cancer I soon became a firm believer in the ways cannabis can help humans as well as their animals and decided to do something about it.
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?
Recently I found out my long-time manufacturer was lying to me. They painted me a big story about how they operated and the standards they held. I even visited their facility and yet their smoke and mirrors got me. They were a leader in the industry, but they fell hard and fast — leaving people like me behind and lawyers involved. That was a moment my company could have gone under as well, but I pivoted. I stood up for myself, held my ground, and got my money back when everyone said it was a lost cause. I used that money to launch my new tincture and get back in business — with new, honest, manufacturing partners. Now I am reaching a whole new market of animals and could not be more excited to do so. At the time it felt like my world was crumbling, but I think it was actually one of the best things that could have happened to my business.
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?
There have been so many mistakes! In the beginning I had someone ask me if my CBD pellets could help with neck pain, I said yes. They were already giving them to their horse, so I assumed that was who they were talking about. Turns out they were talking about themselves! A few weeks later we ran into each other and they told me how they had been adding the pellets to their smoothies and their neck pain was gone. I stood there with a pretty surprised look on my face and then started laughing and siad “Well, I guess we have confirmation they work!” Luckily, all my products are human grade although I don’t recommend eating the pellets. I learned to dig a bit deeper when someone asks me questions!
Do you have a funny story about how someone you knew reacted when they first heard you were getting into the cannabis industry?
I have this line I say “I had a job lined up after graduate school, but then I got into weed” and that’s usually a good conversation starter. Honestly, most people are surprised I’m in the industry. When I ask why they usually say something like “You just don’t look like someone who would be.” I suppose you can take that for whatever you want it to mean. I use it to change stereotypes and start conversations.
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 definitely would not be in this industry if it wasn’t for my brother. He went out on a huge limb to start his delivery service well before California went recreational, and was of course under medical laws. He started up during my recovery and when my dog was diagnosed with cancer. After my experiences with cannabis helping both myself and my dog, I decided to join forces with my brother. Together, we have navigated starting a delivery service out of our parents garage, managing employees, sourcing products, growing our own plants and everything else that comes with running a business. We have been through thick and thin together due to the sometimes ridiculousness that comes with this industry and I would not have it any other way. He inspires me daily and has supported me from day one as I decided to run Mikko’s Choice solo.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m working on expanding the Mikko’s Choice product line — most recently I launched a 5,000 mg CBD tincture. My goal from day one has been to help people and their pets. I’m honored to say my products do just that. I’m constantly blown away by the testimonials people send me and it’s what keeps me going — -it’s all for them. I’m also working to build out a more robust educational platform about CBD and cannabis for pets. I want Mikko’s Choice to be the place people go for trusted information. In doing so, I believe I can help people become informed consumers which ultimately helps them make better decisions for themselves and their pets.
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?
One of the hardest things, and barriers to entry, is finding investors. I think if investors focused on women-run and owned companies it would generate a huge impact. It is also impactful for consumers to know who isehind a brand or company. One way large players in the industry, like Weedmaps and Leafly, can help support women and gender parity would be if they highlighted brands and companies run by women, minorities and members of the LQBTQ communities and encourage customers to purchase from those brands. As for individual consumers, I encourage them to dig deeper into who is behind the products they purchase. No tonly the front-facing people, but also who are their investors and what do all of those people stand for. A lot of companies have multiple brands out on the market that appear to be completely different. They do this to appeal to different consumers, so I encourage those consumers to trace things back a bit to understand who and what they are supporting.
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.
1. Be professional. A lot of people don’t take this industry seriously because there is still a “stoner” stereotype to it and unfortunately at times that is how people act. I have been astonished by the lack of professionalism I run into and am often told how refreshing it is to be so.
2. You have to be ready to pivot. Laws change all the time and it can upend your entire business. It can be small things to how a product is labeled or major changes to licensing. For example, when California went recreational, it took two years for my brother and I to get a license to operate due to bureaucracy. We had to find other people to share a license with in order to continue operating and that was not an easy task.
3. It is hard to find investment. It may seem like there is a lot of money in the industry and there certainly is, but it’s hard to get it. People will tell you they want to get involved, but it takes a lot for that commitment to come to fruition.
4. For California operators specifically, the battle between the legal and illegal markets is a difficult one. As a legally licensed business, you will lose a lot to the illegal market. Major platforms, like Weedmaps, say they do not support illegal operators and yet they allow them to operate on their platform and take up market share. To the customer, it is often difficult to distinguish where a company lies. From a regulatory standpoint, legal companies pass on major taxes to the consumer — -illegal operators do not. This results in cheaper prices to the consumer and thus many take that route. Again, it is not difficult for an illegal company to operate and that is largely thanks to the way regulations have been set up and are enforced and how things appear to the end users.
5. Start small to prove your concept and place in the market. These days there are a lot of products out there. Pick something you’re passionate about, educated in and can differentiate. This is exactly what I did with Mikko’s Choice. I started with one very specific product, CBD pellets for horses, and keep growing it slow and steady.
Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the cannabis industry?
1. I really truly love the plant and what it can do for people and animals. I’m excited that an entire industry has been brought out of the shadows to do just that — try and help people and animals.
2. Although dealing with change can be difficult, I thrive on it. Things are always in flux as regulations change and new products are brought to market. It’s exciting to see what develops over time.
3. The industry lends itself to entrepreneurs. You can start with a little or a lot and really go any direction you want.
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?
1. The integrity of some people. Often as I source products and raw materials I run into people who don’t care much for quality or clean lab results. They’ll use pesticides and consider the product to be clean or fudge test results to show it is. Of course, there will always be a market for low end products but that doesn’t mean they have to be filled with pesticides, heavy metals and molds and that labs should consider these things as “passing.”
2. The hypocrisy of having an entire legal market while people still sit in jail for “drug possession.” Many states have made efforts to let these people out, but it needs to happen in broader terms across the country.
3. Banking. It is incredibly difficult to find safe and consistent banking for businesses. If we are to be considered a true legal industry, then we need to be able to bank like everyone else.
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?
I think it could be a good thing. It would bring this industry out of the shadows and into the normal business world with everyone else. However, it needs to be treated as such. No ridiculous taxes like there currently are — that has been a major downfall to the California industry. If we can get away from the notion that it’s a “drug” and something bad and start treating it as a normal commodity and or a medicine I think that would help business flow a bit smoother. It’s these stereotypes and the notion that it’s ok to be legal if we tax the heck out of it that are a big inheritance to the industry’s success.
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?
It should not be marginalized nor heavily taxed. Cannabis is, generally, much better for people to consume compared to cigarettes and alcohol. A few milligrams or puffs can help take the edge off the day like a glass of wine, without a hangover the next day. Consuming cannabis doesn’t mean someone needs to or should be so high they can’t function, in-fact a lot of products are designed for the opposite effect. One way to help de-marginalize it is to not tax it at such a high rate. This subconsciously tells people it’s a “bad” thing and thus it may never truly emerge out of the shadows and be accepted like grabbing a drink with friends or co-workers. I do think there should be a high standard for quality when it comes to being regulated. Consumers should be aware if they are using a high end or low end product. Many brands today appear to be high end due to their branding, but the quality of their product is actually quite poor. Test results can tell us a lot, but the average consumer doesn’t know enough to understand those past THC or CBD % or milligrams — -some might only care about that and that’s fine, but let’s make it easier for people to understand the differences and lets hold those standards accountable. This is something I strive to do with my company, Mikko’s Choice.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“How you do something when no one is watching is how you do everything.” I’ve always lived by this because it encompasses a lot of other important characteristics of a person. This has been relevant in my life in a lot of ways, but one simple example is taking care of horses. The barn aisle can be a mess, covered in shavings and dust, and maybe no one is around to see you clean it up and maybe no one asked you to…but you do it anyway. You do it because you know it’s the right thing to do and has to be done. To me, it’s about how you operate in the shadows and that says a lot about a person.
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. 🙂
Thank you! If people could, as a whole, be kinder to one another and have some empathy for their common human (and animals) we might all get along a bit better. We might all feel a bit more understood and less judged. This might then give someone the courage to share a struggle so someone else can feel supported. This might give someone the courage to start something new, scary and exciting and in turn inspire someone else to do the same. I guess, ultimately, these are things I aim to get across to people as I share my life with animals, rescue and business on Instagram via @briankangal. The DM’s I get are mind blowing and beyond what I could have imagined the impact to be. To me, it’s just simple things that I do and share and I don’t try to hit people over the head with what I just said….but it happens naturally and the ripple effects from that are beautiful to see. I know we can all do it together and for one another.
Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you only continued success!
Women In Wellness: Esther Murray of SAI On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Be grateful — Always be thankful for the blessings from the Almighty, even the little things that you enjoy every day, such as that first cup of coffee. Do not let yourself be obsessed with money. Most people spend most of their days chasing material things they don’t have, and their inner soul does not need.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Esther Murray.
Esther Murray is a coach who specializes in helping professional women who have hit a dead end in their career due to getting passed over, feeling unappreciated, or lacking opportunities to move ahead in the workplace due to systemic gender discrimination and internal office politics. She is an experienced Administrator with over 23 years of experience in government of which seven years entailed management duties.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your backstory with us?
Well, originally I’m from a small island in the Caribbean, Tobago to be exact. I grew up poor. My three brothers and I were raised by a single mother who juggled three jobs just to put food on the table. My dad deserted us when I was only 8 years old. In those early years, I loved to run around and play with my brothers and gained the reputation of being a tomboy. I would climb trees with my brothers, play cricket in the streets, and stone any stray dogs that wandered in our backyard. I was a rebel, but I still loved the quiet time alone with my books and dolls.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
My foray into coaching came about quite by accident. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020, I was assigned to work from home, remotely, on my computer. One day I was surfing the internet when suddenly the image of Tony Robbins, the renowned motivational speaker, popped up on my screen. I believe I had an epiphany, like a lightbulb shining inside my head. I thought to myself there was something more for me to do, an inner calling, better than sitting at a computer answering calls for the Department of Finance. I jumped into this new avenue of opportunity immediately, feeling that this coaching business was something worthwhile, something I had to explore.
Being at home gave me the calmness I needed to evaluate my inner strengths and values. I got involved in a plethora of seminars and online conversations about career challenges and development, all of which shaped my personal search for job satisfaction. I was determined to be an independent professional lady, dedicating myself to helping others find their own path to inner bliss and deep satisfaction in their careers and lives. Real or meaningful service to others is what drives me. I am offering to urge and give women the courage to jump away from tedious unsatisfying work and brighten their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One of the biggest mistakes for me was in the beginning, once I realized that coaching was my passion. I invested in various coaching programs which later did not serve my purpose. I realized that I should have done more homework to sift out the right program that would give me the adequate training and resources to boost my coaching business.
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?
My mother has always been the support system for myself and my siblings. But, during my hardest time, when I was transitioning from senior high school to the business world, with no job opportunities, I met an Englishman who is the reason why I am here today. This Englishman moved into my neighborhood in Bethany, Tobago, just about the same time that I returned home with my daughter. He would take long walks everyday near the standpipe where I fetched water for my home. We slowly began by saying hello, which later turned into a real friendship with him, his family and mine. He always said to my mother, that I should travel abroad as the possibilities are endless, and that I will not live the life I need to live, tethered to a ‘small’ island.
One day, that moment arrived, and I landed at JFK airport leaving behind all that I know and my young daughter, anxious to pave the way for a better future for myself. My English countryman, Ralph, I will never forget!
Ok, perfect. Now let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
My work aims to fundamentally change my client’s outlook on life and hope for a creative dynamic future. I seek to pull unsatisfied professionals out of their malaise and give them a kick in the rear end, to get them to live and dream and find their bliss. When (and if) they realize their goals, they will indeed be in good health, and I will be very happy.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
1. Exercise — it’s a quick and easy way to enhance your mood, reduce stress, and clear your mind. I find that getting out of bed and straight into my running or walking shoes, to be outside just after sunrise, for 30 minutes, is the surest way to start the day with gusto.
2. Meditate — Twenty minutes of meditation each day will relax your mind and body and strengthen your health. You’ll also build your ability to focus. It may be the best 20 minutes you spend every day.
3. Improve your diet — The food you eat has a dramatic effect on your mood, ability to focus, and health. You already know which foods are healthy. So, introduce more of them into your diet, especially fiber and omega rich foods, like avocado and berries. Most importantly, take sugar out of your diet as much as humanly possible, even if you adore ice cream.
4. Be grateful — Always be thankful for the blessings from the Almighty, even the little things that you enjoy every day, such as that first cup of coffee. Do not let yourself be obsessed with money. Most people spend most of their days chasing material things they don’t have, and their inner soul does not need.
5. Get enough sleep — You cannot function at your best without proper rest! Do not forget your duty to nourish and take care of your body.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
It would be “Hope for the Homeless” to eradicate all the homelessness in the universe. In my dream, all homeless will be treated for their mental well-being and given a place of refuge until they can once again re-enter into society and contribute to the world.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1. It would have been helpful to find my niche sooner, so that I did not feel that I must serve everyone. Having a niche lets me focus all my energy on the right way that works best for me and my clients.
2. Plan to have a mentor coach so that he/she would hold me accountable for my future goals.
3. Never build a website first because it’s not necessary to get clients. There are many coaches today that have an array of clients through word of mouth. Once you get a foothold in your field, then creating a website will give you a multiplier effect.
4. Don’t try to compete with other coaches in the same arena as you, bring your own flavor to the pot. You want to be an individual who follows his/her gut and does not follow the herd.
5. Go to several webinars and learn how other coaches operate before investing lots of money.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
I believe that “mental health” is my chief concern because too many people are living in this nightmare and are extremely reluctant to reveal this because they are either afraid of how others may feel towards them or just lack the courage to label their struggle as such.
I worry about this especially in the workplace now that after COVID-19, workers are slowly moving back to an office space after working remotely for two years. Some are even traumatized and prefer not to return because they are still coping with their circumstances and have lost touch with how things used to be.
What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?
Women In Wellness: Emily Fata on The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Understand that putting yourself first isn’t selfish. We’re conditioned to believe that putting ourselves first makes us bad people, when this just isn’t the case. As clichéd as this sounds, you can’t fill up those around you from an empty cup. It’s similar to how in airline safety guides, they tell adults to put the oxygen masks on themselves before helping any accompanying child; if you’ve passed out from lack of oxygen, how can you help the child with you survive?
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emily Fata.
Emily Fata is the CEO and Founder of Between Our Thighs, an online resource dedicated to making sexual health and wellness accessible to everyone. Emily has a background in psychology, specializing in adult development and women’s and gender studies. Between Our Thighs was started as a passion project in March of 2022 and launched officially in July of that same year.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
Absolutely, I’d love to! For starters, I have a background in psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University, where I ended up focusing my academic studies on sex and gender. Throughout my years in the world of academia, I had become not only incredibly open to discussing topics surrounding sexual health and wellness, but really enjoyed speaking on these subjects and having candid conversations with people about it. It’s one of those taboo topics that people want to talk about, but feel embarrassed or ashamed to dive into with others. Even their own partners!
That said, after entering the workforce as a freelance copywriter, I always kept myself in the loop with studies and information continuously developing in the academic world.
Between Our Thighs was officially launched to the public toward the end of July 2020, but the idea came to mind at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of that same year. At the time, while I had still been regularly keeping up with academic research, I was also perusing articles about sex and sexual health online. I noticed that a lot of these non-academic sources — including very popular, mainstream sites — had a lot of inaccurate information or were missing crucial elements that are necessary for a ‘green’ reader to get the full picture of what it is that they’re reading; after all, most people don’t have an academic background in sex.
Plus, information was very gendered, very hetero-normative, and seemed to give the overall feel of not being entirely inclusive.
The idea came to mind to create a platform of my own, a community, where I could take academic research and make it digestible for the everyday person to understand and benefit from. Eventually, this evolved into incorporating my love of creative writing (I started including weekly erotica stories on the blog), fetish spotlights (a weekly ‘Fetish Friday’ post), and a podcast, too.
While we offer tons of different viewpoints and perspectives now, including opinion-based guest posts, our in-house content is all fact-based and caters to no specific gender or sexual orientation, unless relevant to a particular article.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
Recently, I started working with an amazing sexual health and wellness startup that focuses on fostering intimacy between couples, particularly long-term couples. Through research conducted by the founders, they came across Between Our Thighs as a resource and reached out to me as a result.
I’m now a staff writer on their team, creating and writing fictional erotic stories, couples’ guidance, product write-ups, and informative articles (among other things)!
The fact that Between Our Thighs connected me to this team of amazing people on an equally incredible mission is a clear indication that I am accomplishing exactly what I set out to do with the website.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Setting expectations too high and pushing myself to meet lofty deadlines despite simultaneously having a full-time job was not the wisest decision I made in those early months. I learned fairly quickly that I had to set realistic deadlines and not be so hard on myself when I missed deadlines. While it’s an important thing that I am doing, and there’s no doubt about that in my mind, I also have to be mindful of my mental health and schedule; burnout can be damaging!
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
Short and sweet, Between Our Thighs is creating a safe place for people to learn about and — if they want to — discuss topics pertaining to sexual health and wellness. This is a subject society often shies away from, which can result in information being unavailable or, perhaps even worse, false information circulating and being shared as ‘fact.’
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
When it comes to making ‘lifestyle tweaks’ to better support your wellbeing, there are a handful of things that folks should keep in mind.
Understand that putting yourself first isn’t selfish. We’re conditioned to believe that putting ourselves first makes us bad people, when this just isn’t the case. As clichéd as this sounds, you can’t fill up those around you from an empty cup. It’s similar to how in airline safety guides, they tell adults to put the oxygen masks on themselves before helping any accompanying child; if you’ve passed out from lack of oxygen, how can you help the child with you survive? Likewise, taking care of yourself mentally and physically is paramount to your very being. If you don’t have the energy (or even the willpower) to do something, don’t do it. Pushing your limits is not always the way to go, when it comes to self-growth. Many times, it’s knowing your boundaries and sticking to them.
Know that your mental health is as important as your physical health. It’s easy to forget about mental health, as it’s more ‘invisible’ (so to speak) than a physical ailment that might present as a limb in a cast, a cut or scrape, or even a bruise. That doesn’t mean that one’s mental health is any less important, though. That said, mental illness and romantic relationships (or non-romantic relationships) can co-exist; self-care and communication are pivotal. Just remember that love can uplift your mental health, but should not be used as a repair tactic.
Take yourself on dates…alone. One thing I find so incredibly important is to take myself on dates as frequently as possible. It allows me to get comfortable and embrace alone time, as well as treating myself the way that I want to be treated by others (both platonically and romantically). Most recently, I bought myself season tickets to the opera and attended each show by myself after going for dinner at an upscale restaurant — on my own! While this is just one example of a more lavish gift that I gave to myself, my self-dates typically consist of going to Starbucks with a book and sitting for a couple of hours while I sip an Oat Milk London Fog and read a novel I recently picked up.
Remember that exploring your sexual desires is not only normal, but healthy. First off, if there’s one thing I hate in the world of sexual health and wellness, it’s kink shaming. Thankfully, I’ve not come across it too often in my work with Between Our Thighs, within the community, but it’s something that pops up in comments on the blog and social media every now and then — and gets commentors removed and blocked immediately. As a teenager, I often felt shame about being a sexual being, particularly as a young woman. It wasn’t until I was in university and began shifting my academic focus on sex and gender studies that I really began feeling comfortable having open and frank discussions about sexuality with those around me. In fact, this was when I realized that it’s such a normal part of life and speaking candidly about it all actually makes it easier to talk about!
Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed of your sexual fantasies. Know that there are others out there with the same kinks, fetishes, and fantasies that you have. You’re never alone! One of my favourite things about the Between Our Thighs community are the folks that share their personal stories and advice with others.
It’s the people who reach out asking me to write about a particular topic because they’re keen on learning more, who volunteer to speak on our podcast, or who send us a simple message thanking our writers for an article that helped them see that there are other people out there who share their kinks.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I’d love to foster a movement where people feel genuinely comfortable speaking about their needs, however that may look for them, and then to feel confident going out and doing whatever it takes to achieve that level of comfort. This can be sexual, emotional… you name it.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
Prior to launching Between Our Thighs, five things I wish I had known were:
You’re going to make a positive impact on people’s lives through the information that you provide, by making factual information more accessible to the general public.
Running a blog as a passion project takes a lot of time, effort, and time management skills — but it’s 100% worthwhile.
It’s okay to take a break, when you’re feeling overwhelmed with your workload, as well as to seek out guest articles to supplement in-house articles.
You’ll find some amazing products along the way, through partnerships and relationships you foster with companies.
You’re going to find some incredible clients through your work, thanks to the folks you meet during this journey.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
This is such a hard question to give a concrete answer to, as they are all so near and dear to my heart. As a vegan, I feel that it ties so well into sustainability and environmental changes, as animal farming is not just an issue of animal cruelty (which is why I initially stopped eating meat years ago), but also detrimental to the world that we live in, in terms of its negative environmental impacts.
That said, it also ties into your health, and you typically can’t have optimal mental health when you’re not in optimal physical health; the two are intertwined in many ways.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
Readers can find us on our website, BetweenOurThighs.com, as well as on social media:
Kyle Laskowski and Jason Ziernicki of Monetize Media On Five Ways For Influencers To Monetize Their Brand
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Advertising. This is the most obvious but the least reliable and often the one you are in the least control of. It’s one thing if you sell your own premium sponsorship, but if you rely on an ad network or easy influencer money, they are the first things to go in economic downturns, and you have little control of how to offset it.
As part of my series about “How Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Ziernicki and Kyle Laskowski.
Jason has a deep background in tactical digital marketing and overseeing major online brands. Individually, he was one of the top affiliates for DraftKings and FanDuel in daily fantasy sports, building and running multiple SEO-focused websites and ranking #1 for some of the most competitive terms in affiliate marketing. He is a thought leader in extremely high converting content as an SEO and conversion funnel expert. He turned an audience of tens of thousands into a multi-million-dollar revenue stream. His business, Warwick Gaming, was part of the pair’s $25 million acquisition.
Prior to the founding of Warwick Gaming, Jason ran a leading local web design and SEO service.
Kyle founded the popular Philly sports blog CrossingBroad.com, which became the city’s largest independent website. He was nominated by the local press club for “sportswriter of the year” and made countless appearances on local radio and TV. In 2013, he broke the national story of a NFL player who was caught on camera using a racial slur. Before becoming a multimillion-dollar affiliate site, Crossing Broad was a six-figure ad business… before becoming a seven-figure ecommerce shop selling local sports apparel. The site featured only one other full-time employee.
Prior to founding Crossing Broad, Kyle worked at an affiliate marketing agency, sold advertising in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and worked on the MLB.com shop at GSI Commerce (now Fanatics).
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is your “backstory”? What brought you to this point in your career?
We came together in 2018 at the request of a mutual business client who recognized that our respective skills in content and conversion were complementary and could form one of the largest online sports betting affiliates. [Kyle] founded a Philly sports blog, CrossingBroad.com, in 2009 and built it to become one of the largest independent media sites in a competitive market. [Jason] had a network of daily fantasy sports sites, which saw him become one of the biggest partners of DraftKings and FanDuel during the daily fantasy boom in 2015 and 2016.
We happened to live near each other, share a birthday, and were looking for an office. So we partnered up and attacked one of the biggest business opportunities in the country — the legalization of online sports betting — together.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
One of the upsides of the business we built, which was ultimately acquired by XLMedia, a European performance publisher in 2020 for $25 million, was an agency model where we work with content-based websites and major newspaper publishers to create betting affiliate content for them. This has generated significant revenue for media companies — orders of magnitude more than most any ad stream on a per audience basis — and they have been able to use that money to hire journalists to do important work.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?
There is a fine line between doing something that doesn’t work and will never work and sticking with something through the ups and downs. If you believe strongly in a business or creative pursuit, then you have to accept the fact that you will experiences ups and downs. Setbacks are inevitable. From talking to content creators on our podcast, Monetize Media, one of the themes we’ve uncovered is capping the downside. You may have to go months without income or losing money. If you find yourself in that situation, make sure to set a period (a number of months) that you can try to correct it. This often compels action and limits the downside.
None of us can achieve success without a bit of help along the way. Is there a particular person who made a profound difference in your life to whom you are grateful? Can you share a story?
Each other! Kyle is really good at content, and detail, but often lacks the willingness or instinct to pivot quickly. Jason operates by his gut, which has been great for identifying opportunities before others, but can also gloss over important implementation details to make it all work. This is where we balance each other out.
So what are the most exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
We’ve gotten really good at content and monetization, but we wanted to get better. So we started a podcast to interview and learn from other content creators on how they are growing and scaling their businesses. The aim is to identify trends for listeners so they can learn from what others are doing.
What are your “Top Five Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand” . (Please share a story or example for each.)
1) Recurring revenue. This is probably the hardest to get, but getting your audience to pay you, automatically, every month (subscription or supporter) is probably the best way to build a consistent and stable business. If you own your audience, you are not at the whim of major platforms or ad networks.
2) Affiliate. If you have the right audience, and the right know-how, affiliate advertising money can be worth many multiples of direct ad spends. Because brands only pay you for performance, you have to put your money where your mouth is, but it also largely uncaps the upside if you’re good at– you’re bringing value to a customer at a predetermined rate.
3) Products. We think the world is about to flip. Previously, PRODUCT companies had to create CONTENT to stay relevant. Soon, we think the preferred way to go will be for CONTENT companies to create their own PRODUCTS. The marketing is built in.
4) Events. Easily the hardest on this list because of the logistics, but hosting events for your audience can be beneficial from many standpoints, including profitability!
5) Advertising. This is the most obvious but the least reliable and often the one you are in the least control of. It’s one thing if you sell your own premium sponsorship, but if you rely on an ad network or easy influencer money, they are the first things to go in economic downturns, and you have little control of how to offset it.
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.
Absorb ideas you disagree with. You may still disagree with them, but if you try to understand the other person’s viewpoint, you’ll probably at least respect WHY they hold that view. Less hate, you know?
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 just see this. 🙂
Kyle: Jimmy Buffett. Full stop.
Jason: Michael Rubin.
What is the best way our readers can follow your work online?
Women In Wellness: Heather MacKay and Mary Reaston of Yoga Your Way On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Be true to your values. Your business will always reflect upon you. If you’re true to your values it will shine through in your mission and it will help you build and define your brand.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Heather MacKay and Mary Reaston.
Based in Southern California, Heather and Mary are female entrepreneurs, certified yoga professionals who have experienced and taught yoga internationally. They have dedicated their careers to breaking down the barriers that can serve as impediments by building a brand to bring heath, wellness and fitness to every BODY.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
We met 4 years ago while embracing our love of the water doing stand up paddle board (SUP) yoga in the Carlsbad lagoon. We are different as night and day in age, appearance and physical ability. Heather has been a yoga and fitness practitioner for over 20 years while Mary was a newbie. We had both been through many yoga classes where they catered to expertise and youth, excluding all others. We realized this needed to change and we decided to become the leader of this transformation. In addition, yoga and wellness are costly endeavors and out of reach for the majority of the population. Our goal in creating Yoga Your Way was to offer many different options for health and wellness centered around yoga because yoga is the embodiment of mind, breath and body — creating a holistic approach to getting healthy and fit. Of significant note, the seed for Yoga Your Way started in late 2019 and we all know what happened in early 2020. Covid made us more determined to create this health and wellness enterprise.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
At the end of 2019, we had created Yoga Your Way and we had just landed our first agreement to provide in person yoga for the Girl Scouts of San Diego and their parents. This was an exciting time for us as this was our first meeting and pitch we made for our services, and we landed our first pitch with a home run! We were set to start offering our services in March 2020. Needless to say, our victory was short lived. The world was shutting down and this could have been the end of Yoga Your Way. The old saying, “necessity of the motherhood of invention,” is especially true in our case. In order for our vision to survive, we had to come up with a new model, and we did. In less than three months we had developed our unique online platform, yogayourway.fitness, to offer yoga and fitness for everybody 24/7/365. This is a completely unique wellness platform. The core principle at Yoga Your Way is affordable wellness for every BODY. We designed the platform as the cornerstone of our brand offering a distinctive experience.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Instead of trusting ourselves to market and sell our brand, we initially relied on outside sales people and their vision, not ours. This was a mistake we luckily made at the beginning. When we found that they wanted to charge excessive prices, taking away from our fundamental core values, we decided to drop them and took on the responsibility for our brand and sales. We learned a valuable lesson: in order to have a successful company you have to define your values and stay true to them no matter what the outside influence is. If you are true to yourself, that will show through to your customers and THAT is one of the major keys to increasing sales.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
We started out with our online platform, and from that platform we have built a successful international company. Our initial vision was to bring health and wellness at an affordable rate to every BODY. The first step in the process was developing our online platform. After we launched our platform, we also launched our SUP Yoga classes in southern California, and our wellness retreats. We realized that in addition to offer the services, we wanted to be able to empower others to facilitate our ideology. This year we have branched out to offer Yoga teacher training that is well grounded and affordable. Also, part of our key philosophy is giving back to our community. We offer year-round community events and fund-raising for local charities. A program we are particularly proud of is our complimentary Creating Memories events for families with life threatening illnesses.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
Take at least 15 minutes per day for yourself for reflection and decompression so you can continue to be there for others. If you are ever feeling stressed focus on your breath and prolonging the exhalation to calm your mind and body. Gratitude is the attitude! Everyday find and focus on at least one thing you are grateful for. Pay it Forward! Something as small as holding the door open for someone — kindness is always paid in kind. Surround yourself with positive energy. That includes the people you associate with. Positivity is a buffer for negative energy.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Self Love! Taking care of your body, mind and soul ~ your way. Everyday do something to enrich your physical and emotional wellbeing.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1.Be true to your values. Your business will always reflect upon you. If you’re true to your values it will shine through in your mission and it will help you build and define your brand.
2. Don’t let outside influences sway you. The best example we have is outsourcing our sales. They tried to sway us for increased pricing which went against our core principles and delayed or growth.
3. Surround yourself with positive energy and people. Creating an atmosphere with positivity will help you overcome any obstacles that may come your way.
4. Always be kind. You never know what kind of day someone is having and your bit of kindness could make a difference in their world. Kindness ties in with #3 and creates positivity.
5. To tie everything together, attitude sums it up. Gratitude is the attitude! If you focus on what you are grateful for it keeps negativity away.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the future generations to meet their own needs. It’s not just for the environment, its embedded in most of our core principles. It’s very dear to us because sustainability is truly a holistic approach, as is our approach to wellness
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
Female Founders: Faith Freeman of Primal Elements on The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
I think the most important thing to consider is capital. Be sure to shop for capital even when you don’t need it. Being properly capitalized will help alleviate some of the stresses small business owners don’t recognize. We were positioned for strong growth and had to learn this while we were growing.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Faith Freeman of Primal Elements in Huntington Beach, California.
Primal Elements started in 1993 the kitchen of Faith Freeman’s Mother. She had been making custom soap for her own store and realized that her customers wanted to experience her scent blends before taking them home — so the idea of cutting fresh sliced soap was born. Other stores asked if they could carry the Primal Elements line, and the company has grown into an international brand carried in 1000’s of retail doors.
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 pleasure; thank you for inviting me. I had opened a small bath and body store in Southern California with my husband Scott. We began making soap at home to bring to our store. We had the idea that people needed interaction with one another and shoppers simply did not want to pluck an item off the shelf; so that’s when we came up with the idea for fresh sliced soap. This allowed us to meet and talk with our customers learn about what they liked and what was not so appealing to them. Having a hands-on experience also kept the customer in the store longer, allowed them to look at more product, and perhaps create a larger sale. After a year or two, other store owners found our store and asked if it was possible to purchase our soaps for their own stores. Of course, we were excited about this opportunity and began selling soap to retailers across the country. This was exciting and challenging at the same time as I was spending less time in the store and more at home making soap. The soap business was doing such amazing business we decided that this was really the direction we should be taking so we closed the store in 1996 and began focusing on manufacturing. For many years the bulk of our business was selling to the gift and specialty channel of business, but over time, as the business grew, we were lucky enough (and worked hard enough) to get into larger chain and grocery stores. This really was a turning point for the business as we were able to grow and solidify our position as the industry leader in our space. We are very fortunate to have a very strong team supporting us and amazing customers that have been fans of the brand for nearly 30 years!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
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 we were trying to get the word out about our soaps, we would have our kindergarten aged son Mitchell (now the President of the company) stand outside the front of our store with a tray of soap samples to give away to people passing by. Angry people would come into the store shaking their fists at us and we couldn’t understand why. As luck would have it, since we were just next door to a fabulous bakery people thought that those colorful, fragrant samples were something to eat so they were popping them in their mouths. Our joke became this; “it’s the soap you wished your mom washed your mouth out with”. I suppose the lesson from this is to be very clear when you hand out samples as people will put anything in their mouths.
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?
This may sound like a cliché answer, but it means so much to us. My mother was our biggest cheerleader and support system. She believed so strongly in us and in our dream for this crazy idea of selling hand-crafted soaps that she mortgaged her paid in full home to give us the money to start. Our store was doing well and the wholesale business was growing but no bank would consider lending money to a startup like ours. We hit the brick wall over and over so having my mom step up and take that leap of faith was the inspiration for us to fight to be successful.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Honestly, I am surprised by this low percentage. I suppose I am fortunate enough to be in an industry that has so many gifted women founders. The women around me in both my personal and business life is built on a foundation of very strong women. I have not had much personal experience where a woman, at least in my circle has been unable to achieve what she sets out to do. I think if a woman feels held back, she should look deeply inside and see what her own internal fears are to make the next step to success. There is no better time than today for women to move forward and take-charge whatever path they chose in their journey.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
As human beings it is imperative that we are kind and considerate to each other. Always remember where your own success and strength came from and use that to help others who may need to learn from your experience.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
I believe anybody that wants to be a founder should be one. The walls are continuing to break down. Nobody should live a life with regret, so if there is a dream to be a founder, to create something amazing — do it!
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
This is a fun question. I’m often told that my life is so glamourous as a founder. I get to travel and see great places and meet amazing people. What that translates to is lots of time at an airport; overnight stays at hotels where I am usually prepping for a meeting the next day while eating a sandwich from a tray on the bed. Now that’s what I call glamour.
I once had an employee tell me that he couldn’t believe that I come to work every day, every place he worked at in the past the “bosses” never came in. The truth is the work is hard; it takes time and patience to run a successful operation.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I’m not sure everyone is cut out to be a founder. Entrepreneurship is challenging. There is a high level of risk involved and not all people are cut out for the stresses and challenges that can be placed on the founders’ shoulders. We need a great team around us as founders and entrepreneurs so for me I hope there are still those individuals that chose the path of seeking a ‘regular job’ to support us. We could not be successful without those people around us.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
I think the most important thing to consider is capital. Be sure to shop for capital even when you don’t need it. Being properly capitalized will help alleviate some of the stresses small business owners don’t recognize. We were positioned for strong growth and had to learn this while we were growing.
Have the proper processes in place to take the temperature of your business. Using key performance indicators will really help. For us this helps us monitor purchasing raw materials vs. the orders we have to produce.
Smart hard-working people are essential for a business to succeed. We were very lucky when we first started our manufacturing business to work with Goodwill Industries. Their programs brought us a team of six hearing impaired workers to help us in our soap production. Not only did we employ hard working people, we felt so good about the experience. We still get visits from our original crew some 25 years later.
Additionally, having a strong mentor orsounding board will be a big help. The ability to bounce ideas off of others is very helpful when decisions have to be made. The experience a seasoned mentor brings can be invaluable.
Never be afraid to cut a bad sku. What is mean by this is that sometimes as a business owner you fall in love with your product. Don’t do this! If something isn’t working get rid of it. Just because you think it’s amazing — it may not be. All reports said licorice scented soap would be all the rage; trust me it was not.
Finally, I wish somebody would have told me that this would have been one of the most rewarding things I would ever do! We are so proud that we are able to make all of our products in Huntington Beach, CA our home town and employ a great team of people. Had I known this I would have done it sooner.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I like to believe I have and continue to do my part to make this world a better place. I believe success brings an obligation to contribute. Our company focuses on a few charitable organizations where we can do our best work such as The Children’s Hunger Fund.
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.
Thank you for that compliment; but I doubt I am a person of great influence. I am a small business founder that loves coming to work every day. I simply want people to be kind and respect one another. This is something so simple and it costs nothing. This will benefit the most amount of people.
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 truly appreciate this question. There are so many amazing people with fantastic stories that would make for a great breakfast or lunch meeting. I think for me, maybe because I am getting older I would like to meet with the next generation of female entrepreneurs share my knowledge of almost 30 years with them, and in turn they would share their knowledge with me.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
