Female Founders: Daniella Green of Slaypedia+Transfer Green On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Diversity and inclusion has to go past “just awareness and hashtags”. Organizations have to implement action. Begin to open the forum and communicate what’s required and what they are seeking to diversify leadership. Government grants need to target more startups and offer programs that help with the “launch phase”. Honestly as a society, I’d call to task platforms like Netflix with more entertainment that normalize women in leadership running their own companies like Scandal. As crazy as that sounds, so many women were inspired by that show and her ability to out maneuver the men she worked so closely with.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniella Green.
Daniella Green is the founder of a sustainability engineering firm where they engineer the “how to go green”, implement diversity & inclusion programs and dissect applicable changes to governance/regulatory laws to exploit the benefit to the corporate goals. She is strategist to leadership and has also work with individual clients (particularly women) who’ve outgrown their current role or have hit a glass ceiling, seeking to pivot into leadership opportunities.
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 background is engineering. From College I landed an interview with Shell Oil and was hired immediately! I thought this would be just like my internships. LOL. WRONG! While I appreciate the lessons and mentorship I gained there. I quickly realized I always the only woman and woman of color in so many settings as I worked my way up. Even when I left and went to another company I worked my from director to VP. That was ground breaking. As a woman of color, it wasn’t an easy path to executive leadership and then to branch off and start my own company, that overlaps tech, oil and gas, I was forced to find ways to thrive in a heavily white male industry. However, what made me realize I was strong enough to start my own firm. I started to realize my impact to the overall corporate portfolio. Then I thought why not do this on my own. I’m good enough and I’m for sure smart enough. That’s where my audacity begin.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
I thought that it would be hard to establish trust being young, a woman and of African descent. But what I realized is my ability to communicate how much I trust my talent. That created a boom and a sense of ease in business. I remember when I first started. I did a live session in a Facebook group with some guys from MIT and Oxford. I was for sure no one wanted to hear what I had to say. But after just doing this “talk”. People kept asking to book with me. Companies and individual professionals. I made $30K just off that one session consulting! Mind you this was during the pandemic! God has shown me overflow and favor when businesses were being wiped off the map. 2020 was my year of validation. Any doubts I had about my talent died that day!
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?
Yes, I would be afraid to discuss my prices when I first started out loosing clients. I met a young lady who I consulted on negotiations for her VP role at a major tech company in California. She called me and told me that her bonus was in the high $200K range because she followed everything I said! Hell, I impressed myself….LOL. The company now changed their offering to leaders because she used everything I taught her. She told me I had to stop charging Taco Bell prices for Filet Mignon. She paid me what my consulting rate should’ve been. I haven’t looked back since.
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?
Yes, Wayne & Sakita. A while male executive and one of the top recruiters at the time, a black woman named Sakita. They both helped me realize what exactly I had to offer, how to communicate that and most important how to communicate the my expectations. Mentors are necessary because you avoid a lot of unnecessary failure.
Wayne was the most professional, effective and empowering leaders I’ve ever worked with. He never gossiped, never raised his voice, very in control of his emotions during the most stressful times and he communicated very clearly but trusted us to do our jobs.
Sakita really broke down “negotiations” for me. I needed that. She has also help me grow through some of the roughest moments of my life to ensure they didn’t interfere with my professional life.
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?
Let’s back up ….Women are still fighting the pay gap. Statistically speaking women feel asking for more or negotiating indicates “rocking the boat”, being ungrateful or being greedy. For this very reason I coach women with such passion. They tend to get stuck or hit glass ceilings more than men. Not because they lack talent or ability, it’s a lack of self confidence, audacity and understanding “how and why they should negotiate”. Most organizations today that rank as “top” in their industry, have a heavily dominated male leadership board. So there’s no representation. You can’t expect women to be something they can’t see. So to leave a company to start your own is a bit drastic to most. Lastly, men don’t evaluate the same risk as women. They don’t battle with the same concerns as a woman starting a family (pregnancy) a being a mother, wife and caretaker for family.
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?
Diversity and inclusion has to go past “just awareness and hashtags”. Organizations have to implement action. Begin to open the forum and communicate what’s required and what they are seeking to diversify leadership. Government grants need to target more startups and offer programs that help with the “launch phase”. Honestly as a society, I’d call to task platforms like Netflix with more entertainment that normalize women in leadership running their own companies like Scandal. As crazy as that sounds, so many women were inspired by that show and her ability to out maneuver the men she worked so closely with.
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?
It will reshape society, connect to audiences, and key stakeholders on a deeper level. I feel women offer a perspective that’s often overlooked and quite frankly it impacts profitability and the bottom line. It will also mean a shift in how women are viewed in the workplace and how they are respected by their peers
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
That you can’t have a life outside of this, that we’re lonely, don’t have family or no desire to. Female founders get a bad rep of being hard to deal with “divas”. I also think some women feel they are too old or may have to sell “sex appeal” or a commercial look to appeal to audiences
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?
NO! In the words of Jay-z “Everybody’s bosses ’til it’s time to pay for the office”. I love that bar because social media glamorizes entrepreneurship as if its fun all the time, easy and a way to get rich quick. It also promotes materialism over purpose. My company is not only my passion apart of my purpose, I’m responsible for my team’s careers. I must constantly be open for correction and be dedicated past 5pm, through the weekend etc. You need to have durability. If you want to go clock out and be done when it comes to a business this isn’t for you. A regular job is fine some people find pleasure working with teams, having security, and knowing how much is going to be on their check and if like the feeling of clocking out and then going home, then working for a company would be best.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your opinion and experience, what are the “Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
I’ve Submitted The Video of This:
- Boundaries With Clients
- Write Out The Vision & Mission Clearly
- Turn Over Tasks To Teams & Leave Them There
- Get Clarity On Price Points
- Know When To Unplug
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
My life’s passion is building up black professionals to thrive and connecting black businesses to Big Business. I esteem myself in the fact that every time I help someone in my community that I am not only making it harder to keep systemic racism in place but I am help that person of color to break generational poverty and begin building legacy. I am also working to close the pay gap between women and men. So to see my gift change the trajectory of an entire family for generations to come is truly something that I am extremely grateful for.
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.
Breaking the system in place that prevents and nearly blocks opportunities for people of color. Systemic racism, generational poverty and changing the narrative. I want to normalize wealth in my community.
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.
Robert F Smith. He’s a black billionaire from Texas. The level of work he has put into the community is truly what I aspire to be able to produce myself. I love seeing black and brown leaders in areas that we don’t typically see them in.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Daniella Green of Slaypedia+Transfer Green On The Five Things You Need To Thrive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.