— Jes Wolfe, CEO of Rebel Girls share
Embracing my sensuality and confidence at 56 has been a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. As a certified forum facilitator with YPO and a leadership consultant, I have worked with over 50 women forums and more than 600 senior women leaders across cultures. I see the powerful sense of self-belief, boldness and a quiet sexiness in women over 50. In my experience, I hear a few commonalities.
Acceptance: Start by acknowledging the wisdom that comes from the life experiences you’ve had. What are the lessons of resilience and strength you have learned on the way? Think about the growth you have experienced over the years. What life lessons would you share with your younger self?
Celebration: In a society that often celebrates youth, it is essential to recognize the beauty and allure that comes with age and experience. What if the waist is a couple of inches thicker or there is some cellulite where none existed? Embrace your body exactly as it is. Celebrate the gift of imperfection. Not being a prisoner to the wrinkles and fine lines brings a heady sense of freedom.
Discovery: What is your purpose? What are some of the things that you liked to do but have sat on the back burner? Finding a purpose is like illuminating a dark room with a torchlight. It fills your days with light and joy. What would your 70-year-old self tell your 50-year-old self about a life well lived?
Confidence: Confidence is irresistibly sexy at any age. During your 50s, after having performed many distinct roles in your life, be it daughter, wife, mother, professional. You know exactly what your strengths are. You know your likes and dislikes. Embrace your unique style and personality with pride. Whether rocking your favorite outfit or trying something new, exude confidence in everything you do.
Self-Care: Invest in self-care practices that make you feel radiant from the inside out. Pamper yourself at a spa day, indulge in hobbies you love, or prioritize rest and relaxation. Whatever you choose, self-care is essential for nurturing your mind, body and soul. Honor yourself by acknowledging your needs and prioritizing them.
Embrace Sensuality: Embrace your sensuality with confidence and authenticity. Whether it is through intimacy with a partner or simply enjoying your own femininity, allow yourself to explore and savour the pleasure that comes with embracing your sensual side. Our sexuality does not come with an expiration date.
Connections: Surround yourself with supportive friends and loved ones who uplift and celebrate you. Share your journey of self-love and empowerment with others and be open to learning from their experiences as well. Let go of toxic relationships that suck your energy. Have the courage to draw your own boundaries and let go of situations that no longer serve you.
Practice Gratitude: Cultivate a mindset of gratitude for the blessings in your life, including the gift of aging gracefully. Appreciate the beauty in each moment and find joy in the simple pleasure’s life has to offer.
Inspire Others: Your journey of self-love and confidence can inspire others to embrace their own beauty and worthiness. Share your story openly and authentically and encourage others to celebrate themselves exactly as they are.
By honoring your age, celebrating your body, and embracing your unique beauty, you can radiate confidence and inspire others to do the same. Remember, you are vibrant; you are sexy; and you are unstoppable. Let your light shine brightly for the world to see.
]]>“The state of girlhood has never been so dire as it is today,” she says. “It just makes me want to do more and faster.”
There are alarming statistics informing Wolfe’s concerns. Since 2017, the overall rate of girls’ confidence has declined to 55% from 68%. The biggest drop came from fifth and sixth graders. Fifty-five percent of fifth and sixth graders said that they were unsure if they were smart enough to pursue their dream career; 79% of girls say they’re under so much pressure that they are going to explode; and eight out of 10 girls are so concerned with the way they look that they opt out of important activities such as sports, dances or doctor’s appointments.
“It breaks my heart, and every day it just makes me think about what more can we do, and how much bigger can we do it,” she says.
Wolfe is in a unique position to directly combat this data, as CEO of Rebel Girls, a global, multi-platform girl empowerment brand dedicated to helping raise the most inspired and confident generation of girls through content, experiences, products and community. Co-founded by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo and originating from an international best-selling children’s book, “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls,” Rebel Girls amplifies stories of real-life, extraordinary women throughout history all around the world.
Some of the extraordinary women you already know — Simone Biles, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo — and some you might not, but should: chef Reyna Duong, astronauts Jeanette Epps and Noora Al Matrooshi, and Irish chieftain and seafarer Grace O’Malley, to name just a few.
So far, they have told the stories of more than 2,000 women, with 60% of them being Black, Indigenous and women of color.
“We try to be as intentional as possible so that every girl can see at least one, if not dozens of role models who look like her and feel authentic to her experience,” says Wolfe. “There’s so many layers to diversity and representation, so we’ll continue to push the envelope because it’s fundamental to what we do and who we are.”
A small-town Oregon girl who grew up on a farm and wanted to see and be a part of the world, Wolfe cites Olympic swimmers Summer Sanders and Janet Evans as her childhood heroes. The record-breaking duo motivated Wolfe — a passionate swimmer herself — to get in the pool, work hard and aspire for greatness. But she counts the most influential person in her life as her grandfather, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, was a naval architect, designer, inventor, and late in life earned his law degree.
“He was constantly reinventing himself and getting more education and building new businesses,” Wolfe says. “His attitude toward life and willingness to take risks has been a North Star for me.”
I want these girls to self-identify as Rebel Girls. … To not just be inspired, but truly internalize the ethos that they, too, can be the stars of their own story, the heroes of tomorrow, and they are the ones who are going to change the world. ”
— Jes Wolfe, CEO of Rebel Girls share
After college she spent 16 years living on five continents and working in 25 countries to learn as much as she could. She worked in investment banking, as a consultant, and even at the World Bank before she decided to flex her entrepreneur muscles, building Hoodline, a technology media company that eventually sold to Nextdoor. She also became an angel investor, focusing on women-led companies and funds.
“I view that first decade of my career as my learning mode; how many different experiences could I have?” she says. “And then the second decade of my career has been about building businesses, cultures, and creating impact; that’s really where my heart and soul truly lie.”
By the time she met Favilli in 2019, Rebel Girls had self-published two successful books. Wolfe was ready for a new challenge, recognized the consumer demand for what they were creating, and felt she had the skills and experience to help scale the company. She was totally sold on the ethos.
“You can’t beat the mission: to help raise the most inspired and confident generation of girls,” she says. “There are few ways I could spend my time that would have as much of an impact as Rebel Girls.” She joined the company as a board member in 2019 and became CEO in April 2020.
Not only did Rebel Girl’s rallying cry attract Wolfe, but it also attracted a slew of impressive investors first in the 2020 seed round and then again in the 2023 series A. Formidable women such as Asma Ishaq, Deborah Mei, Gina DÍez Barroso, Joan Jett, Joelle Kayden, Melissa Kushner, and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy participated alongside Owl Ventures, who led the seed round, and Penguin Random House, which came on as a strategic lead for their series A.
“Raising capital is never easy,” she says, citing current interest rates as a barrier to capital for everyone, but especially for women, who only receive 2% of venture funding. “But this is something that the world wanted, and that parents and girls were responding to, and we are proud to have attracted values-aligned investors.”
The capital raised was part of Rebel Girls’ expansion journey toward bigger initiatives and more distribution and content offerings. And as they have expanded, so has the number of women — more than 600 creatives from 50 countries — with whom Wolfe entrusts to tell the Rebel Girl stories as well as hundreds of women and girls whose stories they have told who have become part of the Rebel Girls coalition.
“The community we’ve built has been phenomenal and beyond my wildest dreams in terms of women leaders, entrepreneurs, activists, creators and innovators,” she says. “Everyone wants to inspire and build and be a part of something. And that’s been truly motivational.”
To date, Rebel Girls has sold more than 10 million books in 50 languages and 110 countries. But not every girl is curling up with a physical book. So Wolfe and her team have been nimble with their strategy, including launching audio stories with nearly 50 million listens via podcast, app, YouTube and in-flight entertainment and devices. Wolfe has further expanded the Rebel Girl-verse with partnerships including those with Nike and Google, and in the metaverse with House of Blueberry on Roblox and Minecraft via Stride, an educational company.
“We want to be everywhere girls are,” says Wolfe, who is cognizant of how social media and screen time can impact young girls. “And if that’s in the digital world, we’ll be a part of that as well. But we do it in a safe way that parents can trust and will inspire confidence building and encourage girls to do things in real life in their community.”
The community we’ve built has been phenomenal and beyond my wildest dreams in terms of women leaders, entrepreneurs, activists, creators and innovators. … Everyone wants to inspire and build and be a part of something. And that’s been truly motivational. ”
— Jes Wolfe share
Wolfe has also ushered in Rebel Girls’ “Growing Up Powerful” franchise that teaches girls ages 8-12 important life skills from money management to advice on their changing bodies. In summer 2024, Rebel Girls will release their first fiction series.
The idea grew out of Wolfe’s frustration with entertainment properties that allowed boy protagonists to use their strength and mental prowess to save the day from external threats while girl protagonists were relegated to facing challenges of romance or ‘mean girls,’ or relying on magic rather than their own virtues to save the day. She envisions the series leading to TV series, movies and even theater opportunities.
“It’s our first time world-building, character-building, imagining new story lines, and creating a longer and more encompassing narrative,” says Wolfe. “I want to show the world that you can create a girl-driven fictional series that showcases positive friendships, interpersonal communication and dynamics; that you can build something wonderful that doesn’t rely on horrible tropes.”
Each year, Rebel Girls sends a survey to their customers to measure their impact. In 2023, 94% of parent respondents said Rebel Girls has inspired their daughters, with 86% saying that their girls’ confidence increased because of the company.
The impact of those numbers isn’t lost on Wolfe, especially as Rebel Girls has reached more than 33 million girls with their content (Wolfe’s goal is to hit 100 million by 2030.) Because behind each one is a young girl finding confidence, inspiration, and for some, rules by which one should live.
She recounts a story from one of the many notes she receives from parents reaching out to share Rebel Girl praise where two sisters, ages 7 and 5, were doing a drawing activity at home. The younger sister was struggling and got frustrated enough to throw her papers in the air when her older sister quickly brought her back from the edge of defeat with an impassioned reminder: “You can’t give up – it’s against Rebel Girls law!”
For Wolfe, the story drives home Rebel Girls’ position as leaders in an important movement, especially for generation alpha girls, and that the work they do can make a true difference.
“I want these girls to self-identify as Rebel Girls,” she says. “To not just be inspired, but truly internalize the ethos that they, too, can be the stars of their own story, the heroes of tomorrow, and they are the ones who are going to change the world.”
]]>We count on you to #CountHerIn because everyone deserves the same chance to learn, grow, lead and thrive. Happy International Women’s Day!
]]>It all began in 2004, when new mom Cohen-Farnell — at the time working for a marketing, design and brand strategy agency — was looking for childcare for her son, Max, when she discovered something troubling: The food served to the little ones, regardless of neighborhood, price or educational philosophy, was highly processed and designed for convenience, not optimal nutrition.
“The pre-packaged convenience food model was the only game in town, not because it was the right way to feed kids, but because no one had challenged the status quo,” says Cohen-Farnell. “Max was born at home, breastfed for 18 months and always fed high quality organic, nutritious and delicious foods. I wanted to continue to train and expand his palate and base his earliest memories on the right kind of food.”
So, when she eventually chose the YMCA Family Development Centre in Downtown Toronto, she sent Max off with his own food and water. As the caregivers, center director, and kids became more interested in Max’s lunches and snacks, the YMCA asked Cohen-Farnell to help them create a healthier food program for the 100 kids under their care.
Having grown up in Paris in a home where tasty healthy food made from scratch was the norm, Cohen-Farnell jumped at the chance. “My grandmother’s kitchen was my playground. We would visit the farmers market several times a week and I was encouraged to smell and touch the food. We interacted and exchanged ideas with the farmers and local producers as we planned the delicious meals we would cook together that day.”
With the green light from the YMCA, Cohen-Farnell started a five-month bespoke snack pilot program based on locally grown and prepared healthy foods she sourced and delivered with the help of a local food grocer.
“This is how Real Food for Real Kids was born,” she says. “Out of love for providing kids in childcare the type of foods they need to grow healthy bodies and minds.”
The pilot for Max’s YMCA was a success, so Cohen-Farnell’s contract was extended to provide the same snack program for 12 other YMCA centers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Meanwhile, Cohen-Farnell’s passion to change the quality of food provided in childcare centers began to attract the attention of local and international media, providing her with speaking opportunities about the importance of feeding kids real food.
In 2005, another group of childcare centers approached Cohen-Farnell about providing more than 200 children with snacks and hot lunches — and the nascent team was ready.
“I quit my job in May 2004. We took a second mortgage on our house, hired a couple of amazing people, and went through a full-scale re-think of childcare food service,” she recalls.
While her husband David focused on creating an operational model capable of producing the quality products at a price the nonprofit childcare centers could afford, Cohen-Farnell focused on recipe development and marketing.
“The strategy from the start was to provide kids in childcare centers deliciously prepared hot lunches and snacks made of healthy meat and fish, fruits and vegetables, free of artificial ingredients, fake sweeteners, factory-farmed meats, and fillers of any kind,” says Cohen-Farnell.
Twenty years and four kitchen locations later, following the same strategy, the team has grown to 151 people, serving meals and snacks to an average of 50,000 kids a day in childcare centers, schools and camps in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.
While currently not involved in the day-to-day operations — in 2017 she took a step back from work to heal herself from Lyme disease using bee venom therapy — Cohen-Farnell continues to play a role in the strategic planning, research and development as well as spreading and sharing her knowledge in public speaking engagements related to health optimization and longevity.
RFRK’s future plans include expanding geographically and to the childcare centers that have a kitchen but require made-from-scratch products to solve complex nutritional challenges.
“We will always maintain the same high-quality values that we started with. It has to be healthy and delicious — while maintaining the same culture of a small company with strong family values and a love of real food,” says Cohen-Farnell.
For Cohen-Farnell, witnessing the direct positive impact on children’s health and families has been especially rewarding. And while she admits it was never an easy path, she credits their organic growth on the following key tenets:
Cohen-Farnell attributes a large part of RFRK’s success to their strong company culture, which she built around a sustainability framework of prioritizing people, planet and profit.
“People are excited to join us in our mission to change the way kids eat and perceive food,” she says. “RFRK staff eat the same amazing lunch we provide to the kids we serve, sharing delicious healthy meals made fresh from scratch and with love.”
As North American food habits remain on a dangerous slide away from nutritious and locally grown whole foods, toward cheap, highly processed convenience foods, our work continues to heavily rely on education. ”
— Lulu Cohen-Farnell, Founder and Food Innovation Master, Real Food for Real Kids share
Today, RFRK remains a women-driven workforce, with more than 50% of the leadership team female. “Women, especially mothers, are more connected to food, because of the nurturing side. But I would say a lot of people, both men and women, come to work with us because of our mandate to change the way children perceive food, challenging the perception that kids are commodities.”
“This is a very complex business on many levels. We have a mandate to deliver on time, in full, at correct temperatures, and within 15 minutes of our set delivery time every day,” she says.
“We also need to cater to kids with allergies and food sensitivities and ensure strict quality controls while scaling the operation. The possibilities of making mistakes at every stage means high risks in this labor-intensive business.”
When Cohen-Farnell’s program came up against government nutrition mandates, she advocated for a change in the definition of locally grown food and helped update the Canadian Food Guide.
“The written, outdated rule defining ‘locally grown food’ was 50 kilometers from farm to kitchen. But this was no longer accurate given the expansion of urbanization, as the closest farms were a bit over 100 kilometers from the Real Food Kitchen,” says Cohen-Farnell. “So, I challenged this and was able to change the definition of ‘locally grown food’ to ‘food grown within the province.’ That was a big win, not only for Real Food Kitchen but for all food institutions in Canada focusing on locally grown.”
Like so many other catering companies, RFRK faced several disruptions during the pandemic lock down restrictions. But with team support, government funding and the introduction of cold chain catering (temperature-controlled supply chain packaging systems), RFRK introduced new capabilities to deliver meals to families at home.
Another ongoing challenge remains the cost of production as food prices increase. Cohen-Farnell and her team are committed to making food from scratch and prioritizing both quality and affordability. “This has made us integrate and introduce all kinds of innovations to keep prices affordable while ensuring our high-quality standards are not compromised in a very competitive industry,” says Cohen-Farnell.
She adds that with all the cooking from scratch for thousands of kids every day, small amounts of excess food are inevitable. Since 2010, RFRK has been expanding its Real Food Forward initiative, building relationships with community organizations, including women’s shelter homes to donate thousands of kilos of surplus food, which would otherwise have gone to waste.
Today, the family-owned and operated company continues to work and collaborate with government and other stakeholders, investing in educational campaigns and creating awareness of healthier food choices for kids.
“In 2004, people did not pay much attention to the importance of feeding kids quality foods and instilling healthy eating habits for life. No emphasis was put on sustainably grown foods. We had to educate children and families to take their nutrition seriously and eat better quality foods,” recalls Cohen-Farnell.
“As North American food habits remain on a dangerous slide away from nutritious and locally grown whole foods, toward cheap, highly processed convenience foods, our work continues to heavily rely on education.”
]]>“When I grew up in Ghana, I couldn’t get a job that would make even USD3,000 a year. And the only option for people like me was to leave. There was no remote work,” he explains.
Coleman, only 19 when he left home, quickly dove into the world of startups in the United States. After a few gigs, he became a founding employee of StayNTouch, a hotel property management software company that was acquired in 2017. It was then that Coleman paused to find a way to bridge his love of entrepreneurship with his desire to support others back home, so they didn’t have to leave Africa to provide for their families or pursue their dreams.
For personal and business reasons, he landed on Meaningful Gigs. He says he felt strongly that creativity was what made a difference in his life.
He explains, “When I was a kid, I watched one movie over and over – Eddie Murphy’s ‘Coming to America.’ It was the first time I’d ever seen a Black man, especially an African man, portrayed in a movie as the rich, eloquent hero – not as a slave or a poor person. That inspired me to want to do more than what I had access to in my little Ghanaian world. I’d always believed that creativity made somebody with less feel like they can do more.”
Africa is also a ripe market for talent. Coleman points out that by 2035, every year more young Africans will enter the workforce than in the rest of the world combined. It’s the youngest continent, and by 2050, one in four people on the planet will call Africa home.
“It is mind-blowing,” Coleman says, acknowledging the business opportunity. In his work at various startups, Coleman says, “We would hire people from India and Eastern Europe. But nobody was hiring from Africa. I knew hundreds of millions of people were super educated, super skilled, had access to the internet and could work for companies.”
Every time people try to put you in a box, ignore them. Follow your heart and do the things you care about. That will serve you better than trying to fit into someone’s idea of who you should be. ”
— Ronnie Kwesi Coleman, CEO of Meaningful Gigs share
He knew he had found an untapped market and set to introduce American and global companies to the talent in Africa, building a bridge of creativity using technology. He and his two co-founders, Stephanie Nachemja-Bunton (also his wife) and Max Farago, launched Meaningful Gigs in 2019 with designers they vetted in a few African countries and small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.
“Covid was a huge accelerant to our business,” Coleman acknowledges. He explains the company was initially working with startups used to hiring remotely. “The Amazons, Googles and Johnson & Johnson’s had invested a lot in their campuses, so they weren’t using remote talent.”
The pandemic hit just as Meaningful Gigs was getting off the ground. “These bigger companies realized their productivity stayed the same and their costs were lower with remote work.”
Coleman credits the internet for making Meaningful Gigs possible. But to achieve his goal of providing 100,000 skilled jobs for Africans by 2028, he says “something else needs to shake that Etch-a-Sketch.” That’s where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.
“People are scared that AI will take jobs, but AI is going to give a kid in Lagos the same technology, the same opportunity as a Steven Spielberg,” he explains, with excitement.
Like any new tool, fear will diminish once people realize the good it can do. “There’s always fear when something is new,” he explains. “From farming to industrialization to the electric light bulb, it is always a threat until the people who used it properly actually did better than the people who rejected it.”
Coleman and his team are using AI to build tools for their creatives and their customers to make them more productive. “Even if you’re a kid in Nigeria who never went to design school, by using the right AI tools, you could be a hundred times more productive than somebody who went to some top design school,” he says.
Coleman’s goal is broader than creating 100,000 skilled jobs for people in Africa.
“We want to affect a billion people on the planet and impact their lives whether it’s through creativity or beyond,” he says. “Africa is just the first step. There are kids in South America, Southeast Asia, and people who are super talented and just need a shot. That’s our next long-term frontier.”
Coleman doesn’t settle. His drive can be attributed to his family and his upbringing. His first language is Russian, having been born in Ukraine to a Ukrainian and Jewish mother and a Ghanaian father. They lived in London for a few years before settling in Ghana when Coleman was 10.
We want to build something big, that has scale, that can impact lives for hundreds of years, not just the short-term. ”
— YPO member Ronnie Kwesi Coleman share
“People try to put others in a box too much,” he says. “In Ukraine, I was the Black guy. In London, they considered me biracial. Then in Ghana, I was considered white. Back in America, I’m Black. My advice to anyone is every time people try to put you in a box, ignore them. Follow your heart and do the things you care about. That will serve you better than trying to fit into someone’s idea of who you should be.”
Coleman uses his life experience to help others thrive and dream.
“It’s not enough to just build a business that does good. We’re not a nonprofit,” he adds. “We want to build something big, that has scale, that can impact lives for hundreds of years, not just the short-term.”
]]>YPO, the largest community of chief executives in the world, is where many women leaders are turning to connect, learn and grow in their leadership journeys.
“YPO makes it efficient for us to connect to those who share common goals and values,” says Norma Chu , YPO member and CEO of DayDayCook, one of China’s most popular lifestyle and cooking content provider. “We can all learn together; we can all have fun together; we can all explore and expand together as individuals. I think that goes above and beyond any kind of professional networking that you would get in other organization. Plus It’s kind of rare to be able to identify these lifelong friendships at our stage in life. because we all get so busy and our 24 hours is already filled, right?”
Chu and three other CEOs share their experiences with YPO and its professional and personal impact on their lives.
A friend introduced Radhika Gupta, Managing Director and CEO of one of India’s top 15 asset management companies, Edelweiss Asset Management Limited, to YPO, but she was initially hesitant.
“I’m an introverted person, though I do like to meet people,” she admits. “But I realized that as you rise in your profession, having candid conversations with your team becomes very difficult. I didn’t want to join for networking per se; I wanted to join for the quality of relationships.”
With a mindset of quality over quantity, opportunities like the Women’s Business Network, which connects members and promotes engagement around topics relevant to the female executive, were perfect for Gupta. Despite the network’s vast global footprint, it was easy to connect with women executives around the world.
“I think the experiences that women go through as they navigate their career and homes, they genuinely don’t have borders. The context can be different, because you’re in India or the U.S., but especially across Asia and South Asia, I don’t think there are borders,” says Gupta. She recalls a time she connected with another member in South Africa at an event. They stayed in touch and Gupta ended up addressing more women from that region at another event. “I got as much out of it, probably even more, than what I gave,” she says.
Joanne Goldman, CEO of THEANIMALS, an Australian apparel and lifestyle brand for humans and pets, had a similar experience.
“It’s just astounding how you’re on completely different ends of the world and have very different cultures, yet you come into a meeting and immediately you’ve got so much to talk about,” says Goldman. “I feel really privileged to have exposure to such incredible people and have them there if I need support or advice. I reach out to them more than my oldest friends.”
Managing Director at Anaika Collections Sdn Bhd, Lavina Melwani Valiram found that type of camaraderie globally and regionally, within APAC. APAC’s geographical proximity, background and history, their commonalities — from cultural milieu to daily challenges — help them connect and support one another, she shares.
“When we engage, whether it’s from a space of how we work, how we deal with our companies, how we would think about taking our companies public, how we would handle our financial problems, it’s a very shared culture,” she says. “So if we sit down together, even though we speak different languages, we’re speaking the same language.”
Being able to relate and connect over similarities is undoubtably beneficial. But being able to connect and discover new perspectives outside of your own is just as valuable for today’s leaders. That’s where YPO’s global community really is unique.
For Chu, her forum (a small, tight-knit group within YPO that forge deep, trusting relationships) has been a place for support, but also a place of discovery. She’s learned about the work her forum mates do across various industries, and that some of their challenges aren’t too far from her own. But then again, some are – and hearing about those differences are just as helpful.
“Some of the challenges they had were completely foreign to me. But just knowing what other people were doing in businesses I think just broadens my world,” she says.
Radhika agrees, sharing that it can be easy to solely focus on your sector exclusively, but having perspective from different industries, especially during tumultuous times like the pandemic, has helped her in her own leadership role. She also has found it beneficial to be in a forum with members representing a wide range of ages. As she is younger in her career and recently had a baby, so she can learn from the experiences of those with decades more life under their belts within her forum — and vice versa.
There is also something to be said about diverse gender perspectives.
Valisham remembers a time that one of her companies was failing. She was feeling shame, and unsure of what to do because the company was so visible publicly. A man in her forum gave her blunt advice: No one cared; and if it was failing, no one was paying attention. Cut your losses and move on. His feedback helped her get out of her head. “It was so simple and so profound that I had the nerve to just shut the thing down in the next 12 months,” she says.
Failure, or at least conversation about failure, is what Valisham has really come to appreciate from her time with YPO.
“That interests me more than success because nobody talks about failure. When you can examine the holes, and admit and accept what you didn’t know and what didn’t work — even in a seemingly perfect business or company — you learn a lot from that,” she says. “There’s a sense of relief when you share your own mistakes, just admitting them and hearing yourself talk about them makes it okay to have made them. YPO provides a platform where you don’t need to be afraid and you’re not judged.”
Goldman has also found YPO to be a place she can confront fears and take on new challenges.
“I think what I gained the most was that I learned to really think about what I wanted out of my life and what I wanted to do,” she says, sharing that she always felt that she wanted to do more, to have her own business and be an entrepreneur. But circumstances had led her to various CEO roles to support her family. “Being in forum helped me realize what I wanted out of the next stage of my life. I gained the courage to walk away from a very big, significant role and take the plunge to launch my own business.”
Chu’s biggest benefits have been more abstract.
“I think the impact is less on the day-to-day execution side of things, but more on how we mentally prepare and develop ourselves to face different obstacles,” she says. “It’s more on a higher level, like mental toughness training; and it’s really effective.”
]]>The event was well attended, with a total of 21 guests including 11 prospects and 10 members. Wouchlay Tang, Chapter Chair of YPO Cambodia, introduced the chapter’s offerings, before Sanjay Shah, Regional Strategic Project Officer, delivered opening remarks and an overview of YPO Southeast Asia. Next came a lively panel discussion, where speakers including Shah, Tommy Sim, Chapter Mentoring Officer at YPO Cambodia and Alan Hepburn of YPO Singapore shared their personal experiences with YPO.
Following this was a YPO Learning workshop on Leadership, conducted by Hepburn, CEO of The Hepburn Group, which consults for private developers on leisure and hospitality projects. Hepburn is also CEO of Advisory Board Architects, which helps companies build high-impact director- and advisory boards.
The three-and-a-half-hour workshop began with an unusual proposition: participants were asked to imagine they had just acquired the Rosewood Phnom Penh and to create a mission and set of values for it.
“A company’s values have to involve more than just making as much money as possible, because that’s not enough for people to align behind,” said Hepburn. “It’s also important to articulate these values clearly, build an environment around them and follow them consistently. A company’s values have far-reaching effects – they impact performance recognition, give employees a sense of purpose and teach them how to behave around each other and those outside the company,” said Hepburn, who also emphasized the need for defined internal and external communication.
The interactive discussion proved eye-opening. “At least two participants shared that they were going back to their excos to spend time creating their set of core values, so it was a useful discussion,” said Hepburn. Eric Tan, a YPO Cambodia member, agreed. “I like the learning experience component of the event, learning the basics of how to bring our own company to the next level from the simple steps shared,” said Tan.
“Research shows that organisations with learning cultures are higher performing, with more market share,” said Hepburn. “The theory is that if you’re a learning person, you’re going to be a better and more engaged employee. Empowering workers with continuous opportunities to learn and upgrade themselves – whether it’s learning French, developing sales expertise or playing a new musical instrument – helps to develop a company’s learning culture,” said Hepburn. He also shared examples of companies who’ve done this successfully, such as by allocating their employees budgets to invest in their preferred courses. Event participants were then challenged to envision what a learning culture would look like, the kinds of developmental courses they would offer to staff and who would be responsible for driving initiatives.
Hepburn also touched on the importance of effective delegation, a particularly important topic in Southeast Asia where a large number of businesses are family controlled or operated. “Family businesses have an entirely different dynamic,” said Hepburn. “For example, many important discussions and decisions may be made at the Sunday morning breakfast table rather than the boardroom.” He also shared how they face unique challenges. For example, while a company may have passed to a younger generation, its original founder may still wield considerable influence, complicating workflow and decision making. “This is why it’s important to conduct succession training, so people understand the need to delegate responsibility and give the next generation agency to make critical decisions.”
During the panel discussion, each speaker shared how YPO offers several areas of value as a “truly international organisation”, with 34,000 CEOs and 500 highly engaged chapters around the world. The Singapore chapter, for example, organises about one event a week, covering diverse topics ranging from business and leadership to personal development. Significantly, regional meetings in Southeast Asia are especially diverse, with multiple ethnicities represented and the highest percentage of female members (22% and rising).
Hepburn also highlighted YPO’s “Networks”, global, opt-in interest groups which focus on specific themes such as personal investing or doing business in China. Unlike during other YPO activities, Networks participants are allowed to pitch for business as well as solicit investors or board members.
Hepburn also spoke about YPO’s Forum, which he described as “a game-changer for most YPO members”. There are currently 3,800 Forums, each containing small groups of members, their spouses and young adult children. These are run by a specialised group of 100 rigorously-vetted, highly-skilled professionals in an atmosphere of confidentiality and respect, making them a valuable resource to which CEOs can turn to for insight and perspective only their trusted peers can provide. Whether it’s critical business advice or “where to go for the best African safari,” said Hepburn, “Forums are one place leaders can go and talk about anything without fear of judgement, get useful perspectives and make better decisions. It’s a fantastic value proposition when you join.”
The event’s participants acknowledged this, along with the invaluable networking and learning opportunities YPO membership offers. Sokchea Van said she enjoyed the event as it served as a valuable new platform for her to “learn from other CEOs”.
Fellow prospect Demi Kambur agreed, saying CEOs could use YPO as a powerful tool to improve themselves and become “better leaders for tomorrow”. “It’s a resource and support system that allows you to connect and collaborate with like-minded individuals, not only in business, but with personal growth as well,” said Kambur. “I hope that I can better myself, and use these tools and education to give back to the Cambodian community.”
]]>In the venture capital world, who is writing the checks can have a big impact on who gets funded. The lack of gender diversity in key decision-making roles is one of the reasons that Rhodes launched Aruwa Capital in 2019, a women-led firm that invests in women founders and businesses that serve the female economy. “At the time, there were less than 10 funds in the whole continent that were owned and founded by women. There was only about 2% of capital going to startups and female entrepreneurs. So, for me, it was very clear the reason that I wasn’t making much traction was because I couldn’t be what I couldn’t see.”
Representation can be a powerful tool for achieving equity in funding, explains Rhodes. Women investors or fund managers are three times more likely to invest in a woman CEO and twice as likely to invest in a woman founder. “You have a natural trickle-down effect when you have women in capital allocation roles.”
A limited network is also a barrier for women founders, says Rodewald. Men often have built-in networks that they can access when they’re seeking partners and investors. Women must be intentional about building relationships and making connections that will help them raise money as their businesses grow.
It’s a challenge that Rodewald notes is common for women founders, including herself. “I didn’t have a network of other people that were connected in venture. So, I was starting from basically zero, and I had to build that over time.” Her most valuable network came through The Founder’s Institute program, an accelerator for pre-seed startups. Rodewald says she can track nearly all her funding back to a contact she made in this program.
Networks can be useful for women at all levels of an organization, and Rodewald has prioritized connections at Instant Teams. By creating opportunities for mentoring and upskilling at all career stages, not just young professionals, and promoting from within the organization, her employees have direct access to a team with varied experiences and insights, a condition that is ultimately good for the company as well as the bottom line.
Investments can look different through a gendered lens, and Rhodes and Rodewald agree that their everyday perspectives and lived experiences give them unique insights. The woman economy is an untapped market and a big opportunity for founders and investors, explains Rhodes. In Africa, 80% of consumer spending decisions are driven by women. “Women’s health and other sectors may seem niche to people who are not direct consumers of it, but I think as you’re a woman that’s writing the check and the potential consumer, it gives you that perspective to really understand the size of the market and to really invest in those untapped sectors.”
Rodewald’s firsthand experience helped when she was raising funds for Instant Teams, a talent marketplace that creates outsourcing solutions for employers and remote careers for military spouses. As a military spouse herself, she was entrenched in the community she was trying to reach and could speak directly to their needs and how the business could effectively serve them. She framed her position as the perfect founder/market fit and a strength when pitching investors. But she cautions, her personal experience had diminishing returns as she advanced in her fundraising stages. Later, it was essential to focus on the metrics. Yes, she already had a “good story”, but she needed to move past that to help investors see the business opportunity. “When you get into that later stage funding, it’s not so much about ‘Am I betting on the founder?’ It’s like, now you have the metrics, the growth metrics, right? Do they make sense to be funded, to continue to scale this organization?”
The onus is not only on women entrepreneurs to drive equity in funding. Investors can check their own unconscious biases by the questions they ask when vetting women founders and women-led companies. For instance, Rhodes explains that women are asked prevention questions when pitching their business, like, how are they mitigating risk? Males are asked promotion questions like, how are you going to grow your business? These questions reinforce the idea that women-led businesses are riskier, but businesses run by men have more potential.
Equity should also be an expectation when investors are making decisions on what businesses to fund. “We spend a lot of time with our portfolio companies in due diligence to make sure that if there isn’t the level of equity that we would expect, we’re designing plans to get to that during our investment period,” says Rhodes.
By diversifying decision-makers, empowering women’s networks and addressing biases, Rhodes and Rodewald are confident that the dismal funding gap for women can be narrowed. They’ve already seen small improvements over their careers, and Rhodes says, “Once you change the people in the room and the people that are actually making the investment decisions, we’ll hopefully make some more headway.”
]]>Nicolette Maury studied to be a chemical engineer expecting to spend her days developing innovative products and playing a role in solving the world’s biggest challenges. The real world had different ideas. After graduation, her opportunities were in quality control and cost-cutting, which, she says, did not excite her.
Being nimble, she shifted to management consulting. “It introduced me to the world of business and strategy and big-picture thinking,” she says. “And I loved the intellectual challenge.”
Still, she missed the practical application of building something tangible.
Maury, who joined YPO in 2018, fused her first love, engineering, and her experience in business with her youthful aspiration to make a difference in the world when she became Chief Executive Officer of the Sydney-based Avani. In her role leading the technology company that decarbonizes buildings, Maury is working toward solving the globe’s biggest challenge – its own viability.
“Commercial real estate is one of the largest contributors to global carbon emissions, but it’s a complex problem,” says Maury. She adds that while companies increasingly have sustainability targets and ESG plans in place, most aren’t confident that they can deliver the improvements needed to drive real change.
Avani, she explains, has spent almost two decades developing advanced integration technologies that actively decarbonize buildings by changing the way they behave. The platform connects with existing building technologies, usually in larger commercial buildings but anywhere there is significant energy usage or resource usage – heating, lighting, water – anything that goes into the operations of a building.
Avani’s systems work to eliminate waste by accessing a building’s data, applying self-correcting automated actions to change the building’s behavior, and tracking the improvements of sustainability initiatives through a series of user-friendly dashboards and reports.
“Decarbonizing buildings is our opportunity to make a lasting impact on climate change while helping our clients unlock a greater impact of their own,” Maury says.
Decarbonizing buildings is our opportunity to make a lasting impact on climate change while helping our clients unlock a greater impact of their own. ”
— Nicolette Maury, CEO, Avani Solutions share
By “changing a building’s behavior,” Maury means they can help their clients shift the time of day that they use certain energies, reduce the overall amount that they’re using and help them use energy when there’s more renewable energy in the grid, not when they’re exclusively pulling dirty sources of energy.
A chain of grocery stores uses a lot of energy to maintain the proper refrigeration for its products. With the data Avani collects, the store can choose when to push power into its freezers, based on when the renewable energy grid has ample supply, or when to pull back.
“What’s powerful about that is that instead of these buildings being a drain on the energy grid or contributing negatively to climate change, they become part of the solution,” Maury explains.
Do you bring a sweater into a movie theater even though it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement outside? Avani solves for that by integrating a cinema chain client’s ticketing platform data and creating rules that match the cinema’s operations to the attendance numbers, saving energy.
“Let’s say a showing at a particular time is at less than 50% capacity,” Maury says. “The system knows to dial down the air conditioning. Not only are you saving energy and saving money, but you are also not freezing your patrons.”
She adds, “That example shows that rather than there being a trade-off between emissions cost and human experience, in most cases we can make it all better, and it becomes a win-win.”
Maury acknowledges that it is sometimes difficult to measure the impact Avani is making.
“A lot of the work we do is preventing usage of energy or resources, so we’re effectively finding ways to stop people from emitting more carbon, to stop people from using more water, to stop them from generating more waste,” Maury says. “So it can be hard for clients to measure the impact of their actions without having the data to back it up”.
One way to gauge the impact is to measure the baseline energy usage and carbon emissions that a company was producing across their building operations and then assess what happened when they implemented the Avani platform.
For one client, Maury says, they found they were saving over 1,100 tons of CO2 per year.
Another client cut 21% of their energy usage, which saved them almost 50% of their operational costs.
Explains Maury, “It wasn’t just the reduced energy that was having a benefit. They were also having operational savings from the central view they had of what was happening across their building operations. They were able to better manage their maintenance work across their buildings and better manage their staff so that they were doing higher value-added work.”
Before coming to Avani, Maury led teams at various companies that solve problems or disrupt industries through technology. ‘Engineer’ Maury enjoys defining clients’ unmet needs where innovation can help while ‘business consultant’ Maury likes leading people through the processes of transformation and change.
“I get excited about the role that technology can play in solving complex problems,” she says.
She left Australia in 2019 and spent four years in Europe, getting involved in the ESG strategy for a major European bank. She returned in 2023 because, she says, she was passionate about finding a way to accelerate Australia’s journey into becoming one of the key players in solving climate change worldwide, instead of, in her words, “punching below our weight.”
She adds, “That’s what brought me to Avani. I was looking for an opportunity to apply those transformational change skills and technology platforms to climate change in Australia and to help us become a global contributor to the overall climate change challenge.”
Like many parents, Maury, who has three sons from primary school age to teenage, feels the pressure to protect the planet. “The concept of what world I want to leave behind for them is such a hugely emotional topic that makes me say ‘far out,’” she says. “We have been irresponsible in how we have used our natural resources. I want to leave this world better than we found it.”
She thinks of that when she’s feeling particularly challenged at work. “At the end of the day, goodness gracious, we’ve got so much work to do to make this planet healthy, sustainable and thriving. And we’ve got the technology to do it, so that makes me hugely optimistic.”
Next for Maury is Avani’s Net Zero Tracker, which will help companies define their target timelines to reach net zero and plan out how to get there – and course-correct along the way.
She explains, “This moves companies from an aspirational net zero target to an achievable and accountable one. In some cases, it can take them to what we call real zero, which is not relying on carbon credits but getting them to a point where rather than taking resources from the world around you, you are contributing beneficial outcomes.”
Speaking to her YPO member peers, she says, “We all have a huge responsibility as YPO members no matter what business we’re in to understand how we can have a positive impact on the world. In every business I’ve been in, my focus has been on how I can amplify my work so that in addition to generating business results, it also generates social or environmental results. Everyone at YPO has the power to make a difference.”
]]>“I have been a business owner for 43 years, and in all that time, you are the first company that has ever told me that what I am doing really matters.”
Those tearful words shared by a small business owner with Carissa Reiniger, Founder and CEO of Silver Lining, remain a powerful reminder to her that she’s chosen the right career path.
“In that moment I realized just how thankless, lonely and often scary it is to be a small business owner,” she recalls. “That they feel like we care about them and are advocating for them makes everything worth it.”
Reiniger is a big believer in the power of small businesses — and she has the global data to back it up: 90% of the world’s companies are small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and they account for 70% of global employment while generating 70% of the gross domestic product in developed countries.
“Small business owners are driving most of the engines from which we all benefit. They are in the fabric of our society,” she says. “And yet, as a population, we are obsessed with tech start-ups raising millions, selling for billions and finding the next unicorn.”
Silver Lining is her remedy for making things right, a play for character over charisma when it comes to entrepreneurs. A SaaS and fintech platform based in behavior change science, Silver Lining supports small businesses in setting and hitting their growth goals. Since launching in 2005, Reiniger and her team have supported more than 14,000 small business owners in 76 countries.
“One of the most beautiful parts of my work is meeting these small businesses all around the world,” she says. “And I’ve realized that my life’s work is to build something that can stand and live beyond me.”
With a knack for business development and a background in behavioral science, Reiniger quickly realized that her first job at an advertising company was not going to fulfill her. Around the same time, she was frequenting small business meetups to connect with people in her new city, Toronto, and she discovered a calling that would.
“I was so inspired by how passionate they were and the sacrifices they made to pursue what they were called to do. I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if I used my business development skills to help a small business owner make more money?’”
Support for SMBs traditionally comes from government economic development agencies, private coaches, nonprofits, and academics via training and mentorship programs. This approach was flawed, and Reiniger envisioned a different path.
“Behavior change science teaches you that education, training and mentorship serve the purpose of building knowledge, but not the purpose of creating change,” she says. “The small business industry is spending billions globally trying to help small businesses succeed. But it’s not working, and it’s an indictment on the industry. If we want to actually change someone’s behavior, we need to wrap them in long-term comprehensive support.”
That’s where the Silver Lining Action Plan (SLAP) methodology comes in. Small business owners complete a three-hour guided process detailing their values, what they do, their ideal client profile, expenses, revenue streams, pricing, profit margins and a 12-month action plan that combines marketing, sales, and business development into a clear and simple format. In total, 280 data points are collected on every small business owner.
Once their SLAP is created, customers have unlimited access to the platform to track their progress, connect with other SMBs, entrepreneurs and industry experts from around the world, and earn perks and rewards. Reiniger and her team feed this data into an algorithm that uses technology-driven nudges and human interventions to prompt entrepreneurs to take certain actions based on their work and communication preferences and patterns of behavior to get the results they want.
On average, 80% of business owners hit their goals with SLAP. The average failure rate of SMBs overall is 90%.
As Reiniger puts it, it’s tech-enabled and data-driven, but still incredibly human. She explains, “We can use technology to allow for our humanness, our justice and our impact to grow. That’s the question we need to be asking CEOs right now. It’s not about how we manage the technology or how they’re all opposing forces. But rather, ‘As CEOs are we using every tool we have at our disposal to do good?’”
In the early days of Silver Lining, like many tech entrepreneurs, Reiniger operated under the assumption that she’d raise venture capital. She did a fundraising round and had all the term sheets, but ultimately realized that she’d rather be beholden to her customers than to investors.
Walking away from guaranteed money when her company had accrued debt wasn’t easy and made the next years difficult. But she decided to “build the business the old-fashioned way,” focusing on sales, paying off debt over time, and investing as much money as she could into the software and Silver Lining’s growth.
“What I learned from that experience was that if I had been honest with myself sooner about my ambitions and ideas, and how I wanted to build this company, I could have saved time and money,” she says. “However, what we’ve done is audaciously ambitious, and I’m proud of where we’ve ended up.”
Betting on herself and her company became a habit. In 2021, Silver Lining began providing their customers with small loans and alternative equity capital based 100% on their activity within the SLAP program as opposed to traditional underwriting models such as credit scores and cash flow. To date, Silver Lining Capital has issued 83 SLAPloans.
For many SMBs, a loan of USD50,000 allows them to make significant progress. In the case of one SLAPloans recipient, Row House Publishing, a U.S.-based, justice-focused book publisher, that investment led to the publishing of titles from diverse first-time authors, expanding available perspectives and widening the ripple effect of Silver Lining. To date, SLAP customers have created more than 100,000 jobs and USD7 billion in capital.
“We are truly betting on our own data. And the reason that matters is because of our access-for-all policy, that any small business can access our support because there is no financial barrier to get in.”
While the monthly price of using Silver Lining is USD300, Reiniger knew that cost could eliminate a significant amount of small businesses from using the platform. So, she instituted an Access for All policy, allowing customers to set a price they can afford based on their expected sales goals. No cumbersome applications, no questions asked. She estimates that 90% of businesses that have used SLAP in the past 10 years would not have been able to do so without this policy.
“Our community is so diverse, and there are so many people who probably weren’t receiving support before they got SLAP,” she says. “We would have been perpetuating the exact issue that we’re trying to solve. That’s why our pricing model matters so much. It’s inherently complicated as a CEO, but it is the right decision in every way.”
Economic justice has been baked into Reiniger’s business plan from the beginning, but in recent years her approach has caught the attention of larger entities. In 2021, they launched the American Small Business Growth Program supported by Wells Fargo. which gave SLAP access to 1,270 U.S.-based SMBs from marginalized communities. And they launched Impact5X Economic Justice Initiative supported by GoDaddy and JPMorgan Chase, which supported 500 global SMBs from marginalized communities with SLAP access and SLAPloans.
Internally, Reiniger and her team continue to enhance the support and resources they provide SMBs, including now offering the platform in Spanish and finding ways within the platform to accommodate the neurodivergent. It’s all in support of the customers who became a calling for Reiniger almost 20 years ago.
“I care so much because each of these individuals gives so much, and so much of our livelihood depends on them,” she says. “So, I consider it an honor to work with them, to understand their realities, and to be a small part of their journeys.”
]]>