supporting women

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Episode 70- Imène Maharzi's vision to educate and train 2000 female business angels and get female founders greater access to capital for their startups.

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Terri talks to Imène Maharzi about why she started OwnYourCash this year to educate and train 2000 new female business angels and get female founders greater access to capital for their startups.   

Who is Imène Maharzi?  

Imène Maharzi is a French based professional, who started working in the French Private Equity space 18 years ago. She started out her career as an auditor with Arthur Andersen, and then became an investment professional with Butler Capital Partners where she had the opportunity to explore several sectors, geographies, investment sizes and targets.  

In 2013, she created Butterfly Partners, a company which invests time and money in start-ups and subject matter experts which demonstrate a social or environmental positive impact. In 2014-2015, she took over a majority stake in a school transportation company dedicated to exceptional children with autism, Down syndrome, etc.. As the CEO, she transformed a 15-year family business into a social business, with a resolution to trigger a positive social impact on both employees and beneficiaries, through a strong user-centric, quality-driven approach.  

As she moved through her professional career, she noticed that there was a problem in getting access to capital for female founders that she saw resulted in a massive waste of both economic and social value. This led her to create OwnYourCash this year. OwnYourCash is an educational platform, both online and IRL, to train women (and men) to become Business Angels. By opening a conversation on biases, gender-lens investing and impact investing, OwnYourCash will contribute to smoother access to capital for projects co-founded by women. 

With OwnYourCash, she is committed to training 2000 new female business angels by the year 2020.  The mission of OwnYourCash is to foster economic independence for women leading to true male/female equality 

  

Show Highlights 

  • Imène shared her professional journey into private equity and ultimately starting her new company OwnYourCash to educate and train 2000 new female business angels by 2020.   

  • Imène talks about social entrepreneurship in France…creating a social return and a financial return.   

  • Imène shares the details on OwnYourCash and how the time is right to educate new business angels and create a new business angle network and how the change in the tax laws in France this year will be a positive thing for new business angels. 

  • If Imène had a magic wand, she would make the ‘plain vanilla’ investing be impact investing with everyone going after economic return along with a social or environmental return.   

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Investing is an information business.  

 

References in the Podcast 

 

Contact 

Imène can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/im%C3%A8ne-maharzi-439294/. 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

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Episode 69 -How Accidental Entrepreneur, Fran Dunaway of TomboyX, happened to launch an apparel company

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Terri talks to Fran Dunaway of TomboyX about how she and her partner and wife Naomi Gonzalez started TomboyX in 2014 to create a better shirt and ended up launching an underwear company.  Fran and Naomi recently raised a Series A and Fran shares their journey to this point and where she sees TomboyX going in the next few years.  

Who is Fran Dunaway?  

Fran likes to call herself the accidental entrepreneur. In 2013, she had a great life as partner in a media strategies firm with big budgets, lots of vacation time, regular exercise, and excellent sleep habits. She and her wife, Naomi Gonzalez, started a little side business because they wanted some cool button-down shirts like a Robert Graham for women. They picked the name TomboyX because they thought it was cute.  
  
When the name started resonating with women and girls around the world, they knew they had an instant brand. It turns out that the word 'tomboy' opens the door to a conversation about being whoever it is you want to be. Women were SO elated to have a brand that saw them for who they are at their core. So, when customers started begging for TomboyX to design the first boxer briefs for women, Fran and Naomi obliged.  
  
In September 2014, they pre-sold two styles of boxer briefs designed for women and sold out in two weeks. They have never looked back. TomboyX has since refocused solely into the underwear/loungewear market and is thriving on the fact that people of all shapes and sizes want to be part of a brand that stands for values they share. Their customers continually prove that there is a toughness required to express your individuality – the defining characteristics of a tomboy. 
  
  

Show Highlights 

  • Fran shares the story behind TomboyX and the evolution of the TomboyX brand 

  • Fran continues to talk about how difficult it has been to raise funds to fund the business and what it’s like to run out of inventory as an apparel brand.  

  • Terri and Fran about the shifting landscape for female founders and the economic opportunity in investing in these founders.  

  • Fran explains how she went from a job in corporate to being a founder and focusing on TomboyX 100% 

  • Fran talks about how she and Naomi have evolved as founders and leaders and the evolution of their team as the company as grown and matured 

  • Terri asks Fran about how she sees the company evolve over the next few years 

  • If Fran could wave a magic wand, she would change the lens with which we see each other; to be less judgmental of each other and to have greater clarity as to who we are as individuals.   

  • Fran’s favorite founder resources are Loose Threads (podcast), Leap Frog (the book) and founders stories in general. 

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Money is power and to shift the power dynamic, we need to shift the economic dynamic.  

 

References in the Podcast 

 

 

Contact 

Fran can be reached through the TomboyX website https://tomboyx.com/,  on Twitter @fdunaway and via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/frandunaway/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

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Episode 68 - how investing in startups with female founders, and closing the wage gap, has a positive economic impact with shannon grant

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Terri talks to Shannon Grant about the positive economic impact associated with investing in female founders and the importance of getting more women, and exemplar men, to join them.  Shannon eloquently refers to this time as the ‘awakening’ in contrast to Terri’s term of ‘revolution’.  

Who is Shannon Grant?  

Shannon Grant is an investor, community builder and startup advisor. She leads knowledge programs for the best and brightest minds in tech to facilitate high-level knowledge transfer and create powerful experiences for time-strapped leaders.  
 
In 2014 she developed the Salon Series events at MKThink focusing on the future of education, and she helped build a membership organization of over 80 mission-driven CEOs with The Tugboat Group. She has coached founders to create original talks for CEO summits, hosted Jeffersonian dinners for awesome engineers and connected tech founders with the people or information they need to grow.  
 
To support this vision, she started Deus Capital to invest in companies with billion-dollar market opportunities that have at least one female founder.  
 
Her social impact work includes converting a liquor store into a children's writing center in the heart of San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood with 826 Valencia and building a new model for charity with Mama Hope. 

 

Show Highlights 

  • Shannon shares her journey through venture capital into angel investing.  

  • We talk about our shared interest in getting more women to invest and invest in female founders including the statistics around this.  

  • We discuss the importance of getting girls to see what is possible by exposing them to investing, startups, entrepreneurship, and technology.   

  • We talk about this being an economic opportunity and the importance of encouraging men to join us in investing in women and encouraging more exemplar men in this awakening.  

  • If Shannon could wave a magic wand and change something in this world, she would encourage people to speak; your voice is needed.   

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Investing in women will create trillions of dollars in economic opportunity.  It is not a zero sum game.  

 

References in the Podcast 

 

 

Contact 

Shannon can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-grant-6164139/.   

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

 

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Episode 67 - Terri talks to Jennifer Ehlen of Brazen Global about her focus on supporting female entrepreneurship.

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Terri talks to Jennifer Ehlen of Brazen Global about her focus on supporting the advancement of women-led companies including why she created Brazen Global, a for-profit company, to better serve female founders. 

Who is Jennifer Ehlen?  

 

Jennifer Ehlen is the founder of Brazen and Prosper Women Entrepreneurs (PWE), two organizations aimed at advancing women-led companies. She is the CEO of Brazen Global and a Managing Partner of the PWE Startup Accelerator.  Before making the entrepreneurial leap to focus on Brazen Prosper full-time, Jennifer was a Director at Thompson Street Capital Partners, where Jennifer worked with senior management to help source and evaluate investment opportunities for the St. Louis based $1.5B+ private equity firm.  Prior to joining Thompson Street, Jennifer was the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University.   

Jennifer is an angel investor and invests in early stage ventures. She is also a member of Golden Seeds (NYC chapter).  Jennifer serves as a coach, mentor and advisory board member for companies ranging in size from pre-revenue to $200M+.   

Jennifer’s favorite and most important venture is raising her four children with her partner Craig.   

 

Show Highlights 

  • Jennifer shares her path from a small town in mid-Missouri in a socio-economically challenged family that provides a unique perspective where she has worked in and with the top 2% in private equity.  
  • Jennifer has been fascinated by intersectional feminism in entrepreneurship.  She worked at the St. Louis University, has been an investor, raised a fund, worked in private equity and saw the differences between men and women in entrepreneurialism.  
  • Jennifer saw some research in 2012 about the state of women-owned businesses and saw that St. Louis came in dead last, tied with San Francisco.  She and her colleagues had worked very hard at getting women a seat at the table and they were very frustrated by the reality and the study results. 
  • Jennifer, through Prosper, raised a $3M fund to invest in women and they built an accelerator. 
  • Realizing that the power is in the peer advisory groups, they decided to create Brazen to build the tools to create better peer groups and allow for global scaling.   
  • Brazen operates in 7 cities including St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, and Philly.  Their goal is to expand into more cities this year.   
  • Brazen’s flagship program is the peer advisory groups (growth groups).  7-9 women are in each group and meet every month.  They use Brazen’s proprietary software that provides a rigorous structure that allows the participants to feel like they are fully understood before their peers start to provide guidance and support.   
  • Brazen is a for-profit organization and they license to franchisees.  They have 50 cities that could foreseeably be a new Brazen market, but it comes down to the director and who is delivering the program.   
  • At Brazen, they feel strongly about making sure that the directors understand startups/entrepreneurship/growth process at a deep level.  They need to be able to speak about gender parity in an articulate, evidence-based way.  The directors need to have a good network in the market already.   
  • Brazen has found that the software for the peer groups is applicable across sectors…not just for entrepreneurs.  
  • Jennifer shares what has been most surprising about her journey over the last year.   
  • Jennifer talks about how quite a few of their investors are men as they see the financial opportunity in this space.   
  • Terri asks Jennifer about what she is doing to temper the founder roller coaster.  Her response is a lot of self-care and she is no longer following her competitors in order to be focused on what she is trying to accomplish.  Her team follows them for her.     
  • Terri talks about how when she was going through a tough spot her executive coach reminded her that regardless of what ‘failures’ occurred or ‘down times’ existed in the past, I was able to recover, and this is so important to remember when we encounter tough times.  
  • Terri shared what she discussed with her executive coach about the comparison game and how easy it is to lose sight of your own goals. It is important to focus on your own journey and not someone else’s.   
  • If Jennifer could wave a magic wand to change something in this world, she would create true, total equity in the early stage capital space and have more women investing.  
  • Jennifer’s favorite founder resource is Brazen Global (of course) and recommends becoming a Brazen member. 

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Some of the best entrepreneurial ideas come from anger or angst.   

 

References in the Podcast 

 

Contact 

Jennifer can be reached via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferehlen/ or through the Brazen Global website https://brazenglobal.com/. 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

 

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Episode 66 -Lesley Jane Seymour about leveraging the power of women over the age of 40 to change the world.

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Terri talks to Lesley Jane Seymour about why she created CoveyClub for women over the age of 40 and how important it is to leverage these women in making the world a better place.

Who is Lesley Jane Seymour?  

Lesley Jane Seymour.  Lesley is a media entrepreneur and founder of CoveyClub, a new club for lifelong learners that she launched in February of this year.  The CoveyClub is for women over the age of 40 and has virtual salons, a monthly magazine, a daily blog, and a weekly podcast for women to bond over issues of interest and concern.  

Lesley was named Editor-in-Chief of More Magazine in 2008 and was Editor-in Chief and Social Media Director of More.com.  Before More, she served as Editor-in-Chief of Marie Claire and Redbook magazines, and teen book YM.  She was Beauty Director of Glamour and Senior Editor at Vogue.  She is author of two books, On the Edge, 100 Years of Vogue, and I Wish My Parents Understood.  In 2013 she was named Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for Duke Magazine and a Global Ambassador for Vital Voices.  She is a trustee at Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts.   

Show Highlights 

  • Lesley shares what CoveyClub is and why she created it.  She expands on how women over the age of 40 are disenfranchised and being left out of the conversations.   

  • Terri comments that technology has increased the sense of loneliness and how ironic it is that Lesley is using technology to reduce the loneliness and bring women together.  

  • Terri talks about the importance of getting together in person to fill her soul.   

  • Lesley observes that there are no longer places for people to come together like offices, town squares, religious institutions, and community centers.   

  • Lesley named the company CoveyClub after a small group of birds.  She wants the groups to be small and provide ways for women to get to know who is in the room.  

  • Lesley talks about having a significant career and an amazing life and wants to be able to help women connect and help their dreams come true.   

  • Lesley knows that if you want better content, you’ll have to pay for it and she believes that others are looking for this.   

  • Lesley comments that right now our politicians in Washington DC don’t stay in town to eat together, to get to know each other, to see the humanity in each other, to be able to reach across the aisle to work together.   

  • Terri comments that we need to be intentional about coming together in person to connect as humans.  Terri loves how her city, Redwood City, makes a lot of effort to bring people together at various events around town.   

  • Terri talks about how quickly women over the age of 40 are overlooked and easily dismissed.  Lesley talks about how when we were in our 20s, we were seen as T&A and now she would like us to be seen for our $19T in assets that have control over.   

  • If Lesley had a magic wand, she would make Donald Trump go ‘poof’ and disappear.  Terri talks about the fear from the patriarchy who are trying to keep things as they were, and she hopes that we take this as an opportunity to slingshot forward. We need to drag everyone we know to the polls to make a difference in November.  

  • Lesley’s favorite founder resources are Hello Alice and the group that she is created to provide her with support (the red cup club). 

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Technology rather than bringing people together is leading to a sense of loneliness and isolation and it is time to reconnect in person.   

 

References in the Podcast 

 

Contact 

Lesley can be reached via email at lesley@coveyclub.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleyjaneseymour/. 

 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife. 

 

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Episode 65 -May Samali of Urban Innovation Fund talks about her path into her dream job in venture capital which started out in law.

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Terri talks to May Samali of Urban Innovation Fund about how she fell in love with idea of using social entrepreneurship to solve the world’s problems and her path from law to venture capital.

Who is May Samali?  

 

May Samali is an investor at the Urban Innovation Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. May has had extensive experiences advising both early-stage startups and large companies across the U.S. and Australia. Prior to her current role, she was a Director at Tumml, an urban ventures accelerator in San Francisco. She also served as a Strategy Consultant at a boutique venture firm and as an attorney at Herbert Smith Freehills in Sydney.  

 
May earned her MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School and her economics and law degrees from the University of Sydney. She is also an Australian John Monash Scholar, a Gleitsman Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Center for Public Leadership, and an Australian American Young Leadership Dialogue delegate.  

 

Show Highlights 

  • Terri shares how she met May on the Connected Homes pitch panel at Launch Festival in 2017 which was an all-women panel.   

  • May shares her journey from Australia to the Silicon Valley. 

  • May started in law but fell in love with the idea of using social entrepreneurship to solve the world’s problems.  

  • May answers Terri’s question about how the tall poppy syndrome has influenced May in her life.   

  • May is working on bringing the best parts of the Silicon Valley to Australia.  

  • My comments on how helpful people have been to her in getting into investing.  May has taken the opportunity to reach out to people in a very intentional way and follow up after meeting at events.  

  • Terri discusses the importance of saying ‘why not me?’ instead of ‘why me?’ especially for women.  

  • Terri observes that May’s natural authenticity is very attractive and charming and hard to resist.   

  • May talks about how being of the Baha’ Faith influenced her view of the world from day one and later started to live them as a result of her personal choosing when she was in her twenties. 

  • Terri talks about the importance of taking the leap without having it all figured out.  

  • May shares what she started to do when she was overanalyzing a situation.  She said that she would sit across from herself at the table and provide herself with her own advice.   

  • If May had a magic wand, she would make all of us more human and compassionate and living life in the moment.   

  • May’s favorite investor resources are Venture Deals and Information.  

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

If you believe you can do it, you can do it.   

 

References in the Podcast 

 

Contact 

You can follow May on Twitter @maysamali or reach her via LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/msamali/ 

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife

 

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episode 64 -Terri talks to Darryl Grant about why he started Inspiring Connectivity to bring women together.

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Terri talks to Darryl Grant about how he was inspired by his mother to create an event to bring women together in the Inspiring Connectivity event and how he sees community as the key to solving some of our biggest, societal issues.  

Who is Darryl Grant?  

Darryl Grant is a New York native, born in Harlem. He has 20 siblings and is uncle to over 50 nieces and nephews. He has been a Bay Area resident for the last 4.5 years and enjoys family time with his wife and 2.5 year old son, supporting his clients’ needs, sports (former Div-I Greco-Roman wrestler), reading, traveling, cooking, and supporting diversity and inclusion. 

Darryl is Managing Director of Merrill Corporation and Founder of Inspiring Connectivity.  He  has over 19 years of financial communication experience with the top three financial printers. Darryl began as a Customer Service Project Coordinator in Manhattan and later assumed various managerial roles and engineered XBRL operations for two Manhattan offices. Before assuming his role as Managing Director of Sales where he co-leads Merrill’s Bay Area Capital Markets team, Darryl spent 6 years as a Capital Markets Account Manager leading teams and working directly with C-level execs, law firms, corporate finance and legal departments to manage IPOs, mergers, spin-offs along with all routine SEC filing requirements. He has also managed three of the largest mergers in stock market history and over 20 prominent IPO’s in industries ranging from Tech, e-commerce, transportation, motion pictures, Biotech, retail and broker exchange services.  

Show Highlights 

  • Darryl starts off by talking about the event he puts on with his team called Inspiring Connectivity and why he, as a man, is putting on an event for women. 

  • Darryl talks about growing up in New York and about his mom who noticed a trend where children were being left behind.  This led her to adopting 18 children and raising a total of 21 of which Darryl was one of those adopted by her.   

  • Darryl shares how he worked with a coach who taught him that because he was having trouble with who he was, he was having trouble coming across authentically.  

  • Darryl was inspired to create an event for women because of the 2016 elections, the issues women were facing that were coming to light, and a conversation with a friend who fully supported him creating the event.  He was inspired by what his mother created around community.   

  • Terri comments on how important it is for Darryl to set the example for other men to create these kinds of events to support the change for women in society.  This is a human issue; not a women’s issue.  

  • Darryl observes that solving problems begins with community.   

  • Terri talks about her experience at Inspired Connectivity with Barbara Tien and how Barbara introduced her to the other women at the event.  This made Terri realize that she is having an impact even though she doesn’t always see it.   

  • Terri commented that a lot of founders don’t take the time to get to know her and how important it is to be seen as a person and not just as a checkbook.  

  • Terri asked Darryl about tribalism in a global community and he responds with the importance of connecting and community.   

  • Darryl talks about the importance of getting out of your own head when designing an event and thinking about what the guests are going to want.  

  • Terri asks Darryl if people give him a hard time for not focusing on women of color or people of color and he says that for the most part, no.  

  • Darryl talks about breaking down the platform, the panel, the awards and focus on the people at events.   

  • If Darryl could wave a magic wand, he would use it to genuinely connect people without bias.   

 

Terri’s Key Takeaway 

Creating and building connections and community will be the key to solving our societal issues.   

 

References in the Podcast 

  • Vanessa Grant: Instagram:  @beautysecretary 

Contact 

Darryl can be reached through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/darryl-grant/.  

You can follow Terri on Twitter at @terrihansonmead or go to her website at www.terrihansonmead.com or on Medium:  https://medium.com/@terrihansonmead.  

Feel free to email Terri at PilotingYourLife@gmail.com. 

To continue the conversation, go to Twitter at @PilotingLife and use hashtag #PilotingYourLife.