We are excited to announce that artist, author and Silicon Valley startup survivor Elle Luna will be joining the lineup as a Keynote Speaker at Emerging Women Live 2016!
Elle Luna happily makes art in her very special studio in San Francisco (listen to her Grace & Fire podcast to hear about that peak experience in her life). But that wasn’t always her gig.
Before, Elle was nailing the shoulds. She worked with teams to design and build Mailbox’s iPhone app, redesign Uber’s iPhone app, and scale the storytelling platform, Medium. But in the midst of this life of business and chronic busy-ness, she felt the pull of something deeper calling to her in her dreams – the musts.
With one foot in each world (art and startup), everything was suffering. She wasn’t really feeling her creative process, and her work in Silicon Valley was exhausting her. Her head was saying “you got this” while her body was screaming for a vacation – and not just a week at the beach. She was craving the deep peace of a restful mind. She was at a crossroads.
She had enough in her bank account for a window of time to “not know” and just journey down the roads of should and must. She left her job in Silicon Valley and rented the dreamy studio in San Francisco, the dedicated physical space where must had a chance of being heard. And it worked.
On April 8, 2013, Elle published an essay on Medium.com, “The Crossroads of Should and Must,” which quickly went viral. Within weeks, it was tweeted to over 5 million people and seen by over a quarter of a million readers. Elle extended that post into an illustrated, four color book, The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion, where she explains the importance of mistakes, of “unlearning,” of solitude, of keeping moving and of following a soul path. She had taken a leap, and it resonated.
It’s not just a one-time decision, she learned. It’s a daily thing. Shoulds are decisions for anything or anyone other than yourself, put on you from outside from family, community or culture. When you hear or think a should, you shrink in your body. Huge systems of thought are at work that feel overwhelming. She keeps a list of shoulds in her journal because she says that continuing to bring them into awareness is what releases their hold on your life.
To really get the juices flowing, you’ve got to have your finger on the pulse of must. Must is pre-thought. It’s inexplicable and undeniable. She says that staying in touch with that force is crucial. It’s “the source of our being – it’s the song, and we have to keep that song alive” by opening our eyes to “little mirrors, little clues that lead you back to something essential.”
Should, she says, is like cracking an egg on the countertop to get what’s inside out. Must is letting it burst out from the inside, and what results are the greater potentialities of your life. And the most important step? “To trust that that will manifest over time.”
We hope that you will join us in San Francisco to hear the inspirational Elle Luna share her insight with us at Emerging Women Live 2016. We can’t wait to see what will burst from your egg!
Hundreds of women gathered in San Francisco over the weekend for 4 days of inspiration, authentic connection, feminine leadership training and more. Our lineup of keynote speakers was as influential as ever, including Dr. Jane Goodall, Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, TEDTalk sensation Esther Perel, Kim Jordan of New Belgium Brewing and Dr. Tererai Trent.
We selected some of the most powerful insights from Emerging Women Live 2015 keynotes to share with you here. Feel free to comment, share, tweet and post your faves, too.
1. Dr. Jane Goodall (Founder, the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace)
“The tribe is like an eagle and the eagle will only fly true and high when the wings are equal,” American Indian Proverb via Dr. Jane Goodall, speaking on gender equality.”
2. Brené Brown (Research Professor, University of Houston and Author of Rising Strong)
“There is nothing more threatening to the critics than a woman who is willing to fall because she knows how to rise.”
3. Elizabeth Gilbert (Bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and newly-released book, Big Magic)
“I don’t believe in fearlessness…there’s always an instance where fear saved us. Show some appreciation and respect for that. And then figure out how to work around it.”
4. Kim Jordan (Co-Founder and CEO of New Belgium Brewing)
“Leaders need to make choices that are consistent with what matters.”
5. Esther Perel (Psychotherapist and Consultant to Fortune 500 Companies)
“Desire needs a space to thrive. It needs separateness. Psychological distance. It needs mystery and an unknown.”
6. Dr. Tererai Trent (Founder/President Tererai Trent International)
As we transition into the second month of a new year, it feels like time to start reaching back and pulling those soulful souvenirs from EWLive14 into the forefront of our consciousness again.
In this ongoing series, we’ll share some of our favorite moments and memories from the weekend, and we invite you to do the same. You never know who needs to hear the words that resonated so strongly with you. As all of the Emerging Women Live speakers would agree, it’s crucial to your emergence to share your voice and have an impact on the tribe.
“Women are natural connectors. This our time. The bridges have been built. Now it’s time to connect. ~ Chantal Pierrat”
Sera Beak
In All Fears and Trembling Boldness
Sera Beak shared her personal journey of not only living her truth, but speaking it in her own voice. “We ache to be self-expressed, to be authentic, to totally let ‘er rip,” she says, “and yet we are terrified of being that vulnerable, that raw, that real. So we edit, shape or even shut up our unique soul’s voice in order to be accepted, successful, and loved. But deep down in our bellies, where our power burns the brightest, we know we cannot be of service, we cannot be free, we cannot truly come alive if we aren’t sharing the truth of who we are.”
As the Harvard-trained scholar found herself on the fast-track to fame, she struggled with squaring the messages she was receiving from her publicists with the messages she was receiving from her deepest self. As marketers tried to groom her speaking voice (which she self-describes as sounding like a chipmunk on speed) to be more “powerful,” she could feel the authenticity and impact of her talks losing potency.
“The most important part of my message IS my shaky, struggling voice,” she says in her trembling, yes, but 100% Sera voice.
“Your voice is a treasure. Don’t bury it, share it.”
And these words, beautifully unadulterated by public speaking shoulds and shouldn’ts, stamped an unforgettable image in our hearts that we can call on when sharing our unique expression with the world:
“Every time you speak your truth, a goddess tattoos your name across her belly.”
To feel the power of Sera’s soul voice for yourself, tune in to her EWLive14 talk “In All Fears and Trembling Boldness.”
Tara Mohr
Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message
Women’s leadership expert Tara Mohr has seen a pattern among her brilliant peers.
“Women are sitting on their big ideas rather than sharing them, holding back their most provocative questions instead of asking them,” she says. “They are having a collective hallucination that they aren’t ‘ready’ for that bigger role or next step.”
Based on her recent book, Playing Big, Tara helps us learn to trust our instincts, “unhook” from praise and criticism and begin taking bold and wise action. Because when women play big, we change the world.
The bump in the road is often created by paying too much attention to what other people think. Does that sound familiar to you?
“We strangely learn to see women’s stories as how they’re perceived by others,” she says. The solution is to unhook from both praise and criticism as motivating factors while we carve out our space in the world.
If that sounds like something you could benefit from, do yourself a favor and watch the entire insightful presentation here:
Karen May
Reflections on Leadership
It’s no surprise that Karen May is the Vice President of People Development at Google. Her bouncy energy and enthusiasm is infectious, and her ability to really listen to those going through an emerging process is obvious.
What’s not so immediately apparent are her battles with failure and disappointment. If you can relate, you’ve got to hear about the “Disappointment-A-Day Diet” she started with her brother, where they trained themselves to be okay with disappointing people by promising to disappoint at least one person a day, no matter what.
“You have to be willing to disappoint.”
“I failed! Victory!” became Karen’s new cheer for herself as she learned to accept failure as a natural and helpful part of a fulfilling life. “You gotta find a way to make failure something you just step through,” she says.
“You gotta find a way to make failure something you just step through.”
“To emerge requires looking in the mirror and confronting the awful truth that you’re flawed,” Karen says, “and then digging really really deep to find the grace to go back out and say ‘tell me more,’ trusting that you’ll have the strength and support to hear it and to grow with it.”
Get ready to grin with Karen May here:
Agapi Stassinopoulos
Integration is one way that Emerging Women Live sets itself apart from other conferences. The feminine is all about the body, and so we take time to consciously connect with our bodies through dance, yoga and meditation.
We invite you to take a moment for yourself right now and let Agapi Stassinopoulos, sister of Arianna Huffington and author of Unbinding the Heart, lead you in a soothing and nourishing guided meditation.
“Give yourself permission to not wear Spanx on your heart.”
Just press play and let Agapi do the rest:
Keele Burgin & Power Circles
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” – Mary Oliver
In this moving Emerging Short, writer, poet and memoirist Keele Burgin shares her revelation that she did not have to be her father’s definition of good, and how her Power Circle helped her harness that exuberant empowerment. What a testament to the beauty of women’s groups.
“We can fit in anywhere, but to belong is our soul’s request.”
Want to be there in person this year? Save big when you register now for Emerging Women Live 2015 in San Francisco.
With just under two weeks to go before our national event in New York, you can imagine how busy and excited we are. Of course there are a lot of details and loose ends to tie up, but what is really taking up most of my attention is the inner landscape of how it feels to take big leaps and reach for the stars.
“Is there anything better than leaping?” Eve Ensler asked at EW Live 2013 last year. Well, honestly, sitting home under a cozy blanket with 5 episodes of Game of Thrones ahead of me sounds mighty fine right about now.
And yet I choose to leap. Why? Because this is where my emergence is taking me, and I am allowing myself to be led, no matter how much it pushes me against what I perceive to be my edge.
And I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I have learned to trust in my unfoldment, that everything happening is for my expansion. I have learned to really lean on the people around me, instead of putting the pressure on myself to have it together all the time. I have learned to ask for help. I have realized that none of the spiritual principles we learn about can actually exist until we experience them in the body – that they are mere concepts until we live them.
Trust, authenticity, vulnerability, the body. Sound familiar? These big leaps I am taking are allowing me – forcing me, really – to rely on my feminine powers. And now I know more than ever how powerful these principles really are.
Most significantly during this process I have come to realize that Emerging Women is not just a business or an event. We are a network of extremely powerful women that can move mountains. This is truly a movement. A movement of self-actualizing ourselves on an individual level, but also as a collective.
One woman who has been instrumental in sending me and supporting me on my path as Emerging Women’s founder is Tami Simon. Her ability to love and listen to the people she comes in contact with, coupled with her belief that we are always, always emerging, every moment, makes her a wise mentor who is tremendously sympathetic to the fears that come along with leaping. Be sure to listen to our Grace&Fire podcast “Emerging into Being” to hear her advice for making the most of our eternal growth and evolution.
We can’t wait to feel the out-of-this-world energy as we come into being together in NYC – I am so grateful for the opportunity to dive into my bravest self while surrounded by many amazing and inspiring women. Thank you, and see you in two weeks!
Check it out! Brené Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Eve Ensler, Alanis Morissette – all our favorites are here, talking about Emerging Women Live. And so many power women from EWlive13 are featured, too. Are you in the video?
We are so humbled and grateful for the beautiful, thoughtful testimonies given by our tribe. Warm thank you’s and big, big love to you all! Let’s keep the momentum of this movement going! Let’s change the world!
About Emerging Women Live 2014:
Emerging Women Live aims to support and propel the emerging movement of women who are stepping up and changing the world. #EWLive14 is a one of a kind conference that helps women to harness the power of the feminine, rock the business world, and create a new paradigm for success. Join us in NYC for a truly extraordinary, one-of-a-kind event!
Join us for an experience that will last far beyond the four days we spend together. Learn more here>>>
The article below is excerpted from the eye-opening keynote on Feminine Power Claire Zammit gave at Emerging Women Live 2013, and from my Grace & Fire podcast with her before the event. Claire is the co-creator of the Feminine Power training courses for women and co-leads a thriving learning community of hundreds of thousands of women throughout the world. She is a gifted and highly trained specialist in transformative education that gives her audience access to life-altering shifts, leading to embodied and lasting change. Read on to find out her definition of Feminine Power and why we all need it to make our destiny a reality.
“Masculine power is the power to create those things we can control and predict. Feminine power is the power to create those things that we can’t control.”
CP: Six years ago, you made the decision to start trusting yourself and your abilities so that you could thrive in life. How did that decision come about?
CZ: I spent years of my life waiting to be “discovered.” I always felt like something was going to happen, or should happen, that was going to enable me to become all that I knew I could be. And I was very sad and confused when those opportunities never came.
And so late one night, by candlelight, I prayed for guidance. I knew I couldn’t just skip over this and continue on the course that I was on, and I didn’t know the answer, but I knew I needed to make a commitment to find out. And so, in the darkest hour of that dark night, I just surrendered, open, and I said, “Help, universe,” even though I doubted anybody was there listening.
And I had a very deep and powerful experience. It was almost like a mystical experience where I felt an inner voice say to me, “Claire, you have to have faith in yourself. And you have to believe that all of life is organizing around your success. Even though you don’t have any evidence for it, and even though you don’t know what to do, begin to make choices and take actions in your life aligned with a sense of faith.”
“You have to believe that all of life is organizing around your success.”
So I went to sleep with that thought, and I woke up the next morning and I said, “Okay, what would I do if I really believed in myself and I believed that life was organizing around my success?” And immediately I had access to a very deep intuition that said, “Go and get an office space.”
It was kind of crazy because I’d just moved to LA from Australia, and I didn’t really know anyone, and I had given up my coaching practice 5 years earlier. But with my last $1,000, I went and I got an office space. And that’s how I met the woman who became a close colleague of mine, Katherine Woodward, and within a year we started teaching programs and creating courses together. And I met my husband and soulmate, Craig Hamilton, and the relationship that we share together is beyond anything I could have imagined.
I’m really so honored and grateful to say that having created a foundation of success in my own life, I began to fulfill on that dream of really standing for the global empowerment of women and girls. I wake up and I feel like I need to pinch myself because this outer life reflects the deeper possibilities that I always sensed, but I couldn’t quite see how to get there.
CP: Wow. So what happened?
CZ: I began to create my life from Feminine Power, and it really changed everything. And I know it can change everything for other women as well.
How many women in their clearest moments sense that they have gifts and talents that the world has never seen before and will never see again after they’re gone. And that even that they have a critical role to play in shaping the future of our world. And how many know exactly what that’s going to look like?
CP: There’s a big gap.
CZ: Yes, and this is significant. This yearning that’s waking up inside of us, it’s not just a desire to accomplish – to have a nice house, to have a nice car, to get married. What’s waking up inside of us is an impulse to actualize our higher creative potentials in service to something larger than ourselves.
“What’s waking up inside of us is an impulse to actualize our higher creative potentials in service to something larger than ourselves.”
We don’t just want to have the relationship our parents had, we want to have the experience of intimacy that’s beyond that. We don’t just want to get a job, we want to express who we are and we want to develop our creativity and get it out of us in a way that impacts others.
We don’t just want to get more status or have more stuff. We want to become ourselves and create a life that reflects who we truly are. What we’re yearning for is our destiny: the greatest possibility of who we are in service to something bigger than ourselves. And the nature of destiny is that we don’t know what it looks like in advance, so it’s very hard to create a strategic plan to get there, or even put it on a vision board to be able to manifest.
So the system of power that we’ve been mastering as women over the last 50 years is actually a masculine system of power. It’s a power system that based on logical and linear thinking. So if you have a goal that’s predictable or controllable – you want to build a house, get a college degree – then the masculine power system is the way to go. The problem is, we’re no longer yearning to just accomplish goals. What we’re pregnant with are these higher possibilities.
We can’t get there with just a power system that’s based on analysis and logic. We need to have a power system that based on a much more intuitive, receptive, co-creative and feminine system. Masculine power is the power to create those things we can control and predict. Feminine power is the power to create those things that we can’t control.
“We need to have a power system that based on a much more intuitive, receptive, co-creative and feminine system.”
CP:When you’re in a room with other women and see that maybe another woman is not living from a place of Feminine Power, do you reach forward and try and draw her out?
CZ: Well, that’s a great question. In our course, we have a whole new set of shared agreements that we teach about creating a culture of empowerment between women. And the point in which you can really partner to stand with someone and for someone is when they step forward in self-responsibility.
We can’t go into rescuing if that woman hasn’t yet said, “I’m committed to realizing the greatest possibility of who I am. And I’m standing to be responsible, to see myself as a source of my experience up until that point. And I am open to receiving support.” I think a woman has to step into that for the support to become really conscious and powerful and potent.
“I think a woman has to step into that for the support to become really conscious and powerful and potent.”
I think generally speaking, we want to be finding ways to extend that invitation to women to actually step forth into that level of commitment, to stand for their own greatness. So I think rather than saying “Oh, I see you,” we want to mirror the possibilities. I think it’s, in many ways, so true. We want to mirror the possibilities. We want to reflect opportunities everywhere we go. We want to see and relate to the most powerful version of others.
And I think more than anything I want to encourage women to take that stand for themselves as a foundation for them being able to join other women in partnership, to be able to feed each other power. I think you can create a culture of empowerment between women when everyone’s stepping forward in self-responsibility as the price of admission for that.
“We want to mirror the possibilities. We want to reflect opportunities everywhere we go. We want to see and relate to the most powerful version of others.”
To hear more from the amazing Claire Zammit, don’t miss her free webinar The Three Keys to Feminine Power on May 14th. Read more about what you will learn HERE. You can also see her in New York City, where we are so honored to have her back as a keynote speaker at Emerging Women Live 2014 in October.
About Emerging Women Live 2014:
Emerging Women Live aims to support and propel the emerging movement of women who are stepping up and changing the world. #EWLive14 is a one of a kind conference that helps women to harness the power of the feminine, rock the business world, and create a new paradigm for success. Join us in NYC for a truly extraordinary, one-of-a-kind event!
Join us for an experience that will last far beyond the four days we spend together. Learn more here>>>
Chelsea Brookshire
Executive Assistant and Relationships Manager
Chelsea has over 15 years of experience in administrative and executive support. After her years of working in the legal and oil and gas industry, Chelsea has made it her passion to fill her life with creativity and incorporates that into everything she does. Her position at Emerging Women allows her to expand on that creativity and assist with empowering women around the world. She is a native of Colorado and enjoys spending time with her husband, her son, bonus son, family, and friends. In her free time she loves camping, painting, and all things creative.
Michelle Caggiano
Online Business Manager
Michelle studied Marketing and received her degree from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her passion for marketing, combined with great attention to detail, and over 7 years of experience in the tech-world makes her a valuable asset to the team! In addition to Emerging Women, she is also a solopreneur and works with a number of different clients in the online business realm. She is an experienced Online Business Manager and Virtual Assistant who specializes in marketing operations, project management and online course launch management. She is a Colorado native, mother of two dogs, a cat, and a turtle, and step-mother to an amazing little girl. In her spare time she enjoys live music, good food, traveling, and spending time with her friends and family.
Jen Jefferson
Power Circle Administrator
Jen comes to Emerging Women with over 25 years of experience in event operations and volunteer management. She has worked various types of events as a Volunteer Manager for Integral Life conferences and as an Event Coordinator for various large arts and sports festivals throughout Colorado. Alongside her passion for creating and producing events, she worked as a hospital administrator for over a decade in one of Denver’s largest hospitals helping make care affordable to hundreds of patients. Jen was born in Lima, Peru but has spent most of her life in Colorado. In 2016, a year sabbatical morphed into a life living abroad. Jen has been living in Cusco, Peru for the past four years and cherishes her life in the Andes mountains. In her spare time she enjoys exploring the world, playing capoeira, and deepening her yoga and meditation practices.
Nicole Fegley
Director of Power Circles
For over 13 years, Nicole has been a producer and connector in the field of personal and professional growth and transformation, creating diverse content, life-changing curriculum, and exquisite live and online experiences. She loves to unite and facilitate people in their work to live more good, true, and beautiful lives. She’s honored to bring this diverse expertise to Emerging Women. For the past two years she has been the lead producer for Emerging Women Live, and now is bringing her extensive production, coaching and facilitation skills to EW’s Power Circles. Nicole works in private practice as a Certified Integral Master Coach™, through her company, Unabashedly You, and has worked with hundreds of women (and men) individually and as a group facilitator. She also creates programs and interviews fascinating teachers and wellness experts in her role as U.S. Content Producer for Conscious Life. She is the co-founder of Core Integral, an educational company offering a comprehensive and accessible approach to learning integral theory. Prior to this work, she owned a large and lively restaurant and brewery in Pennsylvania. She has studied extensively and worked alongside Ken Wilber (Integral Theory), Daniel Brown, PhD (Tibetan Buddhism, Self-Development, Attachment, and Positive Psychology), and Sofia Diaz (Hatha Yoga and Feminine Embodiment). She holds a Masters Degree from Lehigh University. She regularly delights in the sunshine and mountains of Colorado with her two dogs and her partner Clint, and is a new mama to her daughter Truly Golden.
Chantal Pierrat
Founder & CEO
Chantal’s mission is to increase women’s leadership across the globe. After earning an MBA from the University of Colorado, Chantal left a career in medical device manufacturing in search of work that would align her dedication to transformative leadership with her passion for living an inspired, impactful life. In September 2012, she founded Emerging Women, a global leadership and media platform that serves over 70,000 women worldwide and has advanced women’s leadership within Fortune 500 companies such as HP, Oracle and more. Chantal’s ultimate vision is to weave feminine leadership and authenticity into businesses, and to create a world where women have a strong voice in the shaping of our future. Prior to Emerging Women, for over a decade, Chantal served on the executive team as the VP of Sales and Marketing for Sounds True, a multimedia publishing company focused on spirituality, personal growth, and holistic living. Chantal is a sought after speaker delivering keynotes at The Grace Hopper Celebration, Wisdom 2.0, and many other stages where women’s leadership is critical to the conversation. When she is not dancing or working to empower women around the world, Chantal enjoys family time with her husband and two sons in Boulder, CO.
Elle Luna happily makes art in her very special studio in San Francisco (listen to her Grace & Fire podcast to hear about that peak experience in her life). But that wasn’t always her gig.
CP: Six years ago, you made the decision to start trusting yourself and your abilities so that you could thrive in life. How did that decision come about?
I’m really so honored and grateful to say that having created a foundation of success in my own life, I began to fulfill on that dream of really standing for the global empowerment of women and girls. I wake up and I feel like I need to pinch myself because this outer life reflects the deeper possibilities that I always sensed, but I couldn’t quite see how to get there.
