Emerging Women Leadership Series @ Impact HUB Academy

Are you craving an opportunity to share authentically with women who face similar challenges and opportunities in bringing their work to the world?

We’re excited to announce the Emerging Women Leadership Series @ Impact HUB Academy in Boulder, Colorado!

Join us for an interactive evening of connection, wisdom, and deep dives to support you on your journey as a female leader.

This series is designed to grow community and support for women of impact to help you succeed in business. Each event will have its own unique theme, including diverse panelists and power circle discussion topics, not to mention libations and evening nibbles!

The Themes:

Women in Money // June 21st

Did you know women will gain control of 2/3rds of the nation’s wealth in a few years? We’ve invited some of the top money minds to help us identify opportunities to shift the world of finance and investing in a more sustainable and collectively beneficial direction with feminine leadership.

Women in Naturals // July 27th

We’re seeing huge opportunities the for growth of women’s leadership in the natural products arena. Join this panel of conscious leaders and entrepreneurs as we discuss how to bring the sustainability and self-care principles behind their products to influence the industry as a whole.

Women in Fitness and Outdoors // August 31st

These leaders are shifting the focus from looking good to feeling strong, capable, and connected to our bodies and surroundings. We’ll discuss how women in this market are increasing their impact by redefining fitness and outdoors as grounds for personal growth, transformation, and mutual empowerment.

Women in Social Impact // September 28th

Big change takes big vision, plus a healthy dose of know-how when it comes to execution. Join this panel of movement-makers as we discuss feminine leadership strategies that mobilize the masses to help girls, women, their communities, and the planet.

Women in Politics // October 26th

Is it safe to say we’re all fed up with the current state of politics? Let’s hear from the women working to get us back on track by running for office and managing campaigns with empathy, courage, authenticity, and heart.

Women in Tech // November 30th

We all know the challenges in this male dominated industry, but what are the opportunities? Hear from the CEOs, founders, and mentors leveraging their innate creativity and feminine leadership talents to elevate the technology landscape.

The Speakers:

We’ll be announcing the powerhouse list of speakers for this series soon. Stay tuned!

The Format:

6:00-6:30 Authentic Networking

6:30-7:15 Panel Discussion

7:15-7:45 Power Circles Breakout

7:45-8:00 ReGroup, Comments, and Close

8:00-8:30 Drinks + Connect

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We can’t wait to see you at Impact HUB in Boulder for the Emerging Women Leadership Series! Mark your calendars and register today.

Anne Lamott joins Emerging Women Live 2016!

More tremendous news on the Emerging Women Live 2016 front!

You know that the Emerging Women community is all about sharing our true selves so that we can shine as the uniquely impactful leaders we are meant to be.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce Anne Lamott as a Keynote Speaker at this year’s national event in San Francisco, CA.

Anne Lamott, author and activist, is a model of compassionate faith, unwavering humor and a voice that tells it like it is, on good days and bad.

As a memoirist and as a non-fiction writer, Anne has a gift for being irreverent and profound at the same time. She is equal parts raw honesty and real hope, with an uncanny ability to glide from heart-wrenching to hilarious without irony or detachment from the core of the matter.

She’s prolific about it, too. She’s written seven novels, several books of non-fiction, and three collections of autobiographical essays. She’s a New York Times bestseller, a prestigious Guggenheim Fellow, a nationwide teacher of her craft, and an inductee of the California Hall of Fame to boot. Rock star!

As Cheryl Strayed mentions in the video below, her work transcends itself. Bird by Bird is as much of a guide to life as it is to writing. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith resonates with religious and non-religious people alike. We can’t wait to see what she brings to the intimate stage at EWLive16 to inspire and ignite the audience.

To get a glimpse of Anne Lamott’s style, watch as she talks with Cheryl Strayed about shitty first drafts, doubt, vulnerability and the universal impact of sharing your personal story:

We hope you’ll join Anne Lamott, Glennon Doyle Melton, and rest of the amazing Emerging Women community on October 13-16th at Emerging Women Live 2016 in San Francisco. Save your seat now!

What must women bring to the world today? Jane Goodall knows.

When I think of Jane Goodall, one specific moment plays in my mind.

It was about 9:30 at night, and she had just finished her brilliant keynote at Emerging Women Live 2015. This was, mind you, after she had flown into San Francisco just that day, done her mic check, prepared for the event and participated in the audience for the talks leading up to hers. Plus she still had a book-signing and a media room interview to go before calling it a night.

I thought she might be tired, so as she stepped down from the stage I offered her my hand. And with classic Goodall grace, she lightly refused my help and alit from the stage like a morning-fresh ballerina in slippers.

With this simple movement, after a long day of long lines and travel and sharing her heart on stage, she helped me realize that that’s the way through. That’s the way to navigate this modern world. Bringing such a level of grace is not only what helped her make such a tremendous impact in her field, it’s also what has given her and her work such longevity.

And that’s what I want to emulate. That’s what I want to start practicing now, so I have it to hold on to in my eighties.

So, what does the incomparable Jane Goodall say we women must bring to the world today? Watch this clip from a video she taped after that night’s book-signing, still brimming with characteristic grace:

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Rethinking Women’s Leadership: Reflections for Shifting Into A New Paradigm of We

Women’s leadership is on the cusp of a quantum leap.

Female leaders everywhere are inching toward the unknown, leaning into the new, announcing their readiness to the future that attracts them. Our passion, commitment, intention, and will may very well collapse the probability of equality and manifest it into a reality some day in the near future.

Denied access to the centers of power for so long in our history, we have become experts on the margins. We are masters at networking, advocating, circling, co-creating, transforming culture—working for the marginalized in every field imaginable. Women leaders are at the forefront of change from the grassroots to governmental levels.

Not About Me, It’s We

In the 1970’s, when the second wave of feminism washed over this land and changed everything in its wake, the phrase “the personal is political” became a slogan as we discovered together how the culture had shaped and silenced us. There was a sense of  “It’s not just ME, it’s all of us,” and that fueled our interest, our outrage, and finally our courage to stand up and speak our truths.

Now, two generations later, young women are assimilating into every institution—corporate, civil, religious, creative—and speaking their truth to power,from power, and about power.

As evolutionary women leaders we are abandoning old tactics and strategies; we are transcending patriarchal, hierarchical models of leadership and creating circular spaces for the surfacing and sharing of collective wisdom. We are creating new vocabularies, replacing words like compete, control, power, motivation with collaborate, co-create, process and transformation.

It takes women only moments to find our commonness, and generally, in every women’s circle, it is always agreed upon that what we are seeking is what is best for the whole. From business women to nuns to non-profit leaders, an awareness of our interdependency underlies every question and answer. And we often believe that if there is a striving to be had, it is to be the best for the world, not the best in the world.

The Value of Questions

Philosopher and scholar Jacob Needleman suggests that the real art form of today is “group pondering.” This resonates as an idea with me, although its execution calls for deep creativity. How does one facilitate “group pondering?” How does a leader mine the wisdom of the group? How do we evolve ourselves into more subtle sowers of collective insight?

The best leaders are the ones with the best questions. The ones who are humble enough to not be the center of attention, but to center the group’s attention. The ones who can laser focus the desire of the group, the intention and will of the group, in order to unleash the group’s ability to create a reality it agrees upon.

After a few decades of facilitating groups for higher levels of leadership and creativity, I’ve come up with some questions that aim at authentic and imaginative truth-telling. Answering these questions will give people an opportunity to find common ground with others, acknowledge what they are passionate about, decide what they are committed to, and proclaim their next steps in the matter.

People pay therapists thousands of dollars for this, but a good leader can bring about these clarifications in a short time by simply asking the right questions and engaging in this kind of group pondering. Here are a few ideas for starters:

  1. What is one thing you know for sure based on your lived experience?
  2. In what ways have you shared that knowing?
  3. In what ways have you advocated on another’s behalf?
  4. What success have you had in this area?
  5. Have you ever felt silenced as a woman? If so, how?
  6. Do you feel an affinity with any marginalized groups? If so, what is your response?
  7. Do you know the difference between your original thoughts and your inherited beliefs?
  8. What inherited beliefs have you disinherited? (about your body? your religion? your sex?)
  9. How have you been changed by another woman’s story or creation?
  10. If someone funded a documentary that you could produce, what subject matter would you choose?
  11. If you had a superpower, what would it be? What would you do as a result?
  12. Where does the imbalance of feminine vs. masculine show up most for you?
  13. What is the impact of that?
  14. In what ways are you bringing more balance to our society?

Tips for Facilitating

If there are many tables in the room, a dividing of the questions and sharing is an excellent way to foster more collective pondering. Introverts often need more time to think about their answers, so it might be wise to list these questions on paper and give people five to ten minutes to reflect and answer. The work of the leader is to create a safe space for sharing, to be self-disclosing and answer a few of the questions from her own perspective before having the group do the assignment.

I read once that the Old English term for leadership comes from the phrase to go first. The greatest leaders are the ones ready to go first, to risk being vulnerable. They speak from their lives. They learn how to master their ordeals, process their tragedies and transform them into stories that hold truths both personal and universal.

If She Can, I Can—The Power of Story

Everything we know happened to us in a story. All the wisdom in our cells came from our trials, our tears, our commitment to keep going in the face of every obstacle. Great leaders tell those stories. They don’t just share what they know. They share how they learned it. That’s what we all hunger for. Those tales of transformation. Those stories that remind us, “If she can, I can.”

You can stop reading leadership books anytime now. Just open up the book of your own life. See what you’ve been up against. See what kept you going. See what you’ve achieved and where you’re headed now. See how connected you are to all the others. And tell those stories. Tell them right from your heart. Don’t be afraid of your tears. This is heart work, after all.

Jan Phillips
Jan Phillips—Emerging Women

Jan Phillips, is the co-founder and executive director of the Living Kindness Foundation, a co-sponsor of Emerging Women, and an artist and author. She’s written  No Ordinary Time, Finding the On-Ramp to Your Spiritual Path, The Art of Original Thinking-The Making of a Thought Leader, Divining the Body, and more. To learn more about her work, you can visit her website.