Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Courtney D. McWilliams, founder/owner of MaryMac’s Doggie Retreat.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I like to refer to myself as the Canine Emotional Officer (CEO).
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
This is a very big question! I left my career as a Master’s level social worker to open a doggie retreat. I must say, I would have never thought in a million years that I would be working with animals.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
For me, it’s more than just being a woman that’s a challenge- the biggest challenge is being an African American woman in the Caucasian male driven field of pet care.
There’s no one who looks like me in this line of work OWNING a doggie day care/doggie boutique. As a result, it’s difficult to gain respect as a black, female owned pet care business. I could not use the traditional route of getting business or referrals from veterinarian companies or any other pet companies. I had to think outside of the box with marketing in order to generate revenue and clients.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
I do have mentors, but not in the traditional sense. They do not even know that they are my mentors.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Do not take no for an answer. Do not allow people to tell you that your dreams are stupid or invalid because they do not understand them. Do not allow your FEARS to STOP you.
Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and rock out with your hair down to overcome your fears.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Lisa Nichols, Ming Lee, Oprah, and Tracy Ellis Ross.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is the most recent book I’ve read. If you have not heard of it, it focuses on the law of attraction. It’s helping me work on being more purposeful in what I say, hear, and do.
What is something coming up that excites you?
My cousin recently had twin boys which I am super excited about. I am focusing more on family and being present, as well as continuing to grow my business. I am learning to prioritize things so that is exciting as well.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Purnima Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of mihygge.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I manage all the operations and wear many hats. My main job is empowering the team and getting to know the future customers as we work to launch the product b2b, and then the entire product, in a few months.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Leaving the bullies behind and finding people who will help me grow. Personal intuition is powerful. I’ve also learned to cherish customers and staff equally and empower everyone for a win-win. When you create something that people love, they will never leave you.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Racism and ageism. I am a second time founder (well educated with 5+ credentials ) and a no nonsense Asian female leader who believes honesty is the best policy.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes. Mentorship is a two way exchange. Every living being is both a teacher and a student from conception to death.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Be brave, take the leap and go for it. Find your path, be an ever learner and create your niche so well that no one can ever copy you.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Mother Earth. She is the stage where we all act and play our part. When we leave and our acting is over, she doesn’t judge.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
I love listening to a meditative story podcast, as well as reading gardening books. I also read a lot of classic English fiction which has taught me many things that are deliverable in my own business. My favorite books are by the Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen.
What is something coming up that excites you?
The launch of our product and beginning the process of signing up paying b2b customers. I am excited to receive feedback and have an open dialogue with our customers so that we can work to empower them.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Modika Fembe Hilda, Co-Founder of SCECYDPs (Social Change and Establishment Center for Youths and Disabled Persons). I am an advocate fighting against marginalization, discrimination, violation of human rights and exploitation of persons living with disabilities. In addition to my work at SCECYDPs, I am a Global Peace Chain Ambassador, UNESCO Peace Ambassador and an African Change Maker.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I supervise the running of Social Change and Establishment Center for Youths and Disabled Persons (SCECYDPs) activities, manage the calendar, give out scholarships for vocational training to unemployed youths and disabled persons, and advocate for the rights of persons living with disabilities.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Staying positive on my vision and avoiding people who were distractions to my personal growth and development.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Trying to get big personalities to do me a favor vs. putting me to bed is the greatest challenge I have faced as a woman.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes I do. I have mentors in my spiritual, organizational and career life. Rev Samuel Tanyi, Mr. Ngale Foretia Henry, Mr. Samir Saran, Mukete Tahle Itoe, and Manna Dabholkar.
Mentorship is very important to me because it gives me directives on how to go about my life and career from people who have had similar experiences. It is helpful to be able to understand their challenges and how they were able to overcome, as well as their greatest secrets of how to succeed in life.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Never give up on your dreams or vision because of what people say.
Always stay around people who can take you where you see your dreams in years to come. Challenges will always be there. The difference will be how you are able to manage yourself during the crisis and emerge victorious as a role model in society and mentor to others.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Manna Dabholkar. She is an International Human Rights Advocate for children and disadvantaged families all over the globe. She has developmental programs that ensure children are prepared emotionally, mentally and physically for their future. These kids will become the future leaders of tomorrow based on what they have learned, and will be able to transform the lives of others.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
Purpose by Rev Samuel Tanyi. This book enables you to discover and walk with purpose and I believe everybody should read it.
What is something coming up that excites you?
My soon to be released book, Accept and Live with It.
Loop & Tie is an engagement platform where you can send a price-blind collection of gifts to recipients and allow them to choose the gift they want. Working with companies such as the San Francisco 49ers, Indeed, Google, Greystar, Salesforce, and more, Loop & Tie has become the go-to engagement platform for companies across the country.
When COVID-19 hit, Loop & Tie’s founder Sara Rodell, quickly committed to finding a way to lend Loop & Tie’s resources and support those being affected. Through a friend of a friend, she was connected with 5 other women, and together they created COVID Tech Connect. An initiative focused on providing devices to the critically ill so they could have the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones.
Loop & Tie has donated both hours and operational and fulfilment resources to manage the receiving and sending of devices all throughout the country! You can read more about the initiative and ways to donate here.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
LaShawn McGhee, Co-Founder | CPO of Revry.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
As Chief Product Officer, I oversee the development and maintenance of our applications. I also manage the physical acquisition of Revry’s content from delivery through distribution.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Continuing to educate myself on best practices and trends in the streaming video space.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Being heard, especially by people who have “more experience” than I do.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes, mentors are essential. You need someone who can help you navigate things. I have both corporate and technical mentors.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Learn everything you can about your chosen field and reach out to people who do the job you want to do.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Bozoma Saint John. She commands the rooms, she’s in demand, and she is authentically herself in every environment.
When did your company join Pledge 1%? How long have you been working on your impact program?
Revry joined Pledge 1% in March of this year. We have been committed to impacting our community since Revry’s launch and one of the ways that we contribute is by participating in Mayor Garcetti’s Internship program call Evolve.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
I’m a huge fan of the podcast Masters of Scale with Reed Hoffman.
What is something coming up that excites you?
We are launching a new set of features for our owned and operated applications. I can’t wait to share it with the world!
Delivering result-oriented support to organizations throughout the value stream is in our DNA at Pollen. As part of our social responsibility and 1% charity pledge, we endeavor to use our capabilities and services for a good cause wherever possible.
With this in mind, we reached out to The Bread & Butter Project – a non-profit organization as well as Sydney’s first artisan bakery run as a social enterprise! Breads and pastries are baked by refugees and asylum seekers from all over the world that the company employs as trainees alongside their qualified artisan bakers. Whilst learning the craft of artisan baking, trainees get to learn English and are coached to ensure they can kick-off a successful career after their traineeship.
We loved the mission behind the business and felt we had the perfect skillset and experience to make improvements to the business profitability – and in return we would get spoilt with delicious pastries and baked goods! So, the collaboration was launched…
“We care a lot about The Bread & Butter Project’s high quality products and especially their mission, which is extremely important. We love helping the people behind the company and appreciate the opportunity to really make a difference by sharing our industry experience.” Stephan Mang, Pollen Director
Using our expertise and industry knowledge, we provided solutions to some of the challenges The Bread & Butter Project were facing and delivered projects to optimize business operations:
- We put our STRATEGY in ACTION to work in two sales strategy workshops. In order to achieve the aspiration of becoming self-sustaining, The Bread & Butter Project revenues need to increase by 15% between August 2019 and September 2020. We facilitated the business in developing a 12-month growth plan and determining products and target customers to focus on. With our practical approach to strategy planning, we ensured the outcome was an implementation roadmap with clear actions for The Bread & Butter Project to make the roll out of the strategy a success.
- In a deep dive on The Bread & Butter Project production process, Pollen made recommendations on MANUFACTURING EXCELLENCE for cost improvements. We performed a bottleneck study and investigated both equipment and people utilization. An opportunity to save $250k annually was identified by streamlining the workload by reallocating staff to identified bottlenecks and streamlining the utilization of the ovens throughout the day. Examples of tips for quick wins were the introduction of Gemba Walks and standardizing the cutting process to reduce waste.
- Another project investigated the distribution process using our SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCY expertise. Daily, The Bread & Butter Project’s fresh baked goods are delivered by drivers in minivans. The optimal number of delivery vans, the most efficient delivery routes and maximum time spent per delivery have been determined to increase labour productivity.
- The Bread & Butter Project’s supervisor is one of the participants in the POLLEN ACADEMY Front-Line Leadership program. The Front-Line Leadership program is especially designed to help front-line leaders develop the right skill set to lead teams, coach individuals and get the best out of their teams so they’ll become tomorrow’s confident operations managers.
“It was a real pleasure to work with Pollen. With their hands-on approach, they were able to make recommendations for efficiency improvements in just a few sessions. The implementation has been very valuable for us and we learned to think with a continuous improvement mindset.” Philip Hoban, General Manager, The Bread & Butter Project
Going forward, we plan to continue supporting the team in the Sales Strategy deployment with frequent refresh and planning sessions. The team at The Bread & Butter Project is one of engaged and driven bakers and trainees. We are sure that with Pollen’s recommendations and tools for structure and efficiency improvements the business is set up for a successful journey of continuous improvement.
The global impact of COVID-19 has not only put the well-being of people at risk, but has also trembled economies, industries, and entire societies. With this pandemic keeping the world on their toes, Algoworks is doing its share to help mitigate the impact on its customers and employees, and the Indian government.
The company has donated 500,000 Indian Rupee to the PM Cares Fund, the official Indian government fund created to to help those affected by COVID-19 across India. Algoworks employees have also promoted the use of face masks and sanitizers in their communities. They’ve helped spread the word by virtually hosting meet-ups with their peers; educating them about the effects, symptoms, and prevention of the virus.
Algoworks has supported remote work and work from home well before the national lockdown took place, to protect their valued employees. As a result, none of Algoworks’ 400+ workforce in India or the U.S. has tested positive for COVID-19, despite the headquarters located in the most affected district near the capital, New Delhi.
Algoworks has also been concerned about the mental well-being of their employees. Various initiatives have been made to stay in touch throughout the lockdown. Complimentary 3-month access to online meditation and yoga sessions with MindHouse was arranged by the HR department to help employees relieve stress and anxiety. Management has gone the extra mile for particular cases needing additional assistance, while strictly complying to all rules established by the respective governing authorities.
With a well-prepared, ready to refer instructional guide on COVID-19, Algoworks helped its employees gain a better understanding of the virus, its effects, and how to prevent it. Algoworks launched the FAQ COVID-19 page immediately following the lockdown to maintain complete transparency and visibility with its clients, partners, customers and employees. Making the best use of its social media channels, Algoworks published information sourced only from credible sources like the World Health Organization and the CDC.
The well-structured BCP, or Business Continuity Plan was rolled out informing customers how Algoworks remains operational during this crisis. In times when it is not wise to host physical meetings or conferences with customers and employees, Algoworks has leveraged various communication channels and video conferencing applications.
The following quote is an excerpt from a notice shared to all employees across the organization by Rachit Agarwal, Co-Founder & Director of Algoworks.
“This situation is unprecedented for businesses and families, both. It is time we all support each other and help come out of this situation unharmed. I’d advise you all to be patient and calm if you are at home, safe, and sound. Remain positive and look after your family and personal responsibilities. Algoworks has a history of not being moved in any situation as we all have always stood together. This situation demands the same. As always, I stand with each one of you and expect the same in return. Let’s all be together, work together, and come out of it stronger. I request you all to work hard towards helping yourself, your family, and your colleagues in achieving success as we beat coronavirus forever.”
Algoworks’ leadership team is continuously hosting online meetings to evaluate the crisis and respond appropriately. The company is taking all necessary measures in accordance with guidance from public health authorities and the local government. We pledge to come back strong.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Holly Copeland, Senior Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability & Impact at Horizon Therapeutics.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
My role involves creating, building and executing our CSR, Sustainability & Impact strategy while also managing the philanthropic portfolio of the company.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
To be intentional and authentic when connecting with others, regardless of their position or status.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Effectively communicating the value of impact work relative to the business and bottom line.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes. Mentorship involves having someone in your life that has your best interests in mind and can help guide you with sound advice through a particular situation or time in your life.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Take as many 1:1 introductory meetings as possible. Buy them a coffee and ask great questions. Listen. Take notes. You can learn something from every encounter, even the bad ones.
Cultivate the good ones over time. Before you know it, you’ll have a solid network that you can leverage when needed.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo.
What is something coming up that excites you?
The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment!
Written by Jay Parekh, VP of Partnerships and Business Development at Chime. Originally published on Medium.
You’ve probably heard the term ‘food desert’ — it’s used to describe a large geographical area where residents don’t have access to a grocery store. The term ‘banking desert’ similarly refers to an area where access to banking services is limited or costs significantly more than where services are easy to come by.
As an online banking service, many of our members live in these banking deserts. Even though we don’t have much of a presence on the ground in these communities, we’re still able to provide them with the services they need without charging them exorbitant fees.
And while our members benefit from our services regardless of where they live, we are always looking for ways to connect in real life with the communities where our members actually live and work. Establishing a connection with and giving back to our communities has been important to us from the beginning. In fact, it was our founders, Chris and Ryan, who suggested we start a program to help Chimers give back. In 2018, they started the wheels turning on a company-wide pledge program and they asked me to help.
To start, we thought about different ways we could give back: our time, company equity, money, and our product. The more we thought about it, we realized it’s a bit hard to give away our product because it’s already free.
In the end, we decided to give 1% of our time — roughly 7,000 hours. We feel it’s a goal that speaks to who we are as a company and helps us further endorse our mission to help Americans live financially healthy lives with our actions and company culture.
While committing 1% of our employees’ time was a no-brainer, we came across a few challenges once we decided to do so: How would we decide where to spend that time? How could we make sure Chimers are engaged with our pledge program? How would we find organizations who would want to work with us? And how could we do all of this while our company scaled? It was important to us to think about this program holistically, make it accessible — and appealing — to all Chimers, and find organizations that could absorb our growing team and be aligned with our mission.
The How: Connecting our Why with partner organizations
To formalize the commitment we wanted to make, we partnered with the folks at Pledge 1%, who have had many leading companies make similar pledges, including Yelp!, Atlassian, and Twilio to figure out which organizations we should work with. Without any preconceived notions about who we’d end up partnering with, we started by gathering groups of Chimers to understand where they want to give back their 1%.
It was important for us to understand what people from all teams and levels of the organization were looking for out of this program, since our goal is to have every employee participate. Each focus group included employees from every part of Chime and covered topics of what matters to them, which communities they want to know more about, and which activities would make giving 1% of their time feel fulfilling.
Something emerged pretty quickly in the group discussions: Chimers were interested in how to help people with economic empowerment. Whether it was helping people manage their personal finances or educating them about businesses and entrepreneurship, Chimers’ interests in helping communities grow economically aligned quite beautifully with our mission. While we did guess that this would be important to many Chimers, it was exciting to see such consistency across our focus groups.
Once we’d narrowed down a theme to focus on — economic empowerment — we identified partner organizations. With an initial list of over 200, we narrowed them down by answering the following questions:
- Will the organization help us develop empathy for our communities by working directly with people? Our hope was to find partners whose work would allow Chimers to meet and get to know members of the community.
- Does the organization serve a diverse location or population? With many of our employees living outside of San Francisco and in Chicago as we scaled our second office, we wanted to make sure our partner organizations would represent folks from different geographies than where we work.
Once we’d narrowed the list to a handful of organizations, we invited them to meet with us — in person or virtually — so that we could get to know them better. We learned what their missions were, what was important to them when it came to taking on volunteers, and what they wanted to see from us, a potential volunteer partner.
After our meet-and-greets, we chose two organizations with whom to pilot our pledge. Both organizations would allow Chimers to meet community members directly. They were also open to collaborating with us on the early stages of our program. We’d found two partners willing to help us iron out the kinks as we got this program off the ground. Those organizations are Oakland Promise and WeThrive.
Oakland Promise: Oakland Promise provides resources and support to Oakland kids to empower them to achieve higher education and careers. We chose to partner with them because they think holistically about intervening positively in peoples’ lives, from offering financial support for low-income people who are about to have a baby to providing one-on-one mentorship when people are going to college. They also allow Chimers to engage at different levels, ranging from a phone call once a month to mentor someone in college, texts throughout the month to offer financial advice, or in-person meetings. We love how Oakland Promise empowers Chimers to develop long-term relationships with community members in the Bay Area.
WeThrive: WeThrive helps underestimated youth build businesses by providing schools with curricula focused on entrepreneurship and empowering kids to start their own businesses. We decided to partner with WeThrive because we felt truly inspired by their founder, Daquan J. Oliver. As the child of a single mother growing up in a low income household, Daquan discovered entrepreneurship at a young age and credits it with keeping him out of trouble through his adolescence. By providing schools with curriculum and volunteer support, kids can build and grow companies and while getting advice and mentorship from partner companies like Chime.
While committing time was important to us, we also realized that helping support Chime volunteers wouldn’t be “free” for the organizations, and wanted to also have additional impact. So we made unrestricted financial donations to both organizations since we know how valuable these kinds of funds are to non-profits.
Measuring success and overcoming challenges
Once we’d figured out how to partner with our community, we wanted to be sure we were holding ourselves accountable to some measurable metrics of success for the program. To measure success, we looked at our 1% Pledge program from a few perspectives: participation, engagement, empathy, and value provided to our partners.
The first measure of success is whether employees are donating 1% of their time. Without a full-time team dedicated to the program, we rely on champions across the organization to encourage participation — people who are passionate about volunteering and are developing their leadership skills, whose responsibility it is to get fellow Chimers involved in the initiative and act as cheerleaders for our partner organizations. Measuring participation is a first step to analyzing how the program is getting off the ground, as well as a proxy for how inspired Chimers feel to give back — both in and out of the workplace.
The second way we’re measuring the program is the relationship between employee engagement and involvement in our 1% Pledge. Already, we’ve heard that many employees feel a sense of pride that Chime is doing this, but long-term success will be evaluated after the annual engagement survey is completed. Our People team will analyze engagement scores and look for a correlation between engagement and involvement in the program.
The third measure of success of our 1% Pledge program is whether it’s building empathy among Chimers for our members. It’s important for Chimers to understand what our members are dealing with day to day because it informs our company culture and how we build our products. Helping people with their financial health contributes to how Chimers solve problems at work by empowering them to better understand and connect with our members.
Finally, we want to add value to our partners’ organizations by giving them our time. To that end, we’ll maintain an open line of communication between our Chime 1% Pledge champions and our partners to continue evaluating our partnerships. After all, they’re the ones we are hoping to positively impact.
The future
While our 1% Pledge program is in its infancy, we’re excited for Chimers to get involved with our partners and find ways to give back on their own — something many Chimers already do. It’s important for all of us to foster a culture where taking time away from work to support and help others in our community is a good thing. This program is just one part of that and we hope to see Chimers giving back in a number of ways.
Giving back during COVID-19
Due to the current shelter-in-place mandates in San Francisco and Chicago, all Chimers are currently working from home. Our top priority during this time is the wellbeing of our members and employees, so we are urging everyone to do what they need to take care of themselves. However, it’s often during times of crisis that people most want to help — so we’re finding ways for Chimers to do so during this time.
We’re working with both of our partners, Oakland Promise and WeThrive, to find ways to offer our time while we weather this pandemic. For example, Chimers are still offering financial advice via text and phone calls for Oakland Promise, as well as advising kids on their entrepreneurship and business ideas for WeThrive. A silver lining of schools being moved to an online model is that Chimers can now help students with their entrepreneurship ideas across the country in partnership with WeThrive.