Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Arleen Saluja-Westerkamp
Director of Salesforce Consulting at Agency73
San Diego, California, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I help Agency73 build their Salesforce consulting business while overseeing customer engagements, managing and mentoring the consulting team, and helping clients achieve their CRM goals through successful Salesforce implementations.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
Apart from helping customers change the way they do business, my favorite part of what I do is help shape the next generation of software consultants and entrepreneurs. Getting the opportunity to influence and work with some of the smartest minds in the business is both a privilege and a responsibility.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
I get my motivation from our customers’ success stories. Through our software implementations, we have helped a number of businesses enable remote working for their employees. We are making a difference in these people’s lives and ultimately helping companies support safe work environment for their employees.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
When I find myself judging another woman, I get reminded of what someone once told me – the first thought that goes through mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next, defines who you are. We are all struggling to find our voice and our place in this world, and a little empathy goes a long way. Amy Poehler once said – “It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and your real estate”.
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity is the ultimate human spirit. If you want to be anything in life, be generous! Generous with your time. Generous with your love. Generous with your support. Generous with your humanity. And generous in the way you treat people.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Businesses help the society grow and flourish. They add jobs and empower people to attain a better quality of life. Businesses help provide purpose and direction to the young adults who are starting new careers. For me, working for a small business provides me the opportunity to use technology to help make people’s lives easier and more efficient. Once, I built a software automation for a customer, that helped them save 2 hours everyday by not having to do manual data entry. This allowed them to be able to leave work earlier and be home in time to have dinner with their child.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Passionate. I am passionate about helping people and making a difference in the world. I try to put passion into everything I do in my personal and professional life. Passion drives my decision-making and goal setting.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Run the World (Girls), Song by Beyoncé
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
Professionally, I am looking forward to growing our team and our company. Getting the opportunity to help guide software consultants in their career path. Personally, I am looking forward to getting a little more of the “normal” back in this COVID-present world. I don’t know if we can ever completely get rid of the virus, but I hope, as a world, we keep getting better at co-existing with it while staying safe and healthy.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I moved to the USA about 15 years ago, as a scared young Indian girl, with lots of hopes and dreams. With hard work and passion, I worked my way up to be a Director at a software company. My journey has taught me to have empathy and compassion for people who are going through their own journeys. I never let myself forget how fortunate I have been and how important it is to give back to the community that helped me flourish.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Nancy Cooper
CEO, Servio Consulting LLC
Frankfort, IL, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
CEO – I mainly oversee our partnership with Salesforce and our sales and marketing departments.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
Strategy! I love working with our customers to understand their pain points, requirements and goals and work with our solutions team to show our customers how to bring those to life using the Salesforce platform.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
Watching the fear and challenges that our customers are facing as they try to adopt digital transformation and learning how to sustain the remote workforce over the few years. We mainly work in education and this has been a huge challenge for institutions and driving them through this new normal is what motivates me to keep going.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Document everything and have a running to do list that is consistently reviewed.
What does generosity mean to you?
Going above and beyond to help others with your time.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Today’s largest challenge is adopting to our volatile world and learning the new digital and remote way of doing business. So having realtime access to data to be able to pivot quickly is what we need to be looking at. Implementing technology that gives us this data and the ability to adopt to change quickly. For example, Servio was able to use Salesforce to implement COVID tracking solutions for several institutions and school districts that will quickly give decision makers the ability to see who is sick, who has COVID, who has been exposed in realtime and react accordingly. Without this technology, it would take days/weeks to gather this information.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Strategic – I love strategy, planning and executing in all aspects of my life and I feel that is my strength. I feel you need to constantly be evolving to improve to be a better company and person.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
If you are going through hell by Rodney Atkins
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
I am looking forward to seeing what our new norm is. We have been moved up to Premium Partner Level with Salesforce, we are figuring out our highbred office hours, we are rapidly hiring, implementing new processes and software. From the personal side, my daughter is getting married in October, my son was moved up to play on a D2 rugby team and I am looking forward to start traveling again. All of this gives me great excitement to see where the business falls at the end of the year, super excited to see my beautiful daughter marry her prince charming, very excited to become a rugby groupie mom this fall and cannot wait to start traveling again, my goal is to travel to a new destination every quarter.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Leslie Buenz
COO, Servio Consulting, LLC
Frankfort, Illinois, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I provide oversight for all of our Operations and Strategic Partnerships.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
Working with our internal teams to strategize and review processes to make sure we continue to change and perfect our approach to all aspects of our projects.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
Managing through the last few years has been difficult for everyone. At Servio we have had a focus on navigating the new business landscape to ensure the least amount of impact to our staff and clients.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Keep doing things outside of your comfort zone until you no longer have one.
What does generosity mean to you?
Giving freely of your time and knowledge without expectations of reciprocation.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Today’s largest challenge is the ability to change quickly and figure out the new way of doing business, no matter what industry. Having access to meaningful data that will allow us to quickly pivot direction and focus on what is driving success is going to be very important moving forward. Implementing the correct technology is critical to give us access to that data and the ability to adopt and change. Working within the Education Industry we have been there to help navigate the recent challenges of the digital transformation many institutions are undergoing. We have utilized the Salesforce platform to implement solutions ranging from Recruitment and Admissions to Alumni Management. Having their data in one place, easily accessible, has given these institutions the ability to act on their data and quickly pivot when needed.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Strategic – I try to look at issues and opportunities from all angles to determine the best approach that will provide the most value to our company, staff and clients alike.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Hear Comes the Sun – The Beatles
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
I’m looking forward to finding our new normal. After the last few years it will be interesting to navigate what an average day will now look like and how we handle those changes.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Katelyn Montigney
Application Product Owner, Passage Technology
Lake Forest, Illinois, US
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I lead the product management team for our Salesforce AppExchange applications. My role involves mentoring other product owners, providing input on product strategy, and market research around topics like pricing.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
The best part of my job is the dev team I get to work with — everyone on the team, product owners and developers alike, is friendly and collaborative. We’ve overcome a lot of tough challenges working together, and I’m really proud of how we’ve grown as a team.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
My wonderful husband and our found/friend family! I’m not sure where I’d be without their support — they can always make me smile.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Once I was feeling pretty low about something that had gone wrong, and my manager told me, experience = mess-ups. If you don’t make mistakes you can’t learn and grow. As someone who’s always been really, really hard on herself whenever anything goes wrong, I’ve found that idea useful to keep in mind — it helps keep me focused on learning from mistakes rather than beating myself up over them.
What does generosity mean to you?
Giving and doing good not because it is expected of you or because it improves your personal reputation, but rather because you know in your heart that it is the right thing to do.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
I think one of the biggest things businesses can do to help solve the challenges of today is listen, and take action based on what you hear, not based on what you want to hear. I don’t have any one specific story I can share, but always being open to feedback and doing what you can with that feedback to make the world a better place is critically important in my opinion.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Stubborn. If there’s one quality that has gotten me through hard times (and caused a fair few issues as well), it’s stubbornness — I refuse to stop or quit, I’m simply too stubborn.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Flow — from the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker soundtrack.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
I’m excited to continue with a couple new hobbies I’ve picked up — I learned how to crochet semi-recently and have a few projects I’m working on there, and I’ve also started learning to draw, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Indupriya (Indu) Tetali
Business Process Specialist, TechForce Services
Sydney NSW Australia
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
Business Process Specialist and Project Delivery assistant: I would like to understand the business use case/objective and workout a solution delivery strategy that embeds the technology with the industry standards, risks, security, current and future processes focusing on the overall big picture of the audience.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
Being creative and rethinking the problem case into an optimised and executable strategy which is S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time driven). No two customers are exactly same and their problems are not same, so creative thinking.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
Sometimes connect with cosmos and resonate within to spread positive vibrations. Yoga and meditation helped me to travel with kind and stable pace during these recent times, was it easy? No and again was it hard? Not if we quest and realign our inner levels.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Never assume, don’t be hasty, just hibernate sometime to resume with more power.
What does generosity mean to you?
It is our very behaviour passed on to us from generations, let us not loose the power of it and spread more to receive happiness back, just keep it active and wake it up!
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
There are many challenges the world is facing but most of the challenges touch sustainability and being human centric ethos in this digital world along with diversities.
Sustainability should be an important principle across of the industries, the investments and visions should drive towards an ethical, secured and platforms that suit all the ages and all times.
Every department in an organisation plays essential role for the business to run and to look all the departments at same levels serving different responsibilities that completes a single big company vision puzzle. Being human connections are not only HR department focused but it should be inculcated as part of all the departments.
The businesses around the world addressing these principles, the world organisations and governments are working towards it, set their foot into these ideas and areas. There are more eco-friendly industries/businesses turning up and the consumers started assessing and shifting to these businesses.
It is a collective change happening across the world…
My organisation, TechForce Services has the above-mentioned as the core standards, human values are focus in a way that every employee gets an opportunity to learn and grow, the professional comfort resonates lot of positive vibes at personal end, this again adds to the company business goals. Its a win-win cycle and it sprouts and grows.
As a business process specialist, an ISO and industry standards enthusiast, for the organisation to grow and get standardised all the divisions globally and the departments should follow the motives of the organisation uniform way and also serving regionally. This is a challenge to execute like greatest symphonies of all to working together towards a common company goal in a standardised way.
There are many aspects to balance and grow together but community service plays vital role in our day to day lifestyle. There are many organisations that support and opportunities to share our happiness and knowledge to others, 1% pledge is one such organisations that drives and connects the businesses across the world to contribute by feeling responsible and contented.
There are many such stories and experiences that directs and motivates our journeys and destinations.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Zealous: Learning to never give up and perform 100% and not focus on the outcome but focus on the strategy. So accept anything that comes and twirl it.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys – defines my journey late 2021 to starting this 2022 to make dynamism my habit going forward. This song is to me, my mother and to all the motherly forces around me.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
Looking for more vision on learning the data insights and use as per the real business cases, stay closer to mother nature and nurture her.
I am very keen to restart my art journey this year, interested to pursue Mandala art and other world traditional art forms. Spend time with my family and travel around which has been missed out in the last 2 years, Japan is in my list at the moment.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Be receptive, both at personal and professional ends: to change, to knowledge, to connections, to challenges faced and then personalise it.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Filipa Bellette
Co-Founder, Chris & Filly Functional Medicine
Don, Tasmania, Australia
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I’m a Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner & PhD Scholar. Founder of award-winning holistic health practice, Chris & Filly Functional Medicine
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
My clients! I absolutely love seeing the changes people experience – health-wise, in parenthood, in their careers and in life – when working with us. Getting random emails or texts that say – “My energy is back!” or “I feel so calm and focussed now” or “I’m a happier mummy” – is just the absolute best. I do also love being a thought-leader in my industry, advocating for prevention and overcoming of body burnout in high-achieving mums, and inspiring mums to love themselves enough to heal their body.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
The pandemic has been tough for many people. We actually pivoted our business right at the start of the pandemic, during lockdown. We pivoted because we knew our clients needed more help, more support, more guidance, and more accountability, especially during this time of high-stress and an ever-changing world. I’m passionate about creating the absolute best solution to help our clients end their body burnout. My team is constantly pushing the boundaries, chaining up our services and product ecosystem, to create the best path for healing, that is effective, simple, fast, and not overwhelming.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
You cannot pour from an empty cup
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity can come in so many forms. An unexpected smile or a hug is generosity. Going the extra mile to help others is generosity. Pouring all your expertise and passion for the purpose of providing your clients complete and remarkable results in generosity. Offering free advice and inspiring others is generosity. And pledging 1%(+) of our sales is generosity.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
For our company, we solve today’s biggest challenges in a two-fold way. Firstly, is the impact we have with our clients. For example, healing one mother from body burnout, has a huge impact on her family, her children, her community, and generations to come. When a mum is free of exhaustion and anxiety and inflammation, she can show up as a better mother, a better career/business woman, and a more vibrant human being in society. With every woman that we help, we are creating a healthier, happier, and more meaningful world. And a more gender equitable world. We’ve recently been awarded in the Telstra Best of Business Awards in the category Advancing Women, for our work in helping progress women.
Secondly, we are a Business Doing What Matters. We have a partnership with child protection organisation Free To Shine where we give a portion of our fees, to help keep girls in Cambodia safe and in school, and out of sex brothels. Sex-trafficking is one of the world’s most abhorent human rights issues, and we are actively working towards ending this issue.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Analytical, quirky & empathetic (sorry, couldn’t pick one, lol!). Analytical, as I have a keen eye for detail and connecting all the pieces, when addressing health issues with clients, as well as creating and running a business. Quirky, because that’s what people say! You’re cut and quirky, haha! And empathetic, because I deeply care.
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
2022 is so exciting! We are heading to the Telstra Best of Business Awards for the Nationals in April (we were announced State Winner a couple of weeks ago for Accelerating Women). I’m also in the process of writing a book – “Healthy, Happy Mum: How To End Body Burnout” (working title) – which I aim to have finished and published by the end of the year. My team are creating a new transformational course/program to further help our clients establish a healthy body and life. And I’m looking forward to more work-life balance, and spending quality time with my husband and two little girls.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Vanessa Chesnut
Lead Product Designer, Humanly.io
Houston, TX, US
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I am the lead product designer at a seed-stage company in the HR Tech space. I spend about 20% of my time creating sales and marketing assets and 80% working on building out our interview intelligence tool called Humanly Voice. I function as both a PM and a Designer, building out strategy, moving pixels, and making sure we are tying all of our product decisions back to our customer needs.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
I enjoy all of the potential energy that comes along with working at a startup. I get to work on hard problems that I believe are still unsolved and that will have huge net- positive returns for both interviewers and interviewees inside the hiring experience.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
- Getting to build a product from 0 to 1 (Humanly Voice)
- The discovery of new things and solving hard problems
- A strong desire to change the world for the better
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Write down your thoughts and predictions of a product or feature launch beforehand and revisit them afterward. Our memory is notoriously flawed and we rewrite history with false memories. Writing down our thoughts keeps us honest.
What does generosity mean to you?
No strings attached.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Crafty
Since joining a startup, I’ve led projects that are completely outside my expertise like researching how to build out machine-learning models or understanding the nuances of why people interrupt others during interviews, mostly unconsciously.
As a product designer, I design the world that I want to see, crafting solutions to problems, both known and unknown.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
Outside of my work, I’m excited about learning more about the potentials of Web3 ( Metaverse, NFT, blockchain gaming) and I’m looking forward to imparting my design knowledge on my mentee, who is a junior product designer at a startup.
I’m also looking forward to my traveling to Japan this summer and eating SO much sushi, visiting a ton of UNESCO World Heritage sites, and getting to see non-western design principles and philosophy.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Molly Emmett
Data Scientist, Atrium
Denver, Colorado, United States
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
As a data scientist at Atrium, I work with clients to design, build, and productionize models. I also work with a nonprofit to optimize their data definition, capture, and analysis.
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
I get to help build Atrium’s Cultivate program, which focuses on supporting nonprofits. I became a data scientist in order to deepen my technical skills and bring those skills back to the social impact arena. Thinking about how to render social impact an integral part of the business context is a meaningful way to bridge my previous and current experiences.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
When I feel like I’m running down personally or professionally, I think about my former students. Some of them faced significant hardship, and if they could show up to school with humor and goodwill, I can get up and keep going in their example.
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity is both personal and structural. In any given interaction, and increasingly so as online interaction is normalized, we only see a fraction of a person. Recognizing that we don’t know a person’s entire history or even what their day has been like is an important practice of generosity that can be logically extended to encompass structural generosity that does not make presumptions about people and groups in need.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
One way that businesses can play a larger role in solving social and environmental challenges is by actively listening to the experts in those arenas. Individuals who work directly with people in need or who have been focused on climate change may have deep understanding of the subtleties of these issues. Asking questions of the people who are being served or the people who, for example, farm or otherwise create the product that is being sold is essential to doing relevant good as opposed to strictly intentional good.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark. I love this song’s acknowledgement of sadness and frustration. We’ve all been confronted with circumstantial uncertainty over the past couple of years, and there’s something to be said for openly expressing the arduousness of that and picking yourself and others up in whatever ways you can (…and I love The Boss).
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Nivi Achanta
CEO, Soapbox Project
Seattle, WA, USA
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
I’m the self-proclaimed Party Sorceress at Soapbox Project. I’m the founder and only full-time employee, which means I do almost everything: write our newsletters, build community, host events, and make it easy for busy people to create environmental justice!
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
The community building piece, hands-down. I LOVE talking to our members and bringing people closer, whether it’s through our weekly virtual events or monthly in-person Action Hours. Social change is a long game, and it requires us overcoming the deeply entrenched ideas that business should be cutthroat and competitive. Building community shows me every day that this business isn’t about myself; it’s about the health and well-being of our planet and its people.
One fun recent win: we had a virtual event where two participants met for the first time, and within an hour post-event, they met up IRL at a local bar! This is the greatest metric of success I could have hoped for.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years – what motivates you to keep going?
Community keeps me going. This includes the Soapbox Project membership community, my community of close friends in Seattle, spaces I attend online with other women entrepreneurs, and the knowledge that we really are in this together, whether we like it or not. Zooming out and realizing the absurdity of being humans on a tiny spinning planet keeps me grounded in a strange way — I realize that if I fail, it does not matter, and if I succeed, it’s going to be beautiful and human-powered, with my community beside me.
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity is actually one of my core values, so I think about the behaviors I demonstrate. At the heart of it, if it’s within my means to help someone in need, I must.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
Businesses can play a HUGE role in solving today’s biggest challenges, but only if we step out of the mindset of “business as usual”. We have to think creatively about the core of what we’re doing, and this means rejecting VC money that doesn’t align with our values, bootstrapping even when it’s hard, giving up control, and putting impacted people in leadership positions.
At Soapbox, we’ve raised over $80,000 for environmental and social justice since 2020. This is a LOT of money for an organization led by one tiny person!
Additionally, one impact I’m proud of is our quarterly letter-writing to incarcerated people events. Since 2021, we’ve written over 1,000 letters to people in prisons, and we’ve changed the lives of our pen-pals on both sides. Our incarcerated friends have written to us saying that they finally feel “more like a human and less like a prisoner”, and attendees on the Soapbox side have had their entire perspectives changed on the US prison system, what compassion means, and how we’re unintentionally doing harm. Soapbox facilitates these events with tech companies and large corporations, and the employees we work with are finally seeing how much more they can do as workers.
If everyone in the business world just did 1% better and sustained that effort over time, it could truly change the world, as long as that 1% of effort and resources is coming from a place of seeking true change, instead of PR or external validation.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Vibrant
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?