So much of startup life is rooted in jargon. While shared terminology can be super helpful, using problematic words across an entire industry can also cause harm. Using problematic language en masse impacts more than how we build companies. …
Whether by choice or chance, career changes are a fact of professional life. A 2019 survey found 49% of full-time workers have experienced a major career change, and 65% say they’re either thinking or have thought about making a dramatic shift. …
Part of the joy of building in public is the open dialogue about the journey of building a company, and part of the joy of building an early-stage startup is that this journey includes a good deal of wayfinding. Who is our specific audience? How might we best serve them…
When thinking about our paths through life, there’s often a binary thought process: should I do this or that? Maybe you’re wondering whether you should follow your creative aspirations or take the business path, for example. We believe you don’t have to choose just one. Your journey doesn’t have to…
Women are answering the call of entrepreneurship — in the U.S., women started an average of 1,817 businesses per day in 2019. But what does that look like, really, to a woman aspiring to found a company? Current research like this is helpful in proving that she’s not alone in…
While the work to achieve equity for womxn needs to be tackled from all sides, the risk of fragmentation or even derailing these efforts is very real. As I see it, the current landscape of organizations is a sea of islands. Some of these isles pop up organically like a…
If you’ve worked with me, you already know that I consider myself a storyteller first. It’s the foundation of my marketing methodology and rationale for a career in building brands. And OwnTrail is a platform centered on stories — womxn sharing their authentic stories of the milestones and experiences of…
When things were getting serious in a co-founder way, I knew I needed to have a talk with Rebekah, OwnTrail’s CEO and co-founder. Because if I was going to leave a company I loved to build a new one, the person I was building it with needed to know what…
When it comes to figurative damage, the biggest casualty of coronavirus might be the creative community.
Because while the current economic uncertainty has everyone alarmed, the impact of social distancing and closures will hit this ecosystem early on in the form of lost wages and then in a lasting way…
I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not what I was told a founder looks like. I’m not who’s supposed to be in the c-suite. My CV lacks the preferred pedigrees of elite (expensive) universities and “top tier” consulting firms. I have visible tattoos and a small child instead of…
