The 40-over-40 Women To Watch celebrates women over 40 who are disruptors, role models and makers...creating momentum and changing the world. It's an initiative by Dare, Dream, Do author Whitney Johnson and 40:20 Vision founder Christina Vuleta. Excerpt from my application.
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How are you disrupting professionally, whether in business, tech, media, entrepreneurship, social good, science, academics, creative arts, or politics?
Are you creating growth, jobs or new products, ideas or services?
My startup GlobalNiche works to train women to use the social web and mobile technology (what we call digital literacy) in alignment with their vision for the world they want to live in order to make that vision a reality both through their own work and through the connections and collaborations they make with others through their web platform. We show them how to do this.
In showing people how to build an effective online presence to connect with broader networks and opportunities, and build social capital, I help people appreciate and tap their own assets and the potential of online spaces to find or make their own jobs.
Along with my cofounder Tara Agacayak, I created a 6-step multimedia program and training system that shows women how to lay a foundation on the web for the work they want to do and the life they want to live.
In our experience, even with the availability of technology, extremely capable women stumble when it comes to sharing their expertise, knowledge, ideas, cause, or voice on the web because they feel uncomfortable using the technology or they feel vulnerable calling attention to themselves or joining a public conversation or taking credit for their ideas. We address these issues by bringing them together in a virtual environment that allows them to interact with one another, learn digital literacy skills and test them out in a supportive community, and encourage them to take the steps toward realizing their vision.
When offered to individuals, our program works to empower their vision for their own life. When offered in community, our program supports the community’s shared goals.
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What are some of the outcomes of your work?
What would suggest your greatest achievements are ahead of, not behind, you?
The world is just waking up to the future I’ve been living in. The future I’ve been solving for, and have now created distributable, teachable, learnable, actionable steps for.
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How are you a positive role model to younger women: innovating around work/life issues; promoting women for leadership?
Are you innovating around work/life issues; promoting women in leadership, or simply willing to make tough choices?
As a longtime expat and pro in culture, media, I’ve been forced to create my OWN GLOBAL LIFE/WORK SOLUTION …because it didn’t exist yet.
Younger women share that I have validated their instincts, helped them contemplate their own possibilities, and provided them much needed support & structure to operate.
- A young work-at-home mother says “I am getting organized both in the real world and in my mind. For the first time I am making visual representations of my work and my ideas.”
- A 30-something author and educator says my support community “became my think-tank, support group, go-to team, and more.”
- A 30-something global curator tells me “When I hear you talk about identity and multiple cultural personalities and finding your creative outlets no matter where you are, I feel understood.”
I wouldn’t say I’m a positive role model to just younger women. I work with women older than I am and they tell me
- I “Love the personal & pro growth spurt it’s providing!” in the words of a 60 year old women’s life-transition coach.
- A university instrucutor also my senior says “I felt smarter and more empowered to make decisions” after receiving my training.
- While a 50-something global mobility expert and real estate agent says training “generates introspection. It will open your eyes to the potential of online spaces.”
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How have you disrupted yourself personally?
How are you personally reinventing or creating a new path? Are you applying your prior experiences in new ways?
My current town of San Francisco may be a tech-forward location but that’s not why I’ve increasingly been turning to technology to help me be where and who I am today. Since living in 30 homes in 4 countries -- talk about personal disruption, try serial personal disruption as a lifestyle -- I’m a globally mobile individual and rely on social & mobile tech for my total, global operation.
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Why do you think you are about to 'take off'?
Because after a lifetime of existing in the wilderness, I am finally on-trend.
My custom life-work solution seems torn from today’s headlines and bestseller lists on the topics of future work skills and work-life fit solutions.
- “Leaning in” to your own life, your own preferred way of living and working.
- Optimizing your online presence in the age of the personal platform & personal branding, the global microbrand of you, content marketing, the social era.
- Being recruitable (quotable, invited to speak, hired, you name it) based on the appeal and impact of your web activities in the beyond-the-resume Google age.
- Your digital footprint IS your resume.
- Building global community through expression of your interests in the age of resonance and new world order of the interest graph — people who share your interests.
- Taking charge of your life’s trajectory in the age of the Start-up of You & disrupt-yourself and the ‘everyone’s an entrepreneur of their own lives’ times we all now live in.
Why am I about to 'take off'? Because I have turned to entrepreneurialism, education, and online spaces in order to share what I know more widely.
