Video retrospective of GlobalNiche, my remote skills edtech startup 2011-2013 and beyond...

“Her groundbreaking concept of building an online professional presence as a way to advance business objectives for growth and sustainability… came long before companies understood the marketing potential of online social media, and began to hire social media managers in large numbers. And long before people understood why and how to use existing tools for effective remote work.”

— Tanya Monsef

I founded GlobalNiche in Istanbul with Tara Agacayak after evolving my 2006 cultural book to a 2010 global citizen blog to an online skill building business, and Tanya Monsef joined us when I moved to San Francisco. Here’s what Tanya, the Dean's Executive Professor of Management in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University for the past decade, says about GlobalNiche in 2024.

Watch a quick retrospective, excuse any missing media.

"Anastasia’s groundbreaking concept of building an online professional presence as a way to advance business objectives for growth and sustainability… came long before companies understood the marketing potential of online social media, and began to hire social media managers in large numbers. And long before people understood why and how to use existing tools for effective remote work.

Tanya recalls how I took my knowledge and prior success using book publishing’s “author platform” concept to reach the public with content marketing, branding and community outreach (that’s Expat Harem!), and combined it with the heavily-online techniques a serial expat like me has relied on during my overseas experiences, and then how I created a way to teach it to others, and then to scale it.

"GlobalNiche was a forward-thinking leader in digital solutions and thought leader to a global cohort of founders and business women, as well as organizations serving female innovators.”

This reminds me that Tanya and I continued to deliver talks and workshops well into 2014 and later, working with the Women’s Startup Lab in Mountain View, Turkish Women’s International Network in Menlo Park, and a women executives group at Cisco in San Jose, and I’ve guest lectured to her business students at Santa Clara University for several years.

““Ten years before Zoom became mainstream, GlobalNiche were already conducting live web video group meetings (using chat, recordings, etc) showcasing an ability to foresee trends and implement innovative solutions to increase opportunity. ”

— Tanya Monsef

"Ten years before Zoom became mainstream, GlobalNiche were already conducting live web video group meetings (using chat, recordings, etc) showcasing her ability to foresee trends and implement innovative solutions to increase opportunity,” she says.

"GlobalNiche was awarded Top Instructor by Udemy in 2013 as the most enrolled course.” You’ll see in the quick video above that Udemy noted we enrolled students from 17 nations in 2013.

Tanya recalls our 2013 win of an innovation challenge to connect 5 million women by national and international gender equality foundations, global health nonprofits, and academic leadership centers.

The multi-year strategic change initiative of San Jose State University, Public Health Institute (PHI), World Pulse, the Global Women's Leadership Network, Monterey Institute of International Studies, and the Global Fund for Women recognized GlobalNiche's pragmatic, resourceful plan to use free web technology and collaboration tools for connecting and transforming communities world-wide.

“In 2013 GlobalNiche won an innovation challenge to connect 5 million women, recognition of a pragmatic, resourceful plan to use free web technology and collaboration tools.”

— Tanya Monsef

ON CONTRIBUTING TO THE FUTURE OF WORK MOVEMENT

In 2014, I looked back on the workforce pioneering I’d done during GlobalNiche, and noted how awareness and adoption was coming for people who hadn’t yet felt the need for this online survival method:

“I’m proud to have added definition to, contributed to & participated in the movement toward every-day entrepreneurial thinking and acting and creative entrepreneurship as a solution for everyone, the incorporation of location independence and lifestyle design in populations beyond expats, travelers and life hackers, a new seriousness around digital identity, personal branding, digital footprints and online social networking in general for personal and professional development, reinvisioning the future of work with online collaboration and cocreation, the adoption of global communication best practices, the absolute tidal wave of online content marketing, the rise of the transformational consumer.”

Is your foot on the brake at the same time you're trying to accelerate? It’s your brain science

New read for Fogust...

I was fortunate to read an early manuscript of this new book release by ☀️ Jessica J.J. Lutz ☀️ and look forward to diving into the final version now making its way around the world!

I see Barbie gets a mention on p 110 - she was Jessica's favored doll because she wasn't a baby, she was a grown woman who knew what she wanted - Jessica and I were among the (how many, uncounted?) girls whose parents wouldn't allow us to play with the toy. Before Barbie director Greta Gerwig was even born, Barbie was a subversive force in our lives!

“A war correspondent facing burnout wonders why she suddenly feels fear when a bomb goes off at her Baghdad hotel: a clue comes when she realizes she is 4 months pregnant. To understand how her coping mechanisms no longer work, she applied her journalistic research skills to the inner conflict she experienced, and her upbringing. What comes out of it is a deep dive into the gender-based sociology, and the brain science, a review of the literature parsing it all, and a way forward, through simple exercises that anyone can do to start using our dual-sided human brain to succeed in life and work, and stay healthy and feel good about it too.”

— How I encapsulated the book on an early read.

Here’s where you can get the book in the USA: Amazon.

The Future of Work 2023

We’re not “post pandemic” just because we want to be.

(And yes, it’s the same sad story from last January, and the year before. I have been early and sadly accurate on this pandemic.)

So - 3 years in- in our life-work environments how do we deal with this new hybrid state — this state of limbo — of being weary of the public health safety protocols and wary of the consequences at the same time?

“As we look at 2023, how do we deal with our new hybrid state: weary of pandemic protocols, wary of the consequences?”

As the new year starts, how do we, all of us, everyone really, but in this case businesses, and in particular company boards and the board directors deal with our not-even-new reality, and our insistent future?

“Would you rather have a hybrid or virtual meeting that is quorate and high attendance, or would you rather risk apologies from directors unable to attend meetings face to face if they are forced to commute?” asks my longtime board journey mentor Shefaly Yogendra in her year end wrap up.

Read it here: Boards and governance: Lessons from 2022

Meanwhile, a future of work inspiration of mine, Budd Caddell who credits Kevin Kelly for the term ‘Protopian Organization’ and offers this one prediction for 2023 from the wreckage of 2022: there is a vacuum for a new kind of organization that takes the future seriously, and creates real change with its people and communities.

With trust in institutions waning, employees disengaged, consumers looking for meaning, progress stalled both at the org- and systemic-level”, a new, more mature organization can emerge, Caddell says.

I immediately recognize this is an opportunity for businesses that take living with the pandemic seriously - to offer the people they work with a baseline of health and safety - by upgrading their ventilation systems, and allowing hybrid work and virtual meetings as Yogendra mentions above, but I see companies failing to do this more often than not. Even companies that pride themselves on futurism, like Google.

“It’s time for organizations that take the future seriously and work for mutual enrichment of their people and communities”

These new protopian organizations he describes, “they don't just paint an optimistic picture of tomorrow, they respect the problems that come with trying to make anything better. These orgs won't just slap "we make the world a better place" on their label and career site and ignore the unintended consequences of their business model and culture.”