Have you heard of MAKERS? The event of the season.
Have you heard of MAKERS? The event of the season.
It was all about Power and Grace
My work with Monumental Me evolved from my probono work of over 20 years as a social impact leader for women in business and gender equity and my years in corporate, in the media and tech industries, and most recently training and practicing executive education. My focus has been on women’s empowerment AND women achieving a state of well-being in order to thrive in life and in work.
I want women to shine, break barriers, and change the world! But I also want women to avoid burnout and dropping out of their chosen careers or passion projects because they have taken on too much and they leave themselves behind.
It catches up with us “doers.” All of this doing, making, championing, caring, working, juggling. I quit my job at Google because I was burnt out. This was an impossible decision for me and had major implications for my ongoing career trajectory. I was changing the world! (the Google mission back then) But I wanted less stress in my life and to take some time off to achieve balance and change my own kid’s diapers!
“Stop looking to the future, start making the future.” Cynt Marshall, the first Black woman CEO in the NBA and author of You’ve Been Chosen.
How was I going to continue to make the future at a big job at a big company with major global reach, and become a powerhouse if was burnt out? I wasn’t. I needed to recalibrate, rethink and recharge.
Several years later, the masses started listening to the need for self-care and uncovering pathways to thrive in work and in life when Arianna Huffington launched her company Thrive Global (what a great name!) after she collapsed from exhaustion from building a multi-million dollar media empire, but before selling her company for $315 million. She turned her overworked, overstressed, and overstretched self around, but at least she proved to be a powerhouse media and wellness executive.
Do all female powerhouses need to run themselves into illness, burnout, broken relationships, and regrets in order to change the world?
Nope. I don’t think they do. But I do think women still have more barriers to entry and to longevity to get to and sustain a level of power to create lasting positive change. Especially women of color and those who were not born into privilege. And there are many women who are excellent role models and achievers, who we now see and hear from (which wasn’t the case only a few short decades ago), who also give themselves grace. Let’s talk about that!
What does giving yourself grace mean? To give myself grace I give myself permission to forgive my mistakes, my lapses in judgment, my imperfections, AND the most crucial is permission to take care of myself. This took me years to learn to prioritize and to do. And now in middle age, as a parent of two teenagers for whom I want to set a good example and live to a ripe old age, I am doing it AND teaching it through Monumental Me.
During the MAKERS conference I just attended in California October 24-26, I met MANY female powerhouses who are changing the world and “Making The Future,” in line with the conference theme. I was so inspired after the conference, inspired to rush home and continue to work for gender equity, inclusion, and belonging after hearing from women such as Mae Jemison engineer and the first Black woman to travel into space, and Constance Wu actor of Asian descent sharing her personal story and battle with mental health, and Cynt Marshall, quoted above and the first Black woman CEO in the NBA and cancer survivor, Kara Swisher, the super sharp journalist and star of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway who speaks her mind, and 95-year-old (!) Maybelle Blair, a female baseball player in the 1940s who inspired A League of Their Own & is an equity advocate, and 17-year old (!) Marly Dias, American activist, writer, and Harvard student who launched a campaign at an even younger age called #1000BlackGirlBooks so Black girls like her could see the necessary role models books share. The list goes on… it was incredible to see and hear from these women in person, live, in a room filled with other women of all colors, ages, and backgrounds connected by drive, curiosity, and passion.
MAKERS is a women’s empowerment platform and annual conference, a brand owned by Yahoo! I had never been, and my brain and heart grew immensely from the experience of attending this 3-day event. There were a few men there as well, and we do need more allies and male changemakers for gender equity and inclusion initiatives, but I was inspired by all of these mighty women!
And in addition to the conference theme of Making the Future, the major message that developed and stuck with me over the course of listening to the speakers was: Have grace for yourself.
It was all about power and grace.
Women can rule the world. Too many successful women burn out, get sick, and feel like a failure as a parent or adult children… There is a need for grace and for these “powerhouse women” to talk about giving themselves grace, and to give high achieving women the encouragement and dare I say permission to do so. Because often times we do-ers don’t allow this. And many of the speakers at MAKERS did just that.
That is what I love to hear. After learning it the hard way. And I am far from comparing myself to any of these remarkable women except that we all share the story of striving for achievement, change, and recognition. We are all MAKERS.
Take care of you.
🧡Liana
Inspiration and stories are key tools for change and growth. Here are some tools to thrive, for you from MAKERS:
Hear from 95 year old Maybelle Blair, Baseball Player & Advocate HERE
Hear from Constance Wu in conversation with Loretta Ross HERE
Hear from Cynt Marshall HERE
