Good Life Project - Christen Brandt & Tammy Tibbetts | Making a Difference

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Christen Brandt and Tammy Tibbetts are on a mission to unlock the potential of girls and women, especially in parts of the world where they’re often excluded from education and, in turn, much of life and the opportunity to help shape their communities and lives in a meaningful way.Both Christen and Tammy grew up in households where they were loved and supported, taught to believe in themselves and the power of education and become strong advocates. They were the first in their families to go to college, and both landed in the fashion magazine world in New York after graduating, where they started building careers and rising up in the industry. But an increasing awakening to inequity led them into a collaboration that would start as a viral video to raise awareness and eventually lead them out of the world of magazines and to co-found a foundation to help women and girls globally become educated, called She’s the First. Along the way, they’ve reimagined the foundation model, becoming leading voices in a new approach to philanthropy that has revolutionized outdated models by shifting power to the most vulnerable. So many people starting coming to them to learn more about how to step into the world of giving in a different way, they decided to distill their philosophy and strategies into a powerful new book, Impact: A Step-by-Step Plan to Create the World You Want to Live In. (https://www.planyourimpact.com/)You can find Christen Brandt & Tammy Tibbetts at: She's the First (https://shesthefirst.org/)-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, so my guests today, Kristen Brandt and Temi Tibbetts, they're on a mission to unlock the potential of girls and women, especially in parts of the world where they're often excluded from education and in turn from much of life and the opportunity to help shape their communities and lives in a really meaningful way. What's interesting is both Kristen and Temi, they grew up in households where they were loved and supported, taught to believe in themselves and the power of education and to become strong advocates and to have a really strong point of view. They were also both the first in their families to go to college and they both landed in the

magazine world in New York City, especially fashion after graduating, where they started to build careers and really rise up in the industry. and eventually lead them out of the world of magazines and to become co-founders of a foundation to help women and girls globally become educated called She's the First. And along the way, they have re-imagined the foundation model, becoming leading voices in really a new approach to philanthropy that has revolutionized outdated models by shifting power to the most vulnerable. So many people started coming to them to learn more, not just about how to be a part of She's the First, but also how they did what they did and how to step into the world of giving in a different way that they decided to distill their philosophy and insights and strategies

into a really powerful new book called Impact, a step-by-step plan to create the world you want to live in. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So right now, you're hanging out in New York. You're working with this really interesting organization that we'll dive into. But this was not either of your original path or intention when you thought about what you'd be doing in your, quote, grown-up lives. Why don't we sort of start the story, probably I guess it makes most sense with Tammy, and then Kristen will bring you into the conversation, and then we'll just sort of like dive into the whole mix. Tammy, I know one of the things I've heard you repeat over and over in different conversations is that you grew up as a kid shy.

I know you've said that. What I'm curious about is how did it actually show up in your life? Yeah. Well, you know what's funny is that after this conversation, I actually have an interview with the editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper, The Viking Vibe, which I used to be the editor-in-chief of. So it's like a full circle moment. But that takes me back to when I was 17. And when I was in high school, I dreaded speaking up, raising my hand in class, standing up in front of people to speak was my worst nightmare. And I really found my self expression and some confidence in writing, which is why I was drawn to journalism and decided that when I went

off to college, I would be a journalism major with the dream of one day being a magazine editor. So senior year of high school, there is the tradition of the superlatives in the yearbook. Many of us can remember that. And I was voted in a fairly large senior class of a thousand some students. I was the one who was most shy. And I remember posing for that picture in the yearbook. They asked me to stand in the lobby of the high school and there was this pillar and they asked me to hide behind it and pretend as if I was just scared of the world. And in my head, I was like, this is a terrible thing to be known as most shy. This is ridiculous. But I went along with it. And I just silently promised myself that I would make

this most shy title, a great irony one day, and I would be anything but. And I would go off to college, and I would go where no one knew me and become the young woman I wanted to be. So that's kind of where everything changed for me is when I began my journey as a first generation college student. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious also whether, so shy is an interesting word and it's a loaded word and it's also a really imprecise word these days, right? Because it often speaks to this spectrum that ranges from severe social anxiety

to introversion. And what's interesting to me about that, and I'm curious about how you experience it, is we have looked at generationally shy or introverted was the functional equivalent of broken. There's something wrong with you that has to be fixed. I think Susan Cain's book, Quiet, opens so many people's eyes, including me, because I'm definitely more on the introvert side of the spectrum, and really made, I think, a lot of people wake up to the fact that there actually is this sort of like spectrum and there's nothing wrong with being on the more introverted side of it, you know, unless it manifests in anxiety or things that actually stop you from living the life you want to live. That's why I'm curious how you actually experience it. Like, did you experience this as just, this is just the way I am and I'm actually pretty good

with it, but for the social reactions to it? Or was it actually more of leaning towards a social anxiety type of thing for you? So I am an introvert and I think that is different from being shy. And Kristen's an extrovert, so we complement each other really well. And introversion has actually been a great strength in this year of 2020. You know, it's made me very well equipped for quarantine and given me a lot of resilience. But as a kid, as a teenager, being shy, I was really afraid of the judgment that other people would make of me and what I had to say.

And I no longer identify as shy because I think I realized that I had to make my voice matter and stand up for something. And when you do reframe it and recognize that you can push yourself to speak up and be a leader to serve others, that was my way of overcoming the fear of other people's judgment. Was I social anxiety? I don't know if I would label it as that because I did have friends who were like the studious, quiet bunch who I had good relationships with, but I never went to a school dance. Uh, ironic, we can talk about this later, but I ironically, I worked for 17 magazine before starting. She's the first, and I would be part of a magazine that I never felt cool enough to read, uh, because I didn't feel like my clothes were stylish. I didn't wear makeup as a teenager. So I think those So I think my insecurity came from now in retrospect, I piece it together this way of

seeing these images of what a cool, confident girl looked like. And I didn't think that that aligned with who I was at the time. Don't you just love those societal expectations and how they sort of frame our early lives so often? It does sound like though, while maybe sort of like the social interaction side of things was your zone of learning, that you were really comfortable actually taking to writing and having a voice and having an opinion and actually leading in the context of written expression. So it sounds like it was less about a fear of being judged for what was going on in your head and your voice and your ideas and your thoughts. It was just sort of like, it was the channel. It was the path. Because I know a lot of people who are terrified of writing, of putting things into words and then having people respond

to that. And we certainly see a lot of that on social media these days. Yeah. No, that's a really interesting observation. And I think some of us just like to collect our thoughts and process it before and put something together. Even so, I mean, like writing a book is such a vulnerable thing to do because it's not like a tweet that you can delete. It's out there forever in the world. But I think that's why, what, 17 years have gone by where I've kind of built up that confidence to just do it anyway. And certainly when you have partners and collaborators, as I'm lucky to have in Kristen, it does make you more brave.

Yeah. So you end up, as you mentioned, first person in your family to go in Kristen, it does make you more brave. Yeah. So you end up, as you mentioned, first person in your family to go to college, focused then just sort of like continuing the process for you, journalism through college, and then heading out into the world of magazines, which is a whole interesting place to be. And why don't we bring you into the conversation now, Kristen, also. So it's interesting, Tammy described you as an extrovert. Did that show up really early in your life also? Were you sort of the person who loved and needed to be around people to fill you up? Yeah, I've always loved people. And I think also I grew up surrounded by people, surrounded by women, actually, in a very loud household. And so I've always found energy from the energy of other people.

That's always really resonated with me. Yeah. Tell me more about that household. Yeah. So my mom had me really young. She was the second oldest and she was 19 when she had me. And so her younger sisters were constantly around. We lived with them and with my grandparents. And so I had all of this feminine energy constantly. And I was the only grandkid. And so, you know, I had this really interesting dichotomy going where my grandmother spoiled the hell out of me. Literally, she used to say to me,

you're Kristen Brandt, so you can do whatever you want. And then I had my mom who, you know, she had me really young and she immediately went to work as a waitress and then eventually put herself through school to become a nurse and then was working nights and holidays in the ER for a while before she got on her feet. And so on the one hand, I had my grandmother telling me I could do anything I wanted. And on the other, I had my mom, who was constantly drilling into me, how hard you had to work in order to get ahead in life, both through her words and through her actions. I mean, the woman worked to take care of me and eventually my little brother as well.

So how does young Kristen process those sort of like seemingly like opposing or dueling messages? Young Kristen decided that she could have whatever she wanted if she worked hard enough for it. And that actually really ended up shaping my worldview even to today in that I have a very hard time accepting that that is not true for everyone, depending on the circumstances that you're born into.

And that is one of the real motivators for me in life is that I think it should be true. I think you should be able to work and get ahead. And it kills me that it just is not. Yeah. I mean, it occurs to me also that you grew up in a multi-generational household with three generations under one roof, which used to be the norm in the US, like a generation or two ago. It's just the way it was. But it's actually become, I think, much more the exception. I remember a little while back, we had Julian Castro on who shared how he had a similar experience. He grew up with his grandmother, his mother, his brothers, and he shared how sometimes really challenging that dynamic was, but also really powerful it was to be in that environment and how he felt like it really equipped him differently than a lot of

other people. I'm curious whether you feel a similar way. Yeah. I think the thing that has really stuck with me from my upbringing is more the gender aspect of it. And because it was multi-generational, it was even stronger. So my whole family from the time that I was born really reiterated that men were untrustworthy. And that's because for many of them, their experiences with men really proved that theory, proved that theory out. And so growing up surrounded by these women who created and cultivated this really incredibly happy childhood for me, at the same time that they were reinforcing these messages about what womanhood meant and about the opposing forces between men and women in a lot of ways as they saw the world really ended up shaping who I became and the ways that

I ended up kind of needing to explore some of those gender dynamics later in life too. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like that also is part of what you ended up really focusing on when you end up, again, similar to Tammy, first generation going to college. And then it sounds like that was a really, an extension of that was really a dynamic of what you focused on with a lot of your research and sort of like exploring women's issues and equity and things like that. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's important to know in my childhood growing up, both in the lives of aunts, as well as some of the, you know, my mother's ex-husband and then her, my father's brother, who we spent a long, long time living with. You know, these experiences taught me a lot about what emotional abuse looked like, about what unhealthy relationships looked like, about what physical abuse looked like.

And by the time I left for college, the idea that women and girls had a right to be safe and should be safe was ingrained so deeply into my DNA that it automatically expressed itself. And the truth is that I actually wasn't able to identify that what I had lived through and what some of my family members had lived through could be called abuse until much later in life. But because of those experiences, I was still expressing them. And so as you hinted at Jonathan, when I went to college, all of the research that I was doing was around issues that were impacting women and girls. I wrote about issues impacting women and girls. I, similar to Tammy, I went into the magazine world so that I could talk to women and girls and ended up working at Glamour Magazine on a scholarship project for them. I think that a lot of times the experiences that we have growing

up shape us and guide our actions before we can even name it, before we even realize what's happening, we're already acting on it. And it sometimes takes us a while, certainly in my case, it did, for our brains to be able to catch up and say, oh, this is why this has been so meaningful to me. This is why this has been so important. Yeah, that's so interesting, right? It's really hard sometimes to understand the context when you're in the middle of the facts. Yeah. understand the context when you're in the middle of the facts in all parts of life, I think for pretty much anyone. So I think it's fascinating. So you both are living these very different lives, yet so many similarities and so many overlaps in experience.

You end up in two different colleges in the same industry, in the magazine industry. Also, what's interesting to me, you end up in sort of glamour-oriented magazines, which on the one hand is like, hey, cool, New York magazine industry, there's no other place to be. But on the other hand, given the underlying, the deeper fascinations, impulses, and sense of purpose with both of you, it's interesting that that becomes the context for your first step into the working world. I'm curious how, I'm sure you both reflected on this independently with each other. Tell me, I'd love to sort of like explore what your thoughts are on that and how it either worked with or created tension with you.

Yeah. Well, you're absolutely right. We were in the magazine industry in like the tail end of the glory days where it was still very much devil wears Prada. And it was a huge contrast to this personal interest that I had in girls who were living in poverty and struggling to have access to education. That was an issue that I started to become aware of my senior year of college because I was doing this capstone reporting project for a class about a woman who was a refugee of the Liberian Civil War and had started a foundation back in Liberia to help kids have their basic needs met and for girls to go to school. And I was really fascinated by both her story and the context of her trying to create this change in a country that was now under the

leadership of the first female president in all of Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. And I think for me, that's when this notion of the power of being a first started to settle in because I hadn't identified as a first generation college grad or student. You know, I didn't come to campus waving a flag saying, look at me. Nobody showed me like how I'm supposed to figure all this out. It was just a thread that I pulled out as I was graduating. So this woman, her foundation was headquartered in New York City. So I would volunteer for her. She didn't have a staff. And after my days working in the Hearst

Tower, I would just walk a couple blocks down the street to her apartment and do all sorts of administrative work. I'd send out the tax receipts to her donors. I would help her organize her galas that were at the Four Seasons Hotel. And through it all, I learned a lot about how nonprofits run. And I saw, on one hand, I saw the power of when you can get these resources of which there are a plenty in New York City and funnel that into communities that don't have any, it just changes the entire life outcomes, particularly for girls who would go on to graduate, break the cycle of poverty in their family. And I was coming to these realizations in 2007 to 2009. So that was a time also when attention was starting to be paid at massive scale in the

public eye and mainstream culture to girls. There was a documentary in a book that came out on the issue of girls' education. So I was kind of there and noticing, like, I think there's a lot of opportunity here. And here I am, 23 years old, and on Facebook, Facebook came out when I was a sophomore in college, and I was seeing how my friends were connecting. And I was posting about this volunteer work, and they wanted to be a part of it. But they couldn't afford the tickets, the thousand dollar tickets to the gala. And there was just this disconnect on, well, it didn't feel right that we were in this room and everyone's having their dinner and photos of poor children were just on the screens. Something felt off. And that's when I took a step back and

I said, I didn't intend to work at all in the nonprofit industry myself. Like I wanted to continue on the path of being a magazine editor, but I recognize that media has a lot of power to make people aware of issues and also give them calls to action on how they can help. And I became really fixated on how can I direct my peers who don't have a lot of money yet, but who can all do something, can all do small things. How can I give them a step to take to support girls? And I gravitated to this concept of girls who would be the first to graduate high school. And that's when it clicked for me that it would be really powerful to launch a social media campaign

and create a video. I had done something similar at work. Working with the Seventeen brand, I launched a campaign called Donate My Dress, which was about getting people to donate their old bridesmaids and prom dresses to girls in financial need. So I thought, what if we had this model, but applied it to girls who are just trying to get access to school? And that's when I posted to my own Facebook page saying, hey, I have this idea for a campaign called She's the First. Here's why I'm passionate about it. Does anyone want to help? That's when Kristen enters the scene and responds. And we start collaborating simply to launch a social media campaign. And we began doing that. I mean, she was still a senior at Syracuse University, but

it was something that happened like after hours of this glamorous magazine job I had. And I think it balanced me out because I saw within my workplace, I was fortunate enough to be serving a readership that is my North Star. I was talking to girls and building their confidence. I think subconsciously trying, or maybe consciously, trying to tell them what I wish I could tell my own 17-year-old self.

So it did give me a lot of meaning and purpose. But I also, like other editors at the time, you'd go to fancy press events and be taken out on lunches with publicists. And it just seemed to me like all of these companies, all of these brands that are in the magazine, like how can we funnel them towards making a, making an impact? And I wanted to channel those resources that I saw in the media industry into the causes that I cared about. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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And this is where you and Kristen really start to come back together, although it's not the first time that you had doing. It's looking at what you're doing and looking at maybe the savory and the less savory parts of what you're doing and saying, okay, so this is helping me develop both a set of skills and an ecosystem of relationships. What if we repurposed it? What if we took everything that we've learned how to do and we're getting good at and we repurposed it for a different outcome? So Kristen, you see Tammy's outreach and I guess something in you was like, huh, okay. This is interesting. Yeah. So as Tammy mentioned, I was still in college when we first started She's the First. And I had been doing a lot of research on poverty alleviation, on girls and women's rights,

just because of my own background and because I wanted to write about something that mattered. I wanted to use this platform for something that really mattered. And I think also relevant to this story is the fact that Tammy and I come from very solidly middle-class backgrounds, right? And my mom was a nurse, Tammy's mom worked in a school, and I think it limits in a way what you think as a kid is possible for you when you think about careers. And I think that you do kind of gravitate toward things that you can see that feel very tangible because you know that you do need to make money, right? There's no world in which you can go to school and not make money after the fact

because that is the reality of a middle-class life. And so for me, I think one of the reasons that I reached for journalism and that I reached for editing and magazines was because I felt like that was a way that I could talk to women and I could talk to girls and it would also pay the bills, right? I didn't feel that I had the luxury of a less concrete option. And so in college was the first time I really had a chance to explore what I could be doing for fun outside of that. And a lot of my fun ended up looking like running the campus magazines and working extracurriculars and volunteering. And because I was doing so much research on girls' education, on girls' rights, on poverty alleviation, I was seeing all of the data that was then coming out after these longitudinal studies about the impact of

girls' education on communities around the world. And the idea that if only half of your population is educated, then all of your other initiatives, whether that is medicine or clean water or what have you, they're only going to be half as effective. And so when I saw Tammy's post, my ambitious college self was like, oh yeah, we could definitely do that. We should do that. Why aren't we doing that? And I messaged her back and I was the only one to message her back. So I got the job. Share some of that data because I think it's really, it's powerful. And I think it's eye opening. I mean, the reality is most people listening to this are probably going to be living in a more comfortable Western culture or Western country with access to the internet and access to all sorts of resources and to the ability to listen to a podcast and earbuds when you're walking around. The data on education and equity in women, especially in developing nations and

around the world, there's such powerful information about both the positive ripple when education becomes a priority and is a resource, but also the negative ripple when it is not, and how that ripples out into all aspects of personal life, family life, culture, society, and all these things. Can you share a little bit more about what some of that wisdom is? Yeah. Well, what we know, and these are stats that are current, is that right now, two-thirds of the world's illiterate population are women. We know that there are 130 million girls who are out of school and won't go to school. We know that there are another 20 million, by the way, that might not return after the COVID-19 pandemic. And then we know things like that every seven seconds, there is a girl under the age of 15 who is being married off. And this is the reality that we're working against, which is that when, particularly when families are facing an economic crisis, it's often women and girls who pay the price, either in early marriage, in child labor, in dropping out of school.

And so that is what we are working against. Those are the stats that we're trying to close. And it is, honestly, the COVID-19 pandemic has made those goals a lot harder. We're looking at a potential backslide to where we were 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And that's scary. That is a scary reality of our work at the current moment. Yeah, I've got to imagine that's kind of devastating. Tammy, when you see Kristen's response and she's like, hey, I'm in. And then you also happen to know that that's the only response that you've gotten.

We're still talking about the early days. So we're still talking about, you know, this is really, it's just a campaign. Not just, but it's a campaign. You know, there's a video. There's, let's see if we can do this one thing together. But that pretty quickly morphs into a partnership. It morphs into, hey, what if we turn this into something bigger? What if we turn this into a foundation, an organization that actually had its

own legs, its own funding, and made this a priority, really with the goal of fighting gender inequality by supporting girls to be the first in their family to graduate, to actually move through a full educational process? At the same time, on a personal level, both of you have to make this, it's kind of interesting, right? Because first generation in college, coming from solid sort of like middle-class backgrounds, as you both described, landing the big publishing job in New York City, which is the aspiration for so many people in that world, in the world of print media. And then you both saying, okay, we have worked so hard to get to this place. And we believe you have to work really hard, but at least in our place, this is possible. We're going to walk away from it all in the name of starting this thing that we have never done before. We don't have a ton of experience in doing.

I'm curious how hard that decision or easy that decision was for both of you. And then I'm also curious, how did your families respond to that decision? So she's the first was kind of snowballing over the course of three years before I quit my job and jumped ship. So it was something at that point, now we're in 2012, I was definitely a candle burning at both ends. I would wake up at 6 a.m., work on She's the First until I had to be in the office by 10, leave the office at 6, and then from 7 to midnight, I would be working.

And I had a lot of energy as a young person, but I was starting to get really burnt out. I was starting to make mistakes at my day job. And I knew that I'd have to make a choice because I couldn't continue to perform well and give 17 what it deserved. And also keep She's the First going. She's the First would either have to fizzle out or hire me and hire a staff to support its growth. And the reason She's the First was taking off is it was gaining traction in two ways. In one way, it was our community of donors who were loving it and felt like it was something that they could actually make an impact and they could see the difference that they were making.

So through word of mouth, it continued to grow. Through social media, it grew. And then on the other hand, we were linking off to grassroots organizations working with girls around the world and starting to build relationships with those organizations and their response and how they shared with us that She's the First was meeting a need, not just in terms of sending them money, but also listening to not only what girls needed to succeed, but what the organizations needed to build their capacity and to be able to take their own local solutions to help girls. And that's what we're set up to do today in training

organizations as well as funding them. And I went about trying to get funding to start salaries. And I have a story I love to tell about how it actually all came down. One of our first funders, he sits on our board today, Tom, and he is a very philanthropic man with three daughters. He lives in New Jersey. And the reason that we know Tom is because back in 2012, one of my volunteers shared a cab with a woman who knew Tom. And here they were, two strangers in a cab. They struck up a conversation that led the volunteer to talk about she's the first. And then they exchanged contact information. The woman said, oh, I'm one of my clients, Tom, he's really passionate

about gender equality and wants to make a global impact. They decided that Tom needed to meet Tammy and we had our first meeting. And when I shared, she's the first with Tom. And I, I asked him, I had done my research. I saw that he had made some major gifts to other organizations. And I asked him if he would be our first funder, he and his wife. And I was so nervous because I had never asked. So I was really good at asking people for $25, but not for $25,000. And I created this brochure for him in Microsoft Word or whatever program it was. And he took it and he said, I'll think about it. And then the next day, he emailed me back and said he and his wife would love to give us that seed funding.

And that was when I realized, OK, I'm going to take a chance. I've got $25,000 in the bank. It's not a full salary, but it will get me started. And from there, if she's the first had my full-time focus, I really believed that I would be able to bring in more resources. The worst that could happen, I asked myself, is that I would fail. And if I did, I knew that I would be hired back in the magazine industry. I was starting to get a lot of recognition

for my role as Seventeen's first social media editor. I was on the cover of an industry magazine, the 13 under 30 issue and getting all these awards for it. So I realized that there was a safety net for me, but for the girls who she's the first serves, there was no such safety net. So that's when I decided like, this is worth the calculated risk on my part. And then as for my family, they, to my surprise, actually, they really encouraged me. They trusted me. And, you know, I'm incredibly privileged that I didn't graduate with any debt because my

dad, he worked overtime hours, like throughout my teenage years. So that in addition to my scholarships, that my parents didn't want my sister and I to graduate with debt. So I didn't have that burden. I didn't have children. I didn't have, other than paying my rent, which was pretty cheap because of a rent-stabilized apartment I had, I had the privilege and the luxury of being able to take that bet on myself. Kristen, was your experience similar? Yeah, I think that for me, that choice. So Tammy quit 17 in May, and then my contract at Glamour

was up for renewal in August. And so I came into that month needing to make this decision about was I going to renew for a year at Glamour or was I going to quit to work on Choose the First? And I did have student loans and was very nervous about the prospect of not bringing in enough money. But I knew two things. First, that first funder that we had who provided that seed funding for us to get started, he also set me up with a one day per week job that would give me just enough flexibility and just enough money for me to make it work. Secondly, was that when I thought about the impact

of these two potential jobs in the world, of these two potential paths in the world, I was starting to see the limits of working within the magazine industry. Particularly when you're starting out and you don't get to say what the articles are going to be about and what the themes of the issues are going to be. And so looking at a situation where

we had the potential to take She's the First to the next level. And so I had four months and I knew that I had four months. And if we didn't have enough in the bank at that point to start paying me, then I would need a full-time job again. And we took those four months and we made it happen. And so in January of that next year of 2013, I was officially on staff as well. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing what happens when you know that you have a certain like clearly identified runway and it's make or break.

It's sort of like, this is the mark that you're looking to hit, you know, and for you. So that, you know, this becomes this season where you're both all in and you have a certain drive to make something happen. And that first thing is, yes, we want to serve all these women around the world and organizations who serve women. And at the same time, we have to make this sustainable, you know, because you're saying no to something, which is very appealing in a lot of ways to you and to a lot of people. But there's a really big yes to this, a much bigger yes, if you can also make it work,

make it sustainable. So that's sort of like the initial goal. Over a period of years, it does become sustainable. It becomes this powerful organization that's raised millions of dollars. Actually, I'm not going to say the organization has raised millions of dollars. You have raised millions of dollars. This is the work of human beings, of women who have gone out and worked fiercely to make this happen and build a global network, relationships with organizations, with schools around the world, with other organizations that allow you to do this incredible work from India to Uganda, to Guatemala, to so many different places. And from what I understand, thousands, nine or 10,000 women's lives touched at this point. And it's not just their lives

individually. We talked about the ripple, you know, like for every one person who you are able to affect, there's the siblings, the parents, the family, the extended family, the community, and then everyone else who benefits because these women are then going out into the world and then sometimes coming back to their communities and making profound change. So being in this position right now, there's the overt mission of what you've been doing and the stunning work that you've accomplished. Then there are also a lot of the learnings, which almost always come from stumbles and figuring things out and either being a part of or witnessing things that don't work right. Part of that is what's in your new book together,

Impact. Part of it is about the planning process, about really putting together an intelligent plan, getting clear on why you're doing this thing. But I'm also curious about some of the other awakenings that have kind of tripped into your experience. One of them is around bias. And I think it's also an important moment to have the conversation around that. Tammy, you used the word privilege a number of times. And I think a lot of people, I'm a white middle-aged guy, and my eyes have been increasingly opened over the last number of years to a lot of things I never considered or thought about before. And that's just in the context of my day-to-day life here. When you're doing the work of reaching out to other countries, many of the women that you're helping, Black or Brown, in very different cultures, you're two white women in the United States

doing this work. Talk to me about this dynamic and how you have both experienced it, what you've been awakened to and seen and learned from and maybe even changed along the way. I think this is actually tied in really closely with the evolution of She's the First, which is that She's the First started with the idea that we could and we would provide one scholarship at a time for one girl somewhere in the world. And that's what the initial model was based on kind of after we came out of the media campaign phase. And what we learned over time from those local partners was, as Tammy hinted at, some of the structural issues and challenges that they were facing

in their work, and also the ways in which the international development space very much mimics and is built on the colonial world and colonial frameworks. And what I mean by that is that often the way that aid works, the way that charity works, is that a solution is decided on in the US or in the Western or the global North. And it is then implemented all around the world in these places that were traditionally colonized in many, many, many cases. And we just expect that that is going to work without ever handing over any power. So the decisions continue to be made in places far, far away from where these solutions,

quote unquote, are being implemented. And so these power dynamics of where power sits and where decisions are made and who is impacted by those decisions stays the same, just as it was in colonial times, except now we're talking about education programs or we're talking about social programs. And so those good intentions don't make that system work any better. The only way to really create sustainable long-term change is to have a local approach. And so what we've done, we've been very, very lucky in the partners that we've worked with over the years that they have been willing to have conversations with us about what really is needed. And it helped to open our eyes to how the system works so that we could change it. I think the other thing that positioned us well to learn about

how our work is or is not impactful is that we sit in this unique space where she's the first seeks funding from donors. And we also provide funding to grassroots organizations. And so we understand kind of inherently the power dynamics when you are asking for money or when you are receiving money from someone and the constraints that that puts on you. And so what this means is that today, the way that we work with our partners is by ensuring that they have flexibility. We provide them with funds for girls' programs, but they decide where it gets spent. We work with them on improving outcomes. So we co-host trainings with local facilitators and local experts on how to improve outcomes for girls within a local context.

And we network. So we connect our partners to one another and to other organizations in the space so that they can learn from one another. Ultimately, our goal really is not about helping. It's not about changing the life of one girl, although those stories are incredibly powerful. It's about how do we change the power dynamic? How do we build new centers of power around the world centered in girls and women who can change the world for the better? Yeah. I mean, it's a really powerful reflection, you know, and it's really, it speaks to the shift from here's what I want to do to tell me what you need us to do. Tammy, I imagine so much of that involves humility and listening, which when you enter

something like this and you're so charged and you just want to like, I wonder if that's sometimes hard to access, especially in the early days. Yeah. I think one thing, I mean, Kristen just profoundly summarized how She's the First has evolved. And it made me reflect on how along that, on that journey, I think we've learned how to sort of edit ourselves out of the story. And in the early days, it was very much, you know, Tammy and Kristen founded She's the First, and it was a prominent part of how people were introduced to the organization. And women who have come from the same socioeconomic background and culture, who have overcome the same obstacles that they're faced with. And in my role as CEO interfacing with donors, I think in those early days, I oftentimes centered the donors' needs and knowing that donors like to be gratified with the connection to one girl that they are

sponsoring. And we used to have that kind of a old school sponsorship model. And it took me several years to recognize that not only was that system just administratively a huge burden to pull off, but it also wasn't healthy for a girl somewhere in Tanzania, Kenya, India, Nepal, wherever, to be so attached to a donor who would then know all about her, but they don't know, it's not reciprocal. They don't know all those personal details about their donor. And it's set up like this unhealthy dependency. It's so much more empowering and effective when a girl instead has those ties to her mentor in her program. And when we can provide our grassroots partners with the flexible funding to strengthen the systems and the design of their programs.

So that benefits more than just one girl at a time, but actually hundreds and thousands at a time. So that's definitely been, I think, as the organization has evolved, we as leaders and me in my role, I definitely have noticed a way of changing the way I approach the work and thinking, you know, what is most valuable for girls to get out of this experience and learning how to communicate that outcome to donors. And what I've ultimately find is that people are proud to support an organization that has a progressive model. And one of our dreams, and I guess this leads us into writing impact, is not just working towards our vision at She's the First, a world where girls can choose their own future. But Krista and I also want to disrupt the philanthropy

sector a little and get nonprofits and donors, regardless of whether you're supporting She's the First or other organizations, to think a little differently. And when you approach organizations to come at it, not from your good intentions and what you want and what you need, but rather what does the organization and what do its beneficiaries need? Yeah. I mean, it's a powerful sort of meta mission on top of the more focused mission of she's the first. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

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It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. I'm curious when you say you want to disrupt the current model.

Because when I think about the book that you've written, on the one hand, it could be written for people in existing institutions to reconsider how they're doing things. But we all know that many of those have been around for decades. And to actually break that model, the creative destruction required to remake it in the mold of something which is new and different is kind of unbearable for most of the people who exist in those organizations. So I wonder if the disruption that you're looking for is to try and convince the existing ones to change, or are you more focused on saying, hey, listen, I'm looking back at myself 10 years ago and all the people who are coming out of high

school now, because we see activism taking root so much earlier now, the people who are coming out of college, the people who may not even be going through any formal education, but are just moved to make meaning and to organize that this is like, hey, here's a roadmap. If you're looking at these giant multi-billion dollar organizations and saying, I want to make a difference, but that doesn't feel right to me. Here's another way to approach it. Kristen, I'm curious whether that was sort of like in your minds as you both worked on this. Yeah. I think for both of us, when we set out to write Impact, there's a primary goal in the book, which is that you as an individual reader pick it up and it helps you to make sense of making an impact. It walks you through how to do that, how to do it ethically, things to

consider. But the second motivation, the more hidden motivation, was the idea that we could equip an entire generation, generations of people with the knowledge they need to be better volunteers, better donors, better leaders, better CSR executives, right? To be able to plug into the ecosystem in ways that are going to have positive ripple effects across all of society. And there are some basic elements and things to think about that if we could spread those messages, then even if that reader never goes to start their own organization or never goes on to run a huge foundation themselves, their ability to interact with the world in these ways means that we can change how society views impact over time. And so those are lessons like the difference between your good intentions and your passion and your excitement and the actual impact of your action. It's bringing in that bias

conversation and understanding that you might not always be the best placed person to develop a solution. So how do you identify what your strongest skills, what your unique gift is that you can bring to the world and that you can offer and that you can create change with? It's really a manual, not just to feel better about your own life and your own impact in it, but to interact with the world in more responsible ways. Yeah. When you write something like this, obviously you have to have a certain amount of, quote, time in the game before you can reflect and say, okay, I have learned enough.

I've accomplished enough. I've stumbled enough. And I have reflected enough to really understand how to write something that you feel kind of stands the test of time and is discreet and valuable. When you say yes to writing a book like this, also having, being a writer as well, generally you say yes anywhere from 12 months to like three to five years in advance, which I'm assuming, so this is not like, hey, May of 2020, let's write a book. So I'm kind of fascinated when you started working on this, it was before this year, before 2020, now 2020 hits. And the book comes out in the fall of this year after so much disruption for so many reasons globally. How does what's happened both within your own organization and the organizations and women that you seek to be in service of, and also just those that you're looking to inspire and the intention of the book. How has that evolved given the nature of what has happened this year? I'm really curious. I mean,

Tammy, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah. So we had a window of time this year while in quarantine to make revisions on the manuscript. We turned it in in January with a spring in our step thinking, you know, it's going to be the best year ever. We got it back in March and we had a window of time to do revisions. And we found that even with everything that was going on in 2020, we actually didn't have to change the text very much because what we had written, the advice, the tools, the frameworks, it stood the test of time. And if anything, it was the chapter on resilience that we were reminding ourselves of our own wisdom, so to speak, at a time when this crisis at She's the First and on girls was starting to spiral and there was so much

anxiety in our own professional lives with She's the First. And we were kind of reassured by our own words, which I always encourage people to do is like, look back on, I don't know, podcasts that you might've done or advice journal entries that you've written, because a lot of times we can remind ourselves of what we truly believe. And that's something that Impact is a book that I myself turn to and practice these exercises anytime I want to create impact in a new way. So that's why we hope it becomes a, is on people's shelves for a long time, because it is something that you revisit all the time. I don't believe anyone ever becomes an expert and a master in change-making.

It really is a practice that challenges up to show up every day and recommit to what we fight for. Yeah. I love that frame as seeing change-making as a practice rather than an outcome. There's no there there. And as you mentioned, resilience is a huge part of that and something that you write about and you speak about. And especially this year, right? Because I have to imagine even in the best of times, there is the opportunity for burnout. There's the opportunity for vicarious trauma when you are in service of organizations and people who are enduring trauma on a daily basis.

And that developing your own personal practices, when you're this committed to something that is such a deeply held belief and mission and sense of purpose for you. And there's a lot of struggle involved in it, that developing your own practices to be okay, to be resilient, to weather constant struggle to a certain extent has got to be so critical to your ability, not just to sustain the organization, but just personally to be okay, to wake up every morning and be like, this is hard, but I'm okay. Kristen, I'm curious how you feel about that. Yeah. One of the concepts we talk about in the book when it comes to self-care is the idea that self-care is not actually

about what makes you feel good in the moment. It's what allows you to continue on. And that's something we've all put into practice this year. And so for me, that includes making sure that I'm exercising. Ideally, I get out of the apartment at least once per day. I've been hiking at least once a week for the last five weeks in a row in order to try and balance out so much of that negative energy that comes from sitting in one place, the stress of running an international organization during a global pandemic, the stress of launching a book in the middle of a global pandemic. There's a lot going on and I'm lucky in that I'm well and healthy and my friends and my family so far are well and healthy. And my friends and my family so far are well and healthy. And we're all facing different elements of the same struggles right now. And it's so important to focus on not what is going

to make you feel good for 30 minutes, but what is going to make it so that tomorrow when you wake up, you're able to get out of bed. So whether that is exercise, whether that is working on a new skill to keep yourself interested and engaged, or knowing that you need to make friend dates online so that you know that you are communicating, connecting with someone. It's often not the things that we want to do actually in the moment. It's the things that we need to make time for so that we can feel okay later that day. Yeah. And I know, I love that frame that change shifts it from indulgence to sustenance, basically. I know also that there can be, I have friends that have been aid workers in the field in really tough places. And there can sometimes also be when you think about devoting any energy, any personal resources to taking care of yourself, that that also sometimes comes with a sense of guilt or shame because you kind of feel like, but no matter what I feel like I'm going through, these other people here who I'm in service of or organizations have it quote so much worse. Who am I to allocate time, energy, resources, anything, taking care of myself? And when you do, there can be this sense of like I'm taking advantage to a certain extent, like this sense of guilt, which I've had a number of friends struggle with. That is something, the way that I deal with that

is that I have a number of mentees, girls, and now young women all around the world who have expressed some version of that to me. And hearing from someone that you know to be working to make the lives of other people better, Hearing that guilt from someone who you look up to, who you know day in and day out is doing the work and deserves the break and who you know needs the break or the ability to take care of themselves, it lights a fire in you. And I think what we all need to do is to give ourselves the same grace that we would give to our mentee or our best friend or our partner when we see them working and working and working and not taking care of themselves. We need to love ourselves just as much as we love those people who are most important to us. Because the second that you start letting that guilt get to you, you're going to burn out and we're going to lose you

and we can't afford to lose you. We are all working toward a better world and I need you by my side. So you have to take that time. I need you to take that time so that you are in tip-top fighting shape, so that you are able to create change, so that you are able to work change, so that you are able to

work towards something better. I love that. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging on this container of good life project, if I offer up the praise to live a good life for each of you, what comes up? Maybe we'll start with Tammy. I think to live a good life is to follow your North Star and take actions every day that create the world you want to live in. Kristen? To live a good life is to leave the world better than you found it. To know that the people that you touched and the places that you touched are better because you were there, however briefly. Thank you both. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show

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