To our revolutionary women:
We are beyond ecstatic to share this project with you. Seriously, it’s all we’ve been talking about for the last few months. As we begin our adult lives — the three of us just recently graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo — we have begun to feel a loss of purpose. In college, our g-cals were filled hour by hour with classes, various club commitments and internships. And now that we’ve started work, all we can think is: Is this really it? Working 9-5 (and often longer — we’ll touch on that later) until we’re too old to do anything else?
Like you, we have lost our old way of life. But more importantly, 2020 has opened our eyes to how comfortable we were in our ignorance. There was too much that wasn’t working: the criminal justice system, healthcare, diversity and inclusion initiatives, to name a few. But born from civil and political unrest are movements, and we are incredibly excited to see so many people from all walks of life take it into their own hands to change the world.
A lot of these changemakers are women. Women who, at every level of every sector in society, from government and nonprofits to tech, are breaking glass ceilings to create a future we all want to live in. If you are paying attention, there is a lot wrong. However, we are so lucky and grateful to live in a time where we not only get to hope and aspire for this future, but work and fight for it. Here is how we are doing our part:
We want this blog and podcast to be about professional and personal development and to answer questions like: How do you negotiate your worth? Deal with difficult managers or coworkers? Pursue a cool business idea? Create work life balance?
“We are so lucky and grateful to live in a time where we not only get to hope and aspire for this future, but work and fight for it.“
But what we have found from our own experience is that too many of us are taught to chase the bag, create success, be independent women, focus on ourselves — without thinking about the social implications of our actions. American individualism, and this idea that you and only you are responsible for your success or failure, has created so many of the problems in today’s society.
In college, we learned skills like Python and Tableau and social media marketing, learned how to negotiate our salaries and work in teams, but — unless we took the initiative to learn outside our curriculum — didn’t learn anything about making the world a better place. We learned the soft and hard skills necessary to make us better and more successful, but what about the people around us? How can we empower your friends, colleagues, community? Instead, what we’re being taught is how to get ahead in life without looking back.
What we’re hoping to do with this blog and podcast, is to help you build those skills like negotiating and financial literacy, but we want to bring those conversations into the larger picture of our individual contributions to society. For example:
- Here is how to negotiate your first job but — why is negotiating harder for women and especially women of color? And how can we change that from a managerial perspective?
- You’re building a new product or service — now how can you make sure it’s inclusive and serves to improve society?
- You’re thinking about pursuing an MBA, how can you make your application stand out? Why do women with an MBA face the widest gender pay gap, and how can we fix that?
What we need right now is radical and revolutionary. What we need is a stronger belief that as individuals we can change the world. This is the year we march for change, petition for change, fight for change. This is when we start saying enough is enough. This blog and podcast is for young, radical, working women who want to change the world, in small ways and big.
Whatever you’re passionate about, Reimagine it.
With love,
Anjana Melvin, Epsa Sharma, Sydney Harder