Brave New Women hosted by Cecilia Poullain

Charlotte Oloya, Country Director at School for Life Foundation in Uganda, discusses her role and the organization's mission to provide quality education to children. She talks about how she discovered her passion for education after working in a temporary program management role for 7 years, and later joined School for Life as the Country Director. Charlotte expresses optimism about Africa's future despite challenges, citing education and campaigning across the continent.

School for Life has educated over 1000 children, impacting families and communities through medical camps, vaccination drives, and community development projects. It has also improved the quality of education for children in Uganda, particularly for girls, by providing a safe haven and opportunities for personal growth.

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Jane Ferguson worked as a war correspondent for PBS NewsHour and The New York Times. In this episode, Jane shares her unique experiences as a journalist, including being the only foreign journalist in Yemen and catching the last plane out of Kabul after the Taliban took power.  She talks about the excitement of being on the front lines, where history was being made and about the ethical dilemmas of her profession. She discusses her ability to confront fear and the importance of proving oneself in the field. Jane recently published “No Ordinary Assignment”, an extraordinary book about why she became a war journalist and what she was attempting to achieve.

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Sherry Shannon-Vanstone is a mathematician, cryptographer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. She founded Profound Impact in 2018?  Profound Impact's mission is ‘to connect great people to do great things’.

She had an early interest in mathematics and learned along her dad who’s was studying to be an electrical engineer.  By the time she was in 5th grade, she tested her aptitudes and she scored 10th grade.

Sherry started her career working as a cryptographer for the US government before moving on to start-ups in Silicon Valley and then Canada. She was an innovator in technology and in leadership.

Along with her late husband, they took the technology that was used for smartphones and applied it to vehicle: they needed security, authentification, etc. They quickly became security experts for the US Department of Transportation.

She loves being an entrepreneur because ‘you can see the impact that you're making.  You're hiring people and touch every one of those lives.  There is so much energy in learning new things’.

She founded ‘Profound Impact’ which helps education, research and community organizations leverage data to measure program impact, tell their story and inform strategy.

Sherry is also involved in supporting other women through an organisation called the Perimeter Institute. Physics is one area where women are the most underrepresented and the goal of the Perimeter Institute is to support 10 female PhD students in physics from around the world.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Julia is an ‘expression mentor’. She specialises in working with introverted and anxiety-prone women who have a history of public speaking fear or performance anxiety and it's holding them back in their careers or from growing their business.

Julia initially trained as an actress and then became a yoga teacher. Eventually she wanted more and she started teaching yoga teachers about their voice and about how to be confident in the spotlight before she transitioned to working with professionals and entrepreneurs.

The progression of her work as a public speaking coach has also mirrored the progression of her own growth. She came to realise that she was an anxious and introverted person and that it was exhausting her. So she started diving into nervous system regulation techniques. This led her to specialise in working with introverted women and helping them to regulate their nervous system, take care of their energy, manage their lifestyle and transform them into authentic, powerhouse speakers.

Julia encourages them to remember that the world needs their voice. In fact, it's the introverted ones, and it's the women who often have the most important messages that the world hasn't yet heard. She trusts that they’ve taken time to really feel into and think through what they want to share.

Julia's website: http://www.speaktoinspire.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Lilian Sue is a PR coach and publicist. She helps creative entrepreneurs to build healthy PR mindsets and a successful PR strategy.

Lilian grew up in a very traditional Chinese Canadian family. She explains the difficulties that she's had in pushing against the cultural traditions and the strict family roles, and what it's meant to her to live the life that she wanted.

She learnt very early on to put boundaries in place and have ‘No Go Zones’ in order to maintain somewhat of a positive relationship with her parents.

One of the early pieces of entrepreneurship advice that she got from mentors have been ‘Don't take advice from somebody who's never been there’. Because anything they tell you is not going to give you the answer that you need, or that you're looking for, to move forward. And that's been very, very true.

She also thinks that as women, we are not taught to celebrate ourselves enough. And that's what she is trying to change in her business and on a personal level.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Jennifer Hicks is the Director of Client & Business Development at Capital Fund Law Group. She speaks about transitioning from her role as a police officer to working in corporate. She is also a strong champion of women and specifically addresses why women sabotaging other women.

When she first started her career as a police officer, she was treated with a lot of respect. But when she moved into another department, she experienced harassment and discrimination. She finally spoke out, filed a complaint and managed to restore her reputation. But she was emotionally broken.

She left law enforcement and started a new adventure as an administrative assistant at Capital Fund Law Group and quickly climbed the ladder to her current position as Director of Client & Business Development. She saw many similarities between how women were perceived in the corporate world and how they were perceived in law enforcement. But a particular event in the corporate world started her thinking about why some women sabotage others. As she puts it: ‘I don't want them to have to go through the vile, awful things and business that some women have had to go through, just to understand how corporate works, and to network and to get ahead doesn't mean having to do things that are against your character’.

As a result, she put together a group of women to talk through why some women are sabotaging others and to help women in corporate like. As she says, you always have a choice: stop it, be complicit or be the perpetrator.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Sheena Simpson completed a Master's degree in Asian History at the University of Sydney and specialized in the development of the Indian railways. She traveled to India on five separate occasions from 1989 to 2005 where she experienced first hand what it was like to travel on the railways.

In her thesis, she studied the economic and social impact of railways on the Indian population, but also the harsh working conditions. The British had started to build railways in India because of the flourishing cotton trade - the railways and the cotton trade were run by the East India Company.

Sheena journey was extremely rewarding and she invites us to follow our interests, even if we are not sure where they will lead us.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Jill Philips is the author of "Lamlash Street, a portrait of 1960s, postwar London through one family's story". In this episode, Jill talks about why it was so important for her to write a book about growing up in Cockney London after the war.

From food rationing to swimming lessons, Jill gives us an insight into the reality of life in the heart of Cockney London only a few short decades ago.
She talks about her relationship with her mother and how unusual it was for her mother to have insisted on Jill pursuing an education after the age of 16, especially in a culture where men traditionally made all the decisions for the family and girls' education was not a priority.

In writing the book, she came to understand how important family was to her and what a strong support system she had had growing up, with family and friends all living close by. This gave her a sense of safety and helped her to succeed later in life.

It took her three years to write the book, with the help of a writing coach. Her family and friends were sceptical about her writing a book, which is why she chose someone who was not going to let her future be determined by what she had achieved in the past.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Staci and Brooke work together at rebellion energy in Oklahoma. Staci is the president and CEO and Brooke is the senior engineering and geological technician. They are also the co-founders of Fellow Environmental Partners, a non-profit focussed on plugging orphaned oil and gas wells in an effort to reduce methane emissions.

Staci and Brooke wanted to do something different for their next project. They were throwing around ideas and started to think about abandoned wells. The more they learnt about the methane emissions and water contamination caused by abandoned oil wells, the more they realised that no one was focussing on the massive environmental damage being caused and how to stop it.

It is a highly technical issue with huge social and environmental impacts. There are hundreds of thousands of orphaned wells - under schools, under houses or under agricultural land. Some are visible - some are not. They can be thought of as wells whose legal owner cannot be found, most becoming wards of the state. The costs of plugging a well are huge.  Average well costs begin at $20,000 to plug.

Staci and Brooke believe that many people in the oil and gas industry care about the environment and opportunities are increasing to use their expertise and resources available to create a positive impact.  Within Fellow Environmental Partners, they are looking to create a diverse and inclusive committee with many different perspectives.

I would love to hear any comments you might have on this episode and respond to any questions. You can find me on the Brave New World Facebook page, on Linkedin or on my website: www.ceciliapoullain.com

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Music: Stephen Marquis www.songsta.com.au
Editing: Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice

Claudine Herzlich était directrice de laboratoire au CNRS et a été la premiere femme a créer un laboratoire qui appartenait a la fois au CNRS, a l’INSERM et a l’EHESS.
Elle est aujourd’hui retraitée et partage son incroyable parcours.

Claudine a étudié la psychologie dans les années 1950 et nous raconte l’ambiance de l’époque à La Sorbonne, où la psychologie était une nouvelle discipline. Durant un séminaire avec Claude Lévi-Strauss, elle décide de son sujet de thèse et se focalise sur la santé et plus particulièrement la perception des maladies, sujet totalement nouveau en psychologie sociale en France à cette époque. Sa these est un succès, sera traduite en anglais et sera suivie par l’écriture d’un livre. Elle a ensuite commencé un nouveau projet d'observation en milieu hospitalier et a progressivement développé des contacts avec l'INSERM.

Comme elle le décrit, elle a eu beaucoup de chance, dans ses rencontres par exemple, mais elle dit aussi: 'je n avais pas la moindre idée mais j’y suis allée quand même’.
Ça demandait du courage mais néanmoins Claudine ne se perçoit pas comme une féministe ‘aggressive’, elle a peu ressenti de discrimination en tant que femme. Elle a juste refuser de se laisser traiter ‘en femme’.

Je serai ravie de savoir ce que vous pensez de cet épisode et de répondre à vos questions éventuelles.  Vous pouvez me trouver sur Linkedin, la page Brave New Women de Facebook ou sur mon site web.

Cecilia Poullain
Fondatrice de Brave New Women
Coach - pour que les femmes trouvent leurs voix
www.ceciliapoullain.com

Musique :  Stephen Marquis https://songsta.com.au
Montage : Talal Bouroki

Cecilia Poullain
Founder of Brave New Women
Coach - Empowering Women to Find their Voice