Femme Hive

What would our world look like if we all stopped pretending and started showing up as our true, authentic selves? Both our host Thamina and this week's guest believe we all would be a whole lot happier and more successful.

Jessica Zweig is an award-winning entrepreneur, personal branding expert, the founder and CEO of SimplyBe. Agency and a soon-to-be-published author! She works with "entrepreneurs, creatives, CEOs and the companies they lead to help them grow on and offline by leveraging the most powerful marketing tool on the planet: authenticity".

As most young women in their 20s are still trying to figure out who they are and what role they want to play in this world, being brave enough to show up as unapologetically authentic can sometimes be more daunting than giving in to society's expectations. Jessica has an important message to all young women who are still struggling: "Just ride the wave. It's all good."

We all know networking is important but a lot of us are intimidated when it comes to reaching out to strangers and most of us don't even know where to start. Our host Thamina has been there.

Growing up in Germany where leveraging your connections to advance your career is oftentimes frowned upon, Thamina experienced a true culture shock after moving to the US. If she didn't want to miss out on professional opportunities and lack behind many of her American classmates, learning how to network and become comfortable with reaching out to alumni from her school was absolutely crucial - especially as an international student who didn't have any connections to leverage in the US.

Today, Thamina credits many of her professional opportunities to building relationships with people and she believes that networking is a skill you can learn and a muscle you need to train over time.

She saved $100,000 by age 25 and is now fighting the patriarchy through financial education. Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, the New York Times, People Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, and more.

This week, we are thrilled to welcome globally-recognized money expert and Founder of Her First $100K Tori Dunlap who has amassed an online following of close to 1,000,000 through her educational money tips and tricks. Tori and Thamina talk about the importance of financial feminism and what is keeping women from taking control of their financial future.

We also learn how Tori was able to get to that magical $100k milestone that allowed her to quit her corporate job at the end of 2019 to pursue Her First $100k full-time. In 2020, she generated more than $600,000 in revenue and went from 0 to more than 800,000 followers on TikTok.

Do you wish you could add more meaning to your daily life? That is the position our host Thamina found herself in not too long ago.

In her solo episode debut, Thamina shares why she founded Femme Hive as a side hustle in addition to her demanding 9-5 job in sales at LinkedIn and how this podcast has added purpose and more meaning to her life - especially during a rather challenging year.

She shares how her passions and past experiences have enabled her to take on the additional workload and shares tips on how you can identify a potential side hustle idea.

While working in a male-dominated industry can present a lot of challenges, women’s groups can be a great way to meet other women in your field and open a discussion about the workplace environment. Today we hear from Cathy Chi, software engineer at Coursera, and the founder of the Women's Engineering Organization at her company. She explains how her group for women in software engineering came about, and what inspired her to start it.

Cathy and Thamina - who is a former office co-lead for Women@LinkedIn - also address the topic of allyship and leadership support.

Do you think you and other women could benefit from a women’s organization at work? If nothing already exists, creating a women’s group can be a great way to get closer to female colleagues and connect with other companies in the industry as well. Creating an organization from scratch can sound daunting, but Cathy gives tons of tips on how to get women together, organize events, and not burn out in the process.

Most of us felt completely lost after graduating from college when it was time for us to finally head into the "real" world. A new environment, new people, new challenges, and a short resume. If only our college degree had also come with an instruction manual for adulthood.

It is not uncommon for us young, ambitious women to experience a quarter-life crisis in our 20s and question the role we are playing in this world. This week's guest has been there. Carolene Méli deferred college twice, she then left school mid-way through her studies, eventually finished her degree and is a full-time traveller who spent 10 years on tour with Cirque du Soleil.

At age 35 she is now working as an Experience Strategist helping businesses create exceptional experiences for their employees and their guests. Carolene argues that is in fact ok to not have everything in life figured out because our past experiences and skills we develop over time will create future opportunity and self-confidence. However, most of the time we aren't even aware of the plethora of skills we have garnered over the years. Carolene knows from personal experience that having a non-linear path is not only fine but probably more beneficial than a linear path.

This episode is a must-listen for everyone who feels stuck, especially the generalists among you!

Your twenties are the perfect time to be adventurous. Moving to a different country can be very daunting, but ultimately offers new experiences, new culture, and possibly fluency in a new language. What’s not to love? Unfortunately, the reality of moving abroad is a little more complicated and is easier said than done.

Today we hear from Kat Zhou, who relocated to Stockholm, Sweden, in early 2020 to work for Spotify as a product designer. She tells her whole abroad story, from the moment she realized she actually applied to a job in Sweden, to finally feeling at home in a new country. Her transition from the US to Sweden is exciting to hear, but also very helpful to give those who are interested in moving abroad a better idea of what the process is like. Spoiler alert: Kat loves the work-life balance that Europe offers but there’s also a lot of racial inequality in Sweden.

Additionally, we spend some time talking about Kat’s passion project , which can teach us all about the power of adding purpose to your day-to-day job.

When are they going to find out that I'm a fraud, that I don't belong here? And what is going to happen when they do?

Most people have experienced what it's like to feel like an imposter at least once in their life - in school, in college, or at work. Researchers have estimated that 70% of all people have encountered imposter syndrome at some point. And while everyone can experience it, this phenomenon is especially prevalent among women.

On this week's episode we turn to Bianca Wulwick, Digital Marketer, Military Spouse, and Host of the Please Don't Kick Me Out podcast where she is exploring "the idea that no one really feels like they belong". Bianca and Thamina talk about their own experiences with imposter syndrome and how women can better advocate for themselves by leveraging feeling like an imposter as a secret weapon for success.

2020 has been an important reminder that racism, xenophobia, and sexism are still a systemic problem in our society. Some of us have been educating ourselves on what it means to be a good ally and explored being uncomfortable with our inherent privilege, others have remained silent.

On this week's episode, Thamina is talking to her good friend Susie Xu, Program Manager at Yext, who has always been very outspoken on matters of equality, which stems from her experience as an East Asian-American woman. Susie vulnerably shares her experiences with subversive, hurtful racism that makes her feel like a perpetual foreigner in her own country. We also explore the concept of "silence is violence", the complexity of cultures and why Susie sometimes chooses to bark at men.

Being a minority and always carrying the torch in the fight again discrimination can be exhausting, especially when intersectionality comes into play. Susie shows us how to be a true role model and call people out.

#BlackLivesMatter

Have you experienced betrayal in your life? Are your parents divorced? Have you moved to a different country by yourself? Do you find solo traveling empowering?

On this week's episode we’re going to talk about how our roots, (traumatic) experiences, trust, and identity shape who we are and how we can build a sense of home away from home. For this rather philosophical conversation, Thamina is joined by Mary Yuan who is a recent graduate of Emory University and the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy.

In early 2020, Mary decided to focus her energy on writing a book by exploring the meaning of “home”. After her parents’ divorce, Mary started to realize that we all have our own definitions of home and try to understand how it shapes our identity. When her family was no longer a safe haven, Mary chose to break away and travel solo to release her grief and rediscover herself.

In her upcoming memoir "Where is Home?", which will be published later this month, Mary takes us on a journey of rebuilding a sense of belonging.