Inflection Point with Lauren Schiller

This fall, I was invited to moderate a panel for a conference put on by Women In Product, a non-profit formed to create a strong community of women builders and leaders in the tech industry. My panel included four female founders of technology companies: Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategy, Heather Fernandez of Solv, Selina Tobaccowala of Evite and Gixo and Aarthi Ramamurthy of Lumoid.

You’ll hear what surprised each of them about starting a company, the pros and cons of running a company while female, from leadership style to sexual harassment and gender bias--and ultimately as business-people what it takes to scale.

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More women than ever are raising their hands to run for office. But what does it actually take to to win? And what will be different when they do? Kate Black, now at the FCC, recorded with me in August when she was Chief of Staff for EMILY's List, an organization that helps pro-choice, Democratic women run for office. And she has her own story of awakening to the fact that we need more women in office.

In part 2 we hear the personal story that started it all for sexual consent and internet abuse lawyer, Carrie Goldberg. And it begins with the usual, "I met him on the internet..." Carrie shares how she fights back against perpetrators of revenge porn and other sexual misconduct, as well as how victims may actually come out the other side with more power.

Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section.

And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point patron today. Thank you!

With the Harvey Weinstein tsunami of sexual misconduct allegations, it has everyone asking, will this be the moment when everything changes? And if it is, what will it take to balance the power between harassers and their victims? And what about the enablers--Is this all one big conspiracy? I talk with sexual harassment and internet privacy lawyer Carrie Goldberg to find out.

Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time to change the world. Get your first 30 days free at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section.

And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point patron.

Jennifer Brea was an avid traveler, a Harvard PhD student and a Princeton grad. She was engaged to be married to the man she loved. Then one day she couldn't get out of bed with an illness that went undiagnosed for over a year. Until finally she started to meet other people--mostly women--who had the same problem: a misunderstood illness, generically described as "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" or what used to be called "hysteria." To take control of her life--and to be taken seriously, she started to film herself, others like her and the few experts there are. Her film is called "Unrest."

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Whitney Bell got tired of receiving unwanted sexually explicit photos from men, and decided to do something about it: She gathered 200 of these images and put them on display in an art gallery show entitled "I Didn't Ask For This. A Lifetime of Dick Pics." This is “Part 1” of our convo. Be sure to listen to Part 2 for more about her feminist activism.

Part 2 of our conversation…To hear about Whitney Bell’s gallery show “I Didn’t Ask For This: A Lifetime of Dick Pics” please check out “Part 1.” In this episode, we move onto the response Whitney got from an article she wrote about abortion for Teen Vogue; why she posed for Playboy and how she handles the backlash from her feminist activism.

Most of us don’t know what to say when we are grieving or how to reach out when the people we love go through something awful. Dr. Kelsey Crowe’s own experiences with grief helped her realize that so many people suffer alone because the people around them don’t know what to do or say. So Kelsey actually shifted her career focus to understand what grieving people want, and what they don’t. She surveyed 900 people about their experiences with grief, founded Help Each Other Out to provide empathy bootcamps, and wrote a book about what she learned. The title of her book sums it up: There is No Good Card for this: What to say and do when life is scary, awful and unfair to people you love.* Lauren talks with Kelsey about what she learned and how we can all help each other out.

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Ashton Applewhite is on a mission as old as humanity itself -- to change our attitudes about age and ageing. Her book is "This Chair Rocks. A Manifesto Against Ageism," and her Ted Talk received a standing ovation. She's onto something. This week on Inflection Point, she talks with Lauren about how she plans to end what she calls "the last acceptable prejudice."

When she was young, Jeannette Walls wanted nothing more than to escape her crazy, chaotic family. She grew up in poverty, in a crumbling home, where her parents couldn’t always put food on the table. They moved from place to place and school to school. After putting her past behind her to become a successful journalist and author, Walls finally revisited her upbringing in her memoir, “The Glass Castle.” Now it’s been adapted into a film, and this was my chance to talk with her about how she rose out of a seemingly impossible situation.