Unraveling Pink

Karen Catlin shares a fantastic male ally moment involving the ultimate compliment.

Male allies can help women if many ways, sometimes in ways we're not aware of at the time.

In this #maleallymoment episode, a male ally turns an awkward situation around.

So, did you know that November is National Podcast Post Month? The challenge is for podcasters to post 30 podcast episodes in 30 days. If you know me, you know I like a challenge. So, I can't resist.

I want to use this time to ensure women’s voices are heard. So, Unraveling Pink will move from a every two week-ish schedule to a daily (fingers crossed!) for the month of November. Join me on this journey by sharing your stories (message me on Twitter @UnravelingPink or send me a message on our Contact page) or by engaging in our male ally challenges. Together, we can unravel the pink bandana!

Episode 15: Let's Turn #metoo Into Change by Unraveling Pink

In this episode, I sat down with Jory Des Jardins, an advisor to female founders and startups. An entrepreneur herself, Jory co-founded BlogHer, that grew into the largest conference and community for women content creators in the world and was eventually acquired by SheKnows Media. Jory shares insights about founding and funding from her own entrepreneurial experience and from advising others on their journeys. She closes with a challenge for us that applies to each of us and can be implemented at work tomorrow. Join us!

My guest this episode is Brian Colucci, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Kilpatrick Townsend. Brian and I continue an ongoing conversation that we started off-mic about the culture of busyness that has become so normalized in Silicon Valley and in law firms, and we explore what happens when this culture bumps up against life - caring for kids, parents, etc.

While we are far from solving this problem, shining some light on it will hopefully create a conversation around how we can get back to a culture that better emphasizes our humanity.

In this episode, Chris Lee, Director of Business Development at Neustar, has a lot of questions and insights into topics like feminism, whether things are truly equal, how we might adjust to a less "bro-culture" workplace, and steps men can take to ally with women on the gender equality front. Chris has a vested interest in this -- his 2 year old daughter -- whom he is preparing to have broad experiences, not based on gender. Will you join him?

In this episode, Unraveling Pink was on location at the Podcast Movement 2017 conference in Anaheim. Thanks to Shure and TalkShoe, we were able to record during the convention, complete with the buzz of the conference excitement in the background.

This episode's guest, Emerald Archer, Director, Center for the Advancement of Women, at Mount Saint Mary's University in L.A., shares with us interesting insights about how gender assumptions play out in the military.

Ever wondered how you would do in a shooting test in the Marines? Or, how your performance would change if you were told before you took the test that you wouldn't be good at it? Or how you would be typecast as a woman in the military? Emerald shares her insights into those questions and more based on her research with the Marines and Air Force.

Get an outsider's peek into some of the challenges women face just to be able to serve in the military.

Twitter, LinkedIn, the Chronicle, other media - social and print - throughout Silicon Valley and beyond, abound with frustrations about diversity in the workplace these days. The conversation is important because we have a lot of work to do to get to workplaces that are truly equal, that are welcoming -- workplaces where one does not have to suffer through explicit or implicit questions about her ability or right to be there. These are conversations we try to enable on Unraveling Pink: non-judgmental, open conversations about what we think but may not typically express, about the gender-based assumptions that impact our productivity or satisfaction at work, and what we can do about them.

Silicon Valley is currently in the "Red Zone." But there is hope. There is a "release valve" that offers help to employers and employees. Resources that enable employers to create the kind of diverse environment that Google is struggling to develop in the very public eye right now. Resources that employees can anonymously seek out to get help when they feel harassed or discriminated against -- or just need a sanity check when suffering through yet another micro-aggression in a workplace that doesn't reflect their identity.

In this episode of Unraveling Pink, Janine Yancey, CEO and founder of Emtrain, shares how Emtrain serves as this very necessary release valve, and how we can move our organizations from the Red Zone, through Orange, and even Yellow, into the coveted Green Zone.