Today is bittersweet, we are posting our final episode of both the Bloom and our Mainline podcast. For the past 6 months we have enjoyed an incredible run of inspirational women sharing with us, the stories that defined them and those that they did not let define them. We thank everyone who joined us on this journey, and hope that you felt as strongly a part of the community that we were trying to connect as we did. For more info please listen to today's episode on Apple/Spotify/Patreon. Our catalog will remain available for the foreseeable future. We do have a few ideas up our sleeves for Women With Strength, and this will be our primary channel for the future. Thanks for lending us your ears! 🥰

-Nancy and Summer

Our guests this week are Rose and Sarah, co-founders of Period Project NC. They started the organization during their sophomore year as a reaction to their negative experiences with having their periods at school. As the age of menarche has been decreasing (Sarah and Rose had their first period at 10 years old), they have found education, conversation and products to be inadequate. Period Project's goal is to normalize menstruation in conversation and ensure that all young women can experience their periods in dignity.

Our guest this week is LaToya Faustin, Executive Director of She Built This City. She Built This City is a nonprofit organization, whose goal is to build pathways for women in industries that they have had low historic representation, the skilled trades. In our conversation we learn about LaToya's history of service as a teacher and community builder. She talks us through the ways the organization confronts the barriers to women successfully developing the skills necessary to land the job and how She Built This City ensures everyone leaving this program has the skills, confidence and tools for the trade. Please visit shebuiltthiscity.org for more information on how you can donate or volunteer with them.

Our guest this week is Michelle Grasty-Colont, who grew up right down the road from Summer in the Appalachian mountains. She shares her journey of learning to embrace - and merge - both of her familial cultures into one that is uniquely her own. Through the medium of food, she combines her Ashkenazi Jewish roots with her Appalachian roots into meaningful and delicious meals. Her substack, Ashkelachian, beautifully presents a combination of storytelling and recipes to share her journey. Check it out at the link in our episode description, and keep an eye out for a special event she's planning this fall.

This week we are joined by Je'Nen Chastain to discuss her professional journey through a recession most Millennials know all too well. The fact that the 2008 US financial crisis focused in banking and housing, certainly didn't help someone in the last year of architecture school start their career with a good foundation. What would you do, in year five of a specialized program, when your professors tell you that you had better find something else to do with your degree, because you won't be designing buildings? Je'Nen shares with us how she navigated the recovery while finding her path, and how she may have ended up exactly where she was supposed to be all along.

Our guest this week is Linda Breen. She joins us to share her story of growing up in South Boston, the moment she realized she was a lesbian, and how she eventually came out to her family. Linda went on to build a career in non profit, with a focus on social justice. She was instrumental in the formation and operation of multiple organizations including the Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund. Linda is a powerful voice in our time and we hope you enjoy the episode as much as we do.

This week's guest is Brittany Canaski, who is no stranger to Women With Strength. Brittany was a speaker at the first WWS conference last year. She joins us for a discussion on what life coaching is, and why she left a successful career in marketing to pursue it as a fresh start. Brittany can be found at www.hellovelocity.co and on instagram @hellovelocityco

This week our guest is Aynsley Szczesniak founder of Speak Out Sisterhood. SOS is a global network elevating youth to eradicate barriers to equality for women in STEM (Science/Technology/Engineering/Mathematics). Aynsley shares how her unique primary school experience helped her develop the skills to: enter Chapel Hill at the age of 16 in pursuit of medical school, start a global organization of mentorship connecting professional women working in STEM with students, and still have time to binge Grey’s Anatomy. For more information on SOS you can check out speakoutsisterhood.org , or follow @speak_out_sisterhood on instagram.

On this week's episode we are joined by Lee Syria. Lee is the CEO and President of Every Age, a series of not-for-profit senior living facilities in North Carolina and Virginia. In our conversation Lee shares how we might make some adjustments to our workplaces to accommodate more diverse voices. In her field Women represent only 20% of senior leadership, while filling 80% of the non-senior roles. Lee also shares some insights on how she was able to make her way to this role at a young age, by always saying yes to new opportunities and never avoiding asking for help.

Nancy and Summer discuss the 2023 retrospective "50 Years of Ms. (The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine that Ignited a Revolution)".