SHESpeaks, the Young&BosSHE podcast

With the holiday season among us, this month we’re focused on hospitality and the building of authentic, real connections. Our guest, Elizabeth Eichhorn, is the Founder and CEO of Ampersand Dinners, an organization dedicated to creating authentic opportunities for professional connections around the dinner table that seed the potential for future partnerships and collaborations. Elizabeth discusses her approach to networking, which completely flies in the face of the business card swap let’s grab coffee dance we’re used to, the beauty of life-giving dinner experiences, the art of hospitality in leadership, the value of storytelling to building meaningful connections and more. 

This month, we’re focusing our content on SHEsSurviving, a theme dedicated to the SHEs we know and love who are actively surviving, recovering and living. Today’s guest, Lindsey Hall, is an incredible writer, blogger, social media influencer and recovery advocate who is dedicated to transparency throughout her own journey of recovering from disordered eating. Lindsey discusses her own experience, the science behind eating disorders and restriction, how to support people you love who might be navigating similar journeys, the ways you know you’re in recovery and the importance of never letting something like disordered eating steal the joys that accompany the one and only life we have.

This month, we’re kicking off the school year by featuring SHEsInCollege and today’s guest, Zaniya Lewis, is making big moves. In high school, she won an essay competition where she shared her story about the adversities that came with being the only African American in her private school class and won the chance to meet First Lady Michelle Obama, discuss the importance of overcoming challenges to get an education and even appear on the cover of Seventeen Magazine. That experience launched her dreams of sharing stories of overcoming adversity with others and since then, she’s launched the Yes She Can Campaign, an initiative to support young women and girls on their journey to accessing education. And she’s just getting started. The most amazing part? She’s done all of this while being a full time student at George Washington University. We discuss her work, her dreams, the adversity she continues to overcome and her advice to other CollegeSHEs, and beyond, who have the inkling of a dream, but aren’t sure how to bring it to reality. 

This month we’re featuring our first global guest -  Kat Brendel, Co-Founder and Head of Communication at Co-Women, a community club and co-working space in Berlin, Germany. Dedicated to re-imagining co-working for women as a function of community, Co-Women’s approach includes mentoring, networking, active relationship building, master classes, weekly wine nights (yes, please) and more. Kat discusses her team’s road to abandoning their full time gigs and jumping straight into Co-Women, the “empire” they’re building, one of their simple mottos — collaboration over competition and the science behind the value of a SHE-based network. 

This month, in honor of PRIDE, we’re celebrating LGBT+Shes and this month’s guest, Shovann Staton-Backus, better known to many as The Stiletto Chef, has dedicated her entrepreneurial venture to celebrating the crazy, fun, flavorful and sexy side of cooking and food. Though she teaches women how to meal prep through viral cooking videos, her business is about much more than that. As a member of the LGBT community, Shovann sees her work as an opportunity to truly see all people and encourage those around her that they are ok, whole and accepted. Shovann tells us about the significance of her work with the Nashville LGBT Chamber of Commerce which recently resulted in a historic Executive Order that affirmed inclusion for LGBT-owned businesses as a recognized category for Metro procurement. She goes on to discuss her work as an entrepreneur, the intersection of her identity, the importance of transparency in business and her dedication to living in her own truth and encouraging those around her to do the same. 

This month, we’re focusing our content on SHEsFounders, a theme dedicated to the SHEs in our world who are building their own futures. I’m speaking with Claire Smith, the founder and owner of Teffola, a fresh teff granola made from ancient grains grown on a farm that has been in Clarie’s family for 7 generations. Though she spent her childhood focused on becoming a pediatric cardiologist, her time in college put her on a different path. Now, Claire works alongside her family, turning they Teff grain they grow into her granola - and her entrepreneurial ventures have only developed from there. She tells us about how growth strategy, how she continues to honor tradition through her business, advice for fellow SHEFounders, ignoring the sneaky hate spiral, the importance of building a mental foundation of strength for herself and more.

This month, we’re back with a YBShe favorite - SHEs in STEM, a topic we featured last April and have looked forward to bringing back ever since. This month’s guest, Caroline Snyder, is a entrepreneurial STEMShe - the founder and CEO of Verdi Advising, a financial coaching company for women with non-traditional careers (read: entrepreneurs to side hustlers and everything in between). Caroline spends her days re-educating our world on the way in which we understand money, and its emotional impact, helping her clients bring financial conversations into their everyday lives, emphasizing the significance of privilege and access into the entire conversation and more. For Caroline, we can all be money experts, we just have to start talking. 

This month, we're focusing our content on SHEsFirst, an opportunity to highlight the pioneering SHEs in our world that have paved the ways for others - and been first. This guest's name might be familiar for many of our listeners - Mariah Brown, the oldest children of the Brown family, grew up on national television as her family's story was detailed throughout TLC's hit show Sister Wives. An active social justice advocate and member of the LBGTQ community, Mariah discusses her coming out story, one that was seen on national television, how she sees her family's platform as a privilege, her growing love for her new home of Chicago, her master's program in social justice and social work and more.

This month, we’re focusing our content on SHEsBlack&SHEsProud, a theme curated by Vice President of Inclusion and Community Relations at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and this month’s podcast guest, Brynn Plummer. Brynn’s career in D&I began during her time at Teach for America, and she’s only getting started. Now, she’s working to combat the lack of diversity throughout the entrepreneurship community - a disparity evidenced by a stat she shares and discusses - that 98% of invested start-up founders are white men. She further unpacks that story, discusses the lessons she’s learned as a black woman at work, the prevalence of non-learning throughout our communities and the ways in which white allies can stop virtue signaling and start acting. 

This month, we’re kicking off Season 2 of SHEspeaks around our January theme of HealthSHEs. With the new year comes a renewed sense of awareness around the importance of health, and we’re celebrating this month with our first guest of this new season, Emi Canahauti, a sexuality educator, trainer, entrepreneur and owner of Thrive and Talk. Emi has dedicated her life to assisting all people with navigating their sexuality, a word she says that we, as a society, don’t fully understand or even define correctly. We’ll learn more about what sexuality entails, how our identities are formed from the very beginning, the first language children learn to speak as infants and the importance of holistic health - all aspects of it - for all SHEs. 

Season 1 is a wrap! And we're highlighting all that we've discussed this year. Listen for a summary of our powerful SHE guests - and a look at what's to come! SHEs everywhere, this one's for you.

Brooke Lopez and Adrianna Maberry are co-founders of The Lone Star Parity Project, a non-partisan initiative dedicated to sharing the stories of women and femmes in Texas politics to ensure political parity across all levels of government. As our first remote interview, these two trailblazers discuss their passions for using the power of story and data to impact the political climate, the idea and research behind voting centers, their own journeys on the campaign trail and how the lessons they’ve learned in the Lone Star State can be applied to countless races across our country and more. 

Dr. Lakisha Simmons, business intelligence and analytics expert, associate professor of information management systems at Belmont University and executive director of The Achiever Academy, spends her days teaching -- both in and out of the classroom. We'll discuss her dedication to education, her belief in the power of mentoring young women as they work to understand just how powerful they are, how she's transforming access to period products in Nashville (and beyond!) and her successful career in business technology.  

Dr. Anjali Forber-Pratt, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University and a Team USA medalist, has dedicated her career to studying issues surrounding disability identity, equality and empowerment for all individuals. We’ll discuss her incredibly successful and decorated athletic career, her work with identity and inclusion, her lengthy battle through a 4-year disability discrimination lawsuit, and the intersection of disability, race, gender and sports.

This month we're celebrating SHEs in Service and featuring Marjorie K. Eastman, a veteran SHE who dedicated 10 years of her life to our country as she served in the Army as an intelligence officer and commander. While in service, Marjorie was the No. 1 intelligence commander in Eastern Afghanistan. Recently, Marjorie wrote and published The Frontline Generation: How We Served Post 9/11, a book that details her time in the field, while challenging its readers (and beyond) to choose to be part of what Marjorie has coined the Frontline Generation -- those of us who find a mission and decide to take action.

This month, we're focusing on LGBT+SHEs and featuring Dr. Marisa Richmond, Professor of history and women's and gender studies at MTSU, First Vice Chair of Metro Human Relations Commission and a Member of the Democratic National Committee (among many other things). Marisa has spent her life advocating for LGBT+ rights. We'll discuss her extensive and dedicated work, the ways in which all SHEs can advocate for transgender issues and the importance of intersectional identity.   

This month, we're celebrating miniSHES and featuring Nashville-based organization Girls to the Moon, a nonprofit dedicated to launching confident girls while creating a more inclusive community. We also speak with three local miniSHES about their own experiences, their SHEroes, what it's like to be a miniSHE in 2018 and more. 

This month on #SHEspeaks, host Hope Cooper Buckner speaks with JavaScript enthusiast, full-stack developer and software engineer Rainu Ittycheriah about her experiences within the STEM industry as a SHE. 

This month, Young&BosSHE #SHEspeaks host Hope Buckner speaks with nonprofit consultant and Executive Director of Unscripted Emma Supica about her work within a Nashville start-up, her improv research, and the SHEs who have shaped her life.

This month Young&BosSHE #SHEspeaks host Hope Buckner talks leadership and creativity with Maria Spear Ollis, founder and owner of Spear IP. 

This month Young&BosSHE co-creator and SHEspeaks host Hope Buckner sat down to talk leadership with Kimmy Garris, member of the Nashville Feminist Collective (NFC) Steering Committee. 

For our first episode in the SHEspeaks series, the Young&BosSHE co-creators sat down to tell our story story: how Young&BosSHE came to be, our dreams for the future, and how SHEs everywhere can get involved in our movement! Why a podcast? Because a SHE is most powerful when using her voice — and we are bringing those voices to you! Interested in being a part of #SHEspeaks? Email us at youngbosSHE@gmail.com!