We're doing things a little different. In this episode, get to know the team behind VEST for our latest podcast installment of VEST Talks.
Get to know Erika Lucas, VEST Founding Member, Gaby Eichenlaub, Operations, Sarah Soetarjo, Member Relations and Kourtney Leigh, Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
We dive deeper into the mission and vision of VEST, our individual perspectives on the barriers women face in the workplace and share practical tips and strategies for navigating workplace challenges.
Each month, we'll still have in-depth interviews with experts and thought leaders discussing various barriers women face in the workplace, but now, in between those interviews, you'll start seeing weekly segments where we will dive deeper into the month's topic, address real-world issues, and share inspiring stories and actionable takeaways.
We can't wait to hear from you! Your stories and questions will play a vital role in shaping our discussions.
If you enjoyed the episode share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. If you are ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Check out our VEST Membership and apply today! www.VESTHer.co
We're doing things a little different. In this episode, get to know the team behind VEST for our latest podcast installment of VEST Talks.
Get to know Erika Lucas, VEST Founding Member, Gaby Eichenlaub, Operations, Sarah Soetarjo, Member Relations and Kourtney Leigh, Entrepreneur-in-Residence.
We dive deeper into the mission and vision of VEST, our individual perspectives on the barriers women face in the workplace and share practical tips and strategies for navigating workplace challenges.
Each month, we'll still have in-depth interviews with experts and thought leaders discussing various barriers women face in the workplace, but now, in between those interviews, you'll start seeing weekly segments where we will dive deeper into the month's topic, address real-world issues, and share inspiring stories and actionable takeaways.
We can't wait to hear from you! Your stories and questions will play a vital role in shaping our discussions.
If you enjoyed the episode share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. If you are ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Check out our VEST Membership and apply today! www.VESTHer.co
Hey everyone, welcome to the Vest podcast, where we explore the investable barriers holding women back in the workplace and share stories of women building power collectively. I am so excited for this session. I am your host and Vest founder, erica Lucas, and this time we're going to do something a little bit different because I'm thrilled to be here with my co-hosts for today. Our Vest staff and team members, hey everyone.
Speaker 2:I'm Gabby, co-founder at Vest, and I'm just excited to be on here talking with you all and learning more and talking more about the mission and vision of Vest and how each of us fits into this journey. I'm Sarah.
Speaker 3:I manage membership at Vest. I'm very excited to be here and I can't wait to share our individual perspectives and the barriers women face in the workplace and why it's essential to discuss these topics openly, and I'm Courtney.
Speaker 4:I am the entrepreneur and resident here at Vest and also a full-time founder at Tinge, and together we make up the Vest team, and in this episode we'll introduce ourselves and share our personal motivations for creating this podcast. So to kick things off.
Speaker 2:let's start just with the big question what is Vest and what inspired us to create this podcast?
Speaker 1:I can get us started, gabby.
Speaker 1:If you recall, in 2020 there were some mass exodus of women leaving workplaces for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons was because of burnout, because some of us were feeling lonely and a lot of us laughed to take care of our loved ones whether it was their children or our parents, grandparents or, in some cases, because we weren't necessarily the main red winner, and so a lot of women made the decision to sacrifice once again to leave their career so their partner or significant other would stay.
Speaker 1:So we launched, during COVID for those reasons, we wanted to provide a safe space for women to have these conversations, like Sarah said, to be able to talk about the barriers that often get in the way of us achieving mobility in the workplace. Sometimes, again, even if we do achieve those positions of power and influence, we get there and we're so lonely and we don't have a support system. So that's why we launched Vest, and now we've grown tremendously. We launched a podcast and we even launched a 20 million dollar fund to invest in other women let companies that are specifically working in these issues that we saw were getting in the way of women not just getting in the workplace, but staying in the workplace.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we created the best podcast to really let other women in on these conversations we were having with incredible speakers every month. But there's just so much more that we can and that we wanted to dive into in these topics. So now we'll be releasing these short segments once a week where we can really dive deeper into the topic, but not just the topic. We'll also discuss real-time issues, share stories from even more women changing the way workplaces work and function, and really create actionable insights for our listeners. And I'm so happy to be doing that with our Vest team. So I'd love to get to know you all a little better. I'd love for our listeners to get to know us a little better, so let's dig right in. So I'd love to hear from you all. What are some challenges you faced in your own career that led to this?
Speaker 3:mission From my perspective. I was living in Asia before that Indonesia and Singapore, specifically Coming to the US. It was so liberating to see that women are so encouraged to do more. You can be more than just a mother. You can be more than just pursuing your career. Those were the challenges that I faced.
Speaker 3:I was in a workplace where it was celebrated that you didn't have kids or that you weren't married or that you didn't have these things tying you down so you could spend all day at work and you can work harder. So I feel inspired to be in an environment where I can pursue all these things still, because after your mom, after the kids leave, after all that you find yourself with yourself and what is that person? And you want to invest in that still and you want to be the best person you can for your kids and if you're happy, then your kids are happy. I have two small kids, so just to give a bit of context, so yeah, those are the things that I face and I'm so grateful to get to know Vess and to be connected with Erica and Gabby and now Courtney, to be able to continue inspiring others and providing a safe space and support. We're very happy to have you, sarah, thank you.
Speaker 4:I would say one of the biggest challenges that I've faced as an entrepreneur is kind of, as the saying goes, it's lonely at the top. Not being in a workplace and surrounded by community, it can feel very, very isolating. Problems can feel very large and daunting and I'm the one, at the end of the day, that really has got to figure them out. But what I love about Vest is both the pillars of community and conversation. I love the community pillar, of course, just kind of echoing what Sarah said, but just in a different stage of life for me. So work, if you will, is currently my baby.
Speaker 4:It is so good to kind of get outside of work and to have conversations with incredible professional women, whether they're building companies or working in a large corporation or battling so many of the same issues.
Speaker 4:And I think that leads into kind of the topic of conversation, which is such a critical piece and something that I really love and appreciate at Vest, because conversation a lot of times I think, if we're being honest for women, we and just even the media kind of skirt around what's actually the reality.
Speaker 4:So many times we're not talking about like our slip ups and our failures and celebrating like big moments and even the little moments in between, and I think that's what Vest, as well, gets such a catalyst for change, specifically for women. Not having those conversations is something that keeps a lot of people out of the arena, particularly as entrepreneurs. I have seen all of these founders kind, of, over the years, glorified and as they know exactly what to do and they're on the perfect path, and then they arrive and they have this massive exit. But that's really not how it goes, and so, unless we're having conversations about what the reality is, the slip ups, the failures, the celebrations, everything in between we're really setting ourselves up for failure. I love the community and conversation that leads into beautifully.
Speaker 2:for the next question what's one specific change or outcome you hope to see in the workplace as a result of these discussions we're having here and in our Vest membership as well? I would completely echo everything you said is just that idea that there's one way that, whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's a career in any specific field or industry, that there's one way of doing things and that it all goes perfectly, that work-life balance is even a real thing. I love hearing these conversations that we have with women and me just feeling understood, those real world discussions to where people are more likely to share their experiences.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So one of the biggest changes for me is when war places and war cultures were originally designed, that we're designed with a very specific type of persona and that type of persona had a support system at home and so it was okay to set the times of 8am 5pm or working through the weekends or adding golf outings here.
Speaker 1:And then it's time for us to evolve workplaces that weren't necessarily designed with other people and might not just women. One of the things that I'm very proud at Vest, that we do very intentionally, is to just talk about the intersectionality. Not every women has the same experience in the workplace. One of the things that I hope Vest does is it just opens more conversation about how can we design more inclusive work spaces that weren't not just for women but for everyone. I think men will benefit a lot from doing away with the traditional work settings. We've had best speakers in the past who have shared that their husbands were afraid to ask for time off to take their kids to doctor appointments because they might be perceived weaker. So that's what I hope that through these conversations we realize that not everybody has had the same work experience, that we benefit from sharing those experiences and learning without judgment.
Speaker 2:Building more on that mission to break down barriers for women and everyone in the workplace. Really, I'd love to hear from you just a moment, from your own career or life where you felt a breakthrough and overcoming a particular challenge, and what advice you would give to other women facing a similar obstacle.
Speaker 4:A barrier that I face personally, and I assume a handful of other women face also, is this challenge of myself and my thoughts and my own kind of mind and really comparison me versus everybody else. There's so many stats out there around this conversation about how we feel like there's only so much space. That's been a real journey for me again, just as an entrepreneur, and spending an honestly wasting time comparing my journey to someone else's. One thing that has been really helpful for me is being okay with the journey being uncomfortable and not being perfect and rosy, and being more open and honest about that, because I feel like when we are open and honest about it, it really invites other people in our circles and in our communities and conversations to be vulnerable to. Right now, just kind of in the macro environment, we're up against a lot of really uncomfortable conversations, so really thinking like, how do we as women, lean into those so that we can have the outcomes and the change that we really want to see for women in the workplace? Absolutely agree.
Speaker 3:All this self-doubt and all these ceilings that you put for yourself with open conversation, well, it won't disappear, but it helps that a lot because then you can tell oh, it's not just me who's going through this and you can find comfort in that.
Speaker 1:I love what both of you say, because I think it's also hard if you don't have kind of that roadmap for yourself, If we don't take the time to really define what's important to us, we end up I know I did you end up, Courtney, like you said competing for titles or for positions or for venture capital money. You end up competing for those and then, even if you get it, sometimes you end up oh my gosh, I didn't even want this. I remember having another VAS session with a VAS member that shared because she hadn't made the time to really identify what her true North was. She ended up just defining success based on what everybody else was defining success at. So I love that you guys touched on that. Can you guys share one practical tip or strategy that has helped you navigate workspace challenges as a woman, something that you hope other people, other listeners, can implement in their own journey?
Speaker 2:Listening to these conversations that we've had at VEST and listening to other women share their experiences, I think just the one practical tip that I can give is to really create that support network for yourself, whether it's women in the same industry, whether it's women in different industries, or whether it's just peers definitely mentors but consciously creating that support network for yourself to have someone to lean on when times get tough has been really invaluable.
Speaker 3:I think as women, we often feel that we have to get a certain mold or meet certain expectations. That is very difficult. If you're trying to do that, to ask for help, to say, hey, I'm struggling here, I need help. I need to be challenged for me, reach out to people I'm getting a lot better at that, but I need to improve and then I'm just saying, hey, you know I'm I need help here. Sounds simple, but it's a lot harder to do.
Speaker 1:When we're talking about takeaways for listeners. I think that we all could do better at asking for help and then receiving help too. It is hard to be vulnerable and to admit that we don't have it all together because of societal norm. Courtney, I think you have said to this we've kind of, for some reason, have believed this notion that well, I think the media has said a lot of this lone wolf entrepreneur or long wolf successful CEO and the truth is, nobody does anything alone.
Speaker 3:Erica, your point about receiving help is even more important, right, because so often people offer help and you don't even recognize it.
Speaker 1:I wonder if that's a little bit of like an immigrant story, sarah, because I struggle with it as well. Like, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2:Well, I meant, yes, me too yeah.
Speaker 1:I wonder if in Mexico, where I'm from, we've romanticized with like oh, working hard, getting 24-7, because that's how we gain our pride. I still believe that in a lot of ways, and it is beautiful to think that you want to work for things, but it's okay to rest too, and it's okay to ask for help.
Speaker 2:I think definitely first generation immigrant too. You're here. You have to prove yourself. Your family made the sacrifice, so now it's up to you to continue that. I can definitely see some relate to that.
Speaker 3:It's interesting because I moved here, because my parents and I lived here, so we moved to be closer to them. So I'm not sure if I can say that I would have the same experience as, like first generation immigrants, because I do have the option that a privilege would be able to come back home if I wanted to and have a life there and be perfectly fine. But I made this decision and this is what I've chosen, so I do feel like the need to prove no, I definitely get that and thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:We all have different perspectives and life experiences that really shape who we are and what we believe and kind of what guides us, so I think it's important that we get to share those parts of us. Courtney, do you want to help us wrap up this question with your takeaway for our listeners?
Speaker 4:My I would say like practical tip is more of a mental strategy and again, I think, just like hearing and echoing everything you all have said about strategy and tips, is like it can be so hard and challenging to ask for help, to receive help. Analyst goes on and on, but I think for me my mental strategy really does come back to growth and comfort. I have kind of a mantra of you all that I repeat myself most every single day and it's comfort won't get you to the place you want to be or the woman you want to become. That really challenges me mentally to show up and to get uncomfortable and to be vulnerable and to ask for help. This comfort doesn't have to mean hustle at all costs. I think discomfort can mean asking for help, discomfort can mean receiving help and discomfort can mean like having open, honest conversations with an incredible community.
Speaker 1:When we launched MERS, it was honestly a hack for us, like we wanted those spaces, and what best has become has, I think, far exceeded everyone's expectations. One of the things I love the most, besides the membership, is just getting to work with you all amazing women, because, like we just heard, we all just bring different experiences, different backgrounds, different approaches, and I feel very lucky to get to work with you guys on a weekly basis, so I'm really excited. I hope that this provides a good overview of what best is, why we launched the podcast, why you should click subscribe Again. Our best sessions will be repurposed into podcast episode. Every month. We bring in different speakers and we talk about the barriers that women face in the workplace and how we can create more inclusive workspaces, but we'll also do some mini sessions to dive deeper into those topics, to talk about real-time events and so on.
Speaker 4:So you definitely want to follow us subscribe to the podcast, and no matter what platform you are tuning in on, we want to hear from you. Your stories and questions play such a vital role in helping us shape our discussion, so if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to leave a comment. If you're discovering us on LinkedIn or another social platform, please send us a DM with your that, and we can't wait to feature them soon If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review.
Speaker 1:And if you're ready to level up at work or need a support community, consider becoming a best member. Go to wwwbestherco and join today.