However, this has also led to a crowded market in just about every industry. You are competing with millions of other businesses. Standing out is incredibly difficult, especially if you are selling a popular product or service. In this context, diversity becomes key to getting ahead.

Before going into the reasons why, all entrepreneurs should be aware of the need for basic insurance. If you’re working from a home that you do not own, you will need good renters insurance for your possessions, including your office furniture and laptop. Since your business could be derailed without your possessions, make sure you are covered for theft and damage. Without a laptop (or the means to replace one), standing out will be the least of your problems.

Now, let’s discuss why diversity is key to standing out in a crowded market.

Finding a niche

Many young entrepreneurs make the assumption that targeting the biggest possible audience will bring them the most sales. This was once the case, with endless opportunity for companies targeting populations around the world. However, in a saturated market, taking such a generalized approach only ensures that you get lost in the crowd.

This is why finding a niche is so important. Niches are fields of interest that are compelling to much smaller groups of people. But by targeting a niche, you compete with a much smaller pool of competition as well. Furthermore, individuals grouped in a niche are usually a more captivated market.

Anyone can choose to target a niche, but the most successful businesses are those with a personal connection. As such, diversity is a huge benefit. Having someone on your team who relates to a specific niche that is outside of the mainstream gives you an organic entryway into the market.

Instead of competing with an endless number of other businesses for uninterested customers, you’re connecting with a group that truly feels seen by you.

Diversity brings innovation

But diversity is not just a link to target audiences you would otherwise miss out on. It actually changes the way you do business entirely. Diversity of thought comes from diversity of experience. If everyone in your team has similar life experience, you may work well together but will be ignorant to ideas and opportunities that you personally cannot relate to.

Diversity brings innovation, which can truly make your business stand out. Again, standing out may not be a good thing if you are trying to target as broad an audience as possible. However, if you are choosing a more focused audience, you will introduce products and services no one else is offering.

Broaden your audience

We’ve spoken about how diversity can help you specify your audience so as to target a more captive population, even if it is smaller. But diversity can do the opposite as well.

Let’s say you are already targeting a niche. When designing adverts, you choose to target populations that you know will respond to your product or service. If you lack diversity in your team, you will find it hard to identify the members of the niche who don’t look or think like you.

Diversity gives you insight into how people who are nothing like you relate to your niche. This gives you the opportunity to speak to those people, broadening your audience to include populations who are typically excluded but are just as engaged with the field.

Diversity in business is not just about opening up opportunities to people who have been excluded in the past, although that is important. It also helps you with choosing a niche, innovating, and marketing to people who everyone else ignores. Your whole team starts thinking with more nuance, leading to a better environment for exploration and discovery.

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San Francisco, CA — June 28, 2022 — Front, a communication hub for building strong customer relationships, today announced it raised $65 million in Series D financing, led by Salesforce Ventures and Battery Ventures and with participation from PagerDuty CEO, Jennifer Tejada. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Threshold Ventures and Uncork Capital also participated in the financing. This round values Front at $1.7 billion, bringing the company’s total funding to date over $200 million.

According to Crunchbase, among the 1,360 unicorns it tracks on the Crunchbase Unicorn Board and among the thousands of public and private SaaS companies in Crunchbase’s dataset, Front CEO and co-founder Mathilde Collin joins a list of only 10 other women to found and hold the role as chief executive at both public and private SaaS company valued at over $1 billion dollars. With this latest funding, Front more than doubled its valuation — an achievement made more significant as it comes amid the most challenging tech fundraising environment in over a decade. In recent months, public technology company valuations have been slashed and growth at all costs is no longer being rewarded. Instead, there is much greater emphasis placed on profitability and efficiency. Front has a history of capital-efficient growth, with a track record of opting for lower valuations to minimize equity dilution and maintain a strong capitalization table.

Front’s strong track record of consistent and disciplined growth can be attributed, in part, to the fact that Front’s leadership heavily skews female: alongside co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin, 80 percent of the executive team is female and 50 percent of Front’s managers are women. Private technology companies led by women are more capital-efficient, achieving 35 percent higher ROI, and, when venture-backed, 12 percent higher revenue than startups run by men, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Yet, according to PitchBook, female founders secured only 2 percent of venture capital in the U.S. in 2021, the smallest share since 2016.

Front enables human relationships at scale

Founded in 2013, Front is upending two of the largest and most deeply entrenched markets in SaaS: email and customer support software. Businesses that rely on strong customer relationships to differentiate themselves are underserved by the incumbents: Email is inefficient for teams, with no support for workflows, analytics or meaningful integration; support software creates efficiencies, it makes customers feel like numbers. Front surrounds every high-stakes conversation with team collaboration capabilities and customer data. Its customers use it to ensure responses are always fast, accurate and deeply personalized. Unlike customer ticketing software, Front’s modern interface is inspired by email clients, which team members love because it’s familiar and easy to use.

“When it comes to customer communication, technology rarely improves the relationships it’s designed to manage. Efficiencies tend to come at the cost of quality of service: the so called smart bots, the deflection techniques, the cold ticket numbers and impersonal processes. In the long run, both customers and businesses lose out. Front has taken a contrarian approach: we’re building technology that scales customer relationships without losing that human touch,” said Mathilde Collin, co-founder and CEO of Front. “This investment round, coming in the economic environment as it did, is a validation of that approach. Front has the potential to become the communications layer for meaningful relationships across the entire enterprise, and investors want to help us get there.”

Front has nearly 8,000 customers in over 100 countries, including five of the Fortune 25. The company has grown net new ARR by 120 percent YoY and is seeing strong traction in mid-market and enterprise with new business growing nearly 2X faster than other segments last year. Front’s Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) has averaged 98 percent in the past 12 months, and it has consistently been ranked one of the top 10 companies globally, according to Nicereply. Front consistently sees a level of engagement that’s far more common in consumer apps such as Netflix and Instagram than in B2B technology: 75 percent of Front’s monthly active users are also daily active users.

“Front has emerged as a mission critical customer communication platform for companies of all shapes and sizes across” said Alex Kayyal, Managing Partner at Salesforce Ventures. “We’re delighted to support such a talented team as they tap into the massive opportunity to marry collaboration tools and data to strengthen relationships via digital channels.”

“At Battery we’ve closely studied the evolution of customer communication and collaboration software more broadly, and our work has made us extremely excited about Front’s vision in this sector and its ability to execute,” said Battery Ventures General Partner, Neeraj Agrawal. “Mathilde and her team have not only built a great business–they’ve built a great culture around highly satisfied employees who are channeling that enthusiasm back into the product. We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with Front.”

Front will use the funds to accelerate investments in both product and go-to-market initiatives. On the product side, it will increase investments in product development efforts to empower support, operations and account management teams to build long-lasting relationships at scale. For go-to-market, it will invest in new partnerships, geographies and gaining market share in industries where customer relationships drive business success more than any other factor, including professional services, financial services, logistics, and B2B technology, among others. The company will also use the funds to continue driving its global expansion, particularly in EMEA where the company has offices in Paris and Dublin.

About Front

Front is a communication hub for building strong customer relationships on digital channels. For many businesses, almost every customer conversation can make or break the relationship — the stakes are that high. Front puts these conversations at the center of a team’s attention and surrounds them with collaboration capabilities and contextual data from multiple systems. This lets teams stay focused on delivering timely, accurate and deeply personalized communications. Nearly 8,000 businesses, including Shopify, Airbnb, Hulu, Lyft, and Mailchimp, use Front to build better customer relationships, one conversation at a time. To learn more, visit front.com.

The original press release can be found on LinkedIn.

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Speechmatics, the leading speech recognition technology scaleup, has raised $62m in Series B funding. Led by Susquehanna Growth Equity with participation from existing investors AlbionVC and IQ Capital, the funding will be used to support Speechmatics’ vision to be a world-leading speech platform, understanding every voice with human-level accuracy.

Global experts in deep learning and speech recognition, Speechmatics has built the most accurate and inclusive speech-to-text engine available. Its aim is to understand every voice regardless of the speakers’ demographic, age, gender, accent, dialect, or location. Historically, training data had to be manually tagged, classified or ‘labelled’ and therefore acceptable accuracy was only viable for a narrow set of the most commercially valuable speakers. Following a major breakthrough in 2021, the Speechmatics speech-to-text engine is now trained through exposure to hundreds of thousands of individual voices using millions of hours of unlabelled, more representative voice data that doesn’t require human intervention. This has enabled a paradigm shift in accuracy, particularly for non-English languages, dramatically reducing both AI bias and errors in speech recognition.*

The Speechmatics engine already understands 34 languages for live and pre-recorded media. Industry-leading features include advanced punctuation and entity formatting (formatting of numbers, currencies, and addresses). Speechmatics works with customers and partners in any industry and with any use case – on-premises, via the cloud, and hybrid. Organisations ranging from 3Play Media, Veritone, Deloitte UK, and Vonage to government departments across the world already take advantage of its accuracy.

Speechmatics is headquartered in Cambridge, UK with offices in London, Boston, USA, Chennai, India and Brno, in the Czech Republic. The investment will be used to support global expansion across the United States and Asia-Pacific, improving infrastructure – particularly data centre capacity and adding further firepower to its research and development to deliver even more accurate understanding of even more voices.

Katy Wigdahl, CEO, Speechmatics, said, “Our progress in the last few years left us inundated with interest from investors for our Series B fundraise. We chose to work with Susquehanna Growth Equity because they have a fantastic global footprint and a history of supporting significant growth in software businesses. The team is smart and ambitious but also pragmatic which is critical in this environment.

The patient capital will enable us to double down on our vision to close the gap between humanity and machines, which is incredibly exciting. The Speechmatics team is hugely ambitious. We have a real heritage in speech technology combined with some of the world’s most talented speech and machine learning experts. We cannot wait to accelerate our growth and unlock the understanding of more and more voices.”

Jonathan Klahr, Managing Director of Susquehanna Growth Equity, said, “The Speechmatics team are undoubtedly a different pedigree of technologists. We started tracking Speechmatics when our portfolio companies told us that again and again Speechmatics win on accuracy against all the other options including those coming from ‘Big Tech’ players. We are primed to work with the team to ensure that more companies can get exposed to and adopt this superior technology.”

Robert Whitby-Smith, Partner at AlbionVC, said, “Our view is voice will become the increasingly dominant human-machine interface and Speechmatics are the category leaders in applying deep learning to speech, with category defining accuracy and understanding across industry use-case and requirements. We have witnessed the impressive growth of the team and product over the last few years since our Series A investment in 2019 and as responsible investors we are delighted to support the company’s inclusive mission to understand every voice globally.”

Jonathan Klahr, Managing Director of Susquehanna Growth Equity will join the Speechmatics board.

*Based on datasets used in Stanford’s ‘Racial Disparities in Speech Recognition’ study, Speechmatics recorded an overall accuracy of 82.8% for African American voices compared to Google (68.6%) and Amazon (68.6). This level of accuracy equates to a 45% reduction in speech recognition errors – the equivalent of three words in an average sentence.

The original article can be found on the Speechmatics website.

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According to a report by Credit Suisse, not only are women less likely to hold executive leadership positions but they also receive significantly less funding. Data shows that in Europe, all-male funding teams receive 93% of all capital invested, with only 2% going to all-female teams. This, when combined with the fact that the percentage of women in management positions in companies around the world is only 19.9%, shows a clear bias against feminine stereotypes.

While the entrepreneurial gender gap certainly seems to be closing thanks to the efforts of many organizations and private individuals, there is a lot of work to be done. With most efforts having focused on female representation in leadership positions until now, venture capital financing for female-led teams and the empowerment of female limited/general partners seems to be the next step.

The Bridge is looking to do just that by connecting limited partners with emerging female-led technology VC funds. Founded in 2020, the organization has been fulfilling this mission by organizing “The Bridge Conference”, an invite-only event focused on providing resources to connect both parties, presenting emerging funds, and offering high-quality content.

With more than 36 commitments having already been made through The Bridge to emerging fund female managers, the organization launched its new initiative earlier in June. Known as Bridge Funding Global, the platform relies on a selection committee formed by US top institutional and family office investors. The committee will include 20 permanent judges who will help select the top female GMs to become the first members.

Female GPs interested in becoming members will be able to apply twice a year, with the cap being reached once 100 GP members are selected. The judges, who collectively manage over 2 trillion, will take into consideration the program’s promises to the community, which include:

• Create meaningful and personalized connections
• Be data and growth centric
• Keep a focused, directed, unbiased, and curated access to the community
• Increase transparency on the LP landscape 
• Engage ecosystem partners to ensure the best solutions and support to emerging VC managers

Competition is expected to be high given the increasing interest that The Bridge Conference has received over the past years. The last edition, which took place back in May, saw the participation of 40 LPs and 40 female GPs chosen out of 197 applicants, with a total of 36 commitments taking place. With applications closing on July 1st, there is still time to apply.

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Queer and trans owned, Play Out was co-founded by CEO Abby Sugar and Chief Design Officer Grey Leifer in 2018. Not seeing representation reflected in brands and apparel, specifically the lack of inclusivity in underwear, was the catalyst for these co-founders to design and manufacture it for themselves.

The gender-equal startups mission is to positively impact queer visibility and represent queer celebration. Queer people, gender nonconforming, and transgender individuals deserve to see themselves joyously reflected in clothing and brands. Allies, of course, are welcome in the community to shop, support, engage, and enjoy Play Out’s signature soft underwear and streetwear.

Each exclusive collection (all patterns) was once hand painted on a canvas by co-founder Leifer. The painting is then digitized and designed into lifestyle attire – now their turning the artwork into NFTs for inclusive representation on the blockchain. 

Play Out defines gender equal shopping as dismantling the notion that gender defines style. Play Out offers inclusive, affirming apparel with affordable price points, unique artistic designs, and a shopping experience that is inclusive for all customers. The website does not have “Men’s” or “Women’s” sections; it has categories like “flat front” or “pouch space.” All tops are categorized as unisex.

Play Out is gender, race, age, sexuality, size (XS – 5X), and ability inclusive. By designing inclusively, this means there is equal opportunity for shape, size, color, and style in shopping, without gender categories or othering due to body differences – everyone should celebrate their authentic self-expression. All styles are designed in-house by Co-Founder Grey Leifer, and each collection’s limited-edition prints originate from Leifer’s paintings, then digitized and made into Play Out Apparel.

With 20% net profits going to LGBTQ+ and BLM organizations, Play Out Apparel is a Social Good Enterprise. Play Out works solely with a woman-owned manufacturer in Mexico who employs people over the age of 50, pays living wages and works directly with trans and LGBTQ+ communities. With a sustainability focus on responsible manufacturing, Play Out uses overstock/selvage raw materials (left by larger companies) and designs as much as possible using recycled fabrics.

Bigger vision for Play Out includes a wholly-owned circular shopping ecosystem where brand evangelists can buy-sell their clothes in the marketplace instead of always purchasing new; and establishing buy-back recycling partnerships. Making sure new-majority groups (especially women and the LGBTQ+ community) are participating and represented in these new and emerging markets and opportunities, Play Out is partnering with Web3 platforms to be THE gender-equal lifestyle brand, digital fashion designers, suppliers, and community experience builders.

A Founder Institute Select Portfolio Company – top 2% of its companies – Play Out was named one of its 50 Fastest Growing Companies of 2021, profiled in NYTimes last year and founder, Abby Sugar, was named to the 2021 Forbes Next 1000 List. Play Out has already raised $575K from value-aligned investors in their pre seed funding round (The Gaingels, LoyalVC, Andy Dunn, Tech Execs, etc).

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What you might not be aware of is that shapewear can be used for medical reasons, as it’s used by many post-surgery patients either those recovering from BBL or other plastic surgery procedures.

In general, fashion companies are recognizing the benefits of having a powerful branding strategy especially as more customers align themselves with brands that champion diversity and inclusion. Examples of great comebacks include brands like Victoria’s Secret as well as emerging brands like Skims by Kim Kardashian.

One company that has made its first footstep into America, is deploying its methodology and values to close the gap between shapewear and fashion. Tributo is the first fajas (girdle) company that makes colorful and customizable fajas as well as other shapewear. Originated from Columbia which has an epicenter for plastic surgery clinics, they have managed to partner with some of the largest clinics and surgeons in both Columbia and America. Their brand champions partnerships that are in full alignment with what they believe in: diversity, inclusivity, and innovation.

This movement pertains to more than just positive ROI and brand trust, but its vision stretches to impact customers of all backgrounds and sizes globally, as well as pioneering ethical employment practices. 

Here’s how functional fajas are taking a storm on the shapewear market.

Customization is key to embracing all types of bodies

Traditional fashion follows standardized protocols for sizing. This may leave people frustrated when trying to feel good in clothes because they’re unable to find clothes that are tailored to their body type and curves. It can become an expensive endeavor tailoring every piece of clothing they have, or time-consuming trying to look for the perfect fit in stores.

Here’s how customization can be powerful. When a company is based on customizing their clothing to fit the person instead of the other way around, it exemplifies to the customer that they truly come first. Tributo introduced a seamless online shopping experience for their customers who want customization but don’t want to pay thousands of dollars for it.

Their products are not only aesthetically pleasing, but the hallmark is their bright colors that customers want to show off, instead of hiding. The material is designed to provide compression to snatch the silhouette. By being custom made, the faja is able to only give compression in the areas needed like the abdominal area. The compression helps shape people’s curves, flatten the stomach, and improve posture. It’s also extremely suitable for people recovering from surgical procedures. Viviana says, ”By creating custom garments, we send the message that there is no such thing as a standard body or standard beauty.”

Another demographic that is underserved is people who identify as non-binary and desire to achieve the hourglass shape. Through Tributo, non-binary clients can receive exceptional service and customization to their needs. This was so important to the company, that they recently released the Ken Doll collection to honor this specific community and want to be the first ones to bring it to the mainstream. 

Living by the same Values: Inclusion, Innovation, and Quality

Fashion has been around for centuries yet it’s not known for being the most inclusive nor ethical. Only recently have brands and advertising companies intentionally woven diversity and ethical practices into their marketing. The pivot to more inclusive fashion campaigns by brands such as Vogue, Victoria’s Secret, and the Gap, shows a cultural paradigm shift in fashion and values.

For Tributo, the quality of its product has as much to do with the quality of the company’s values as anything. The founder and CEO, Viviana Millán, takes care of her sixty and growing employees, treating it as an investment, rather than an expense. Besides refusing to open factories and restoring calm and beautiful houses for her employees to work in, she is mindful to negate the biases of gender or age from Tributo’s hiring process. Today, Tributo is a predominantly women-run company, with several single moms and immigrants in the workforce. 

As it comes to branding, Tributo generally tries to employ regular people in their campaigns and partners with real fajas-loving customers of all orientations and body types. Most recently, their Hot Pink Campaign featured a bionic model Marsha Elle. This served as an amazing opportunity to showcase their brand’s values of inclusivity, as Millan puts it, “Having Marsha represents a bold statement for inclusion since she has a prosthetic leg, and it is not common in the shapewear industry to display people with disabilities.”

The constant iteration and improvement of the fajas speak to Viviana’s innovative mind. “It’s programmed into my hard drive to always look for ways to improve,” Millán says. In part what makes the company successful, is its unwavering dedication to using the best quality for the fajas and their practice of ethical fashion standards.

Conclusion

The story of customizable fajas started small and humble in Columbia, but as word spread, it’s on track to becoming a fashion staple. Not only so, but it’s supporting a broader cultural shift for people of all gender and body sizes in fashion. Utility, a distinct brand message, and loyal communities are indications of a timeless brand in the making.

The post A Tribute to Adversity: Functional Yet Fashionable Fajas appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Empower, founded by serial entrepreneurs and leading DE&I specialists Thorey Vilhjalmsdottir Proppe and Dee Thomsen, has worked with both government and private sector organizations, such as the country’s Parliament, police organizations, universities and leading international enterprises to uncover, address and correct workplace biases and toxic culture traits that impede their ability to attract and retain diverse talent, and create an equal, diverse and inclusive workplace.

“As we’ve seen with Iceland’s continued top ranking on Gender Equality, LBGTQIA+, peace and happiness indexes, the path to equality begins with acknowledgement of biases within the workplace, systems and society, and a willingness to change those workplaces, systems and society,” said Thorey Vilhjalmsdottir Proppe. “Empower tackles these same challenges within government and private organizations, creating solutions that address the significant market gap within the HR software sector, by providing an integrated solution centered specifically on DE&I.”

“With this round of funding, we will expedite our journey, building out our team and new solutions to eliminate and mitigate the many challenges organizations face across the Nordic, North American and European markets,” stated Dee Thomsen. “We will leverage both our proven methodologies, as well as our new, comprehensive software solution, which includes a holistic dashboard complete with reporting systems, red flag monitors, action plan frameworks, goals and KPI tracking, as well as impactful training & micro learning content.” 

“We are proud of the positive social impact of this venture. It is imperative that organizations uncover and address the equality challenges that limit their success and the career successes of their employees, both for human and organizational health, as well as regulatory compliance,” said Svana Gunnarsdottir, Managing Partner, Frumtak Ventures. “Empower’s founders deeply understand the needs of HR and DE&I managers, as well as the employees they recruit to these organizations, and are using this breadth of experience to inform the dashboards and toolkits their solution provides, helping to foster more equal and inclusive organizations globally.”

Empower is a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion solutions provider focused on combining its successful track record in DE&I consulting with technical solutions to support HR and DE&I teams at government and enterprise organizations globally. Empower helps to create organizational change for more inclusive and equal workplaces through high impact methodologies; Dashboard, goals, KPI’s and creative micro learning content. For more information, visit empowernow.co.

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Dalia Feldheim was led many memorable advertising campaigns, including Always #LikeAGirl in 2014, which won 14 Cannes awards and was listed on the Forbes 2020 10 Most Influential Campaigns of the Century. Her Whisper’s “Touch the Pickle” campaign won the 2014 winner Cannes Sheryl Sandberg Glass Ceiling Award.

After P&G, Feldheim became A citizen of Israel, she began her career as a platoon commander in the Israeli Defense Forces—an apt preparation for intense leadership roles.

Feldheim’s marketing jobs are not even the most interesting thing about her. She is an adjunct professor of The Science of Happiness at the Singapore Management University and, in partnership with Dr. Tal Ben Shahar and the Happiness Studies Academy, founder of Uppiness, an online game to promote wellbeing at work.

We asked Dahlia Feldheim about leading like a girl and the painful origins of the title, which hopefully are obscure to people younger than a certain age.

Grit Daily: Your new book is titled Dare to Lead Like a Girl. Is that a call for more women in leadership positions, or is to urge men in leadership to broaden their approach to leadership?

Dahlia Feldheim: Both!  The title is an homage to the Always # LikeAGirl marketing campaign I helped lead back in 2014, and is a provocative call to all leaders to connect to their more feminine leadership traits and dare to lead (more) like a girl. 

It’s a call for society to stop trying to fix women and instead understand the value in those more traditionally female leadership traits like empathy, teamwork and intuition. When we change our definition of what makes a great leader, we will see more women in leadership positions and more men bringing their hearts to work.

Grit Daily: I am pretty old, so I have vivid memories of when telling a boy that he threw a baseball like a girl was both a real insult but also considered a shorthand way to describe what he was doing wrong. How much is different now compared to that?

Dahlia Feldheim: Words create worlds. “Run or throw like a girl.” “You’ve got balls” is a way of describing someone with courage, and “Don’t be a pussy” means don’t be a coward.  That’s pretty powerful.

When we came up with the #LikeAGirl campaign, our desire was to change the meaning of words and re-claim the phrase “like a girl” to mean being proud to be who you are. The campaign was immensely successful and is now even taught in schools as part of social studies. A mum called me recently to tell me that her son’s football coach heard a friend shouting to his peer that he runs like a girl. The coach stopped the match, took all the players aside and had a serious talk on why this was inappropriate and denigrating to girls. He even showed them the commercial!

Her son was so taken by it, he shared it with his mum who contacted me. I would be a fool to think this denigration completely disappeared but I am hoping we are moving the needle. Now I am on a mission to reclaim the phrase once again—this time in the world of leadership.

Grit Daily: Nearly everywhere in the world, men hold most of the leadership positions in society, at least outside of the home. Acknowledging that the question presumes there are real gender differences, what are the problems with male dominated leadership that you believe could be solved, or at least lessened, by leading like a girl?

Dahlia Feldheim: First, I would like to point out that research shows that with the modern requirements of the workplace, women are not only as efficient as men in leadership roles but that women score higher than men with regard to 17 of 19 leadership traits as voted by their employees.

With the world going virtual, with the importance of customer relations, creativity and agility, the old leadership paradigm of command and control is not relevant anymore. When we look at the great resignation the #1 driver is toxic environments.

Our employees are suffering -1 in 4 experience acute work related anxiety. This must stop. We must humanize our workplace—put the hearts of our people at the heart of what we do. Bring back psychological safety by creating workplaces where employees feel confident to speak up and bring their full self to work.

This I believe will happen when leaders start leading more like a girl.

Grit Daily: You were a platoon commander in the Israeli Defense Forces. What did that teach you about leadership, particularly as a woman in command of men?

Dahlia Feldheim: Israelis have many mixed feelings about our mandatory military service, and the experience can be extremely challenging but looking back, my own service was a valuable crash course in leadership. The importance of motivation, leading by example, courage.

I will tell you two stories that bring this to life:

The first is during Yom Kippur—our holiest day of the year—my base commander went home and I became base commander. In the middle of the night we heard shooting outside the base. I had to alert a shooting squad. These were reserve soldiers 3 times older then I was. We started walking towards the shooter and suddenly I realized that this shooting squad of all men were walking slower behind me letting me lead. It was scary but I kept on thinking of the lives of my platoon relying on me. Luckily the shooter was caught a few hours later and safety returned but Leadership is about ‘ACHARAI’ which in Hebrew means follow me: a leader leads by example. You will never ask your squad to do something you are not willing to do.

For most of my service I was a platoon commander of basic training. The army is a melting pot and so you see soldiers from all economic backgrounds. One weekend one of my soldiers crossed the line and my base commander was furious—she said she wouldn’t amount to much. She wasn’t motivated and I was told to charge her and put her in jail. I ask for a week to consider an alternative mode of punishment. The main mode of punishment in those days was drills. And so at midnight she was brought in and I started drilling her 1-on-1 – run here, run there. But in between I gave her a full blown motivational speech. It doesn’t matter where you have come from, and I know your life has been harder than the rest, what matters is that the army has given you the opportunity to start over to prove who you really are to be an equal contributor to society.

It was the weirdest experience as slowly we started bonding. I was tough and demanding but caring and understanding at the same time. At 4 am she broke into tears and asked me for a second chance. The next morning as I entered our canteen she saw me coming and got the whole canteen to stand on their feet and salute me. She went on to be our best soldier. She completed her army service and went on to be a lawyer. We stayed in touch. I saw the value of treating people as humans no matter their background and believing anyone can make a difference if they just choose to.

Leadership really isn’t about men vs women and the traditional view of stern courage. In fact the word courage comes from the French word coeur which means heart. Courageous leaders are those who lead by example and lead from the heart- demanding and setting high standards but being empathetic and caring for the growth of their soldiers at the same time.

When your life and the lives of others depend on you being the best that you can be and the deep psychological safety and comradeship you develop in your team to save your back in times of crisis, you learn fast how to help your people be tough, resilient, professional and motivated.  

Grit Daily: You are an adjunct professor of The Science of Happiness at the Singapore Management University, which I find at least as interesting as your military service. What is the connection between happiness and leadership?

Dahlia Feldheim: A very strong connection. When I started studying positive psychology and Happiness, I realized that everything I intuitively knew about leadership was grounded in research. On a personal level I was always considered to be contagiously positive- this was a good thing- I was able to motivate teams to reach goals they never thought possible. But I had one boss who couldn’t give compliments because he felt it was a waste of time. He thought I was too positive and even nicknamed me ‘Miss Kumbaya’. I was glad to learn what I felt intuitively, that being positive makes you a better leader, and research shows all measures of productivity increase when you are in a positive state (engagement, less sick leave, less absenteeism etc).

Positive psychology is about focusing on what works vs what doesn’t. Looking at strengths vs always trying to fix opportunities. Having a growth mindset, that is, seeing drawbacks as growth lessons. And most importantly, positive psychology is NOT about being falsely happy all the time. It’s about giving ourselves and our employees the permission to be human. Being truly empathetic to understand it is OK not to be OK. Allowing employees to express how they are feeling and then helping them create an upwards spiral of positivity seeing new opportunities instilling hope and gratitude.

In fact, our brains in positive mode are 30 percent more productive. That is what I focus on- helping leaders lead with positivity.

Grit Daily: In recent years the phrase “first world problem” has become a label for the petty complaints of materially comfortable people. How do you, as a scholar of happiness, explain the mental health problems, frustration and plain unhappiness that is so common in wealthy countries?

Dahlia Feldheim: Well, it all comes down to to the Maslow Hierarchy of need: the basic needs are physical needs and safety, food, shelter. When you don’t have that, and sadly much of the population is in survival mode, that is your focus and your drive. Then comes the need for love and belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization.

The issues of the “first world” emerge when this self comes at the expense of others. When we ‘jump over’ the need for belonging, the empathy for others to fulfill our egoistic needs.

True self-actualization can only happen when we are using our unique strengths and passions to better the world for others (that will also improve the world for me but that focus is secondarily). That is the essence of finding one’s purpose.

One of the favorite workshops I lead for companies is ‘Find your spark.’  CEO’s get scared it will mean the employees will leave and start living as monks in the Himalaya but that is very rarely one’s true purpose. Like in the movie Soul, it’s not about getting to the one big thing, but the journey.

My moto has always been: have an idea of where you are headed (spend time on your purpose and your goals to have a pull power) BUT don’t let this blind you from enjoying the view on the way.

It is not goal attainment that brings us happiness. If we are only focused on reaching the summit we will be disappointed to learn that there is a bigger one behind. It is the climb that matters. Enjoying the view, learning and smelling the roses, watching the maple leaf as it falls.

The ‘dark side’ of the happiness society is the people got confused with chasing happiness instead of chasing the components of happiness. As my Happiness teacher Dr. Tal Ben Shahar refers to it: Happiness is like the sun – you can’t stare straight at it. But you can stare at a rainbow, which basically is breaking down the rays of light into their components.

The components (of happiness) are well documented and what I cover in my 5 P model for leading like a girl. How connected you are to a higher purpose- bringing to life your strengths and passion area to make a positive impact on the word. How much you cultivate a growth mindset: building resilience, reframing failure as a stepping stone to growth. How connected you are to your own energy. To what makes your body happy: what you eat, quality of sleep, meditation. How much do you invest in emotional bravery: being connected to and expressing emotions in a way that drives deeper empathy and connection.  Finally, and proven most importantly, how much you invest in building your relationships.  Because the quality of our life is the quality of our relationships.

So key in this pursuit of happiness is that it must be holistic. You can’t create a rainbow without all colors. You can’t put  lipstick on a pig and expect it to be beautiful. In the same way- we can’t be in a shitty job that pays well but we don’t enjoy, we can’t skip on sleep and party all day, we can’t be emotionally closed and have only shallow relationships, we can’t be takers without considering others and then meditate to become happier. We need to be making progress in all areas, live all the components, all the colors of the rainbow to be happy.

 When we refer to a leader we think of an exceptional person who is in command, while when we refer to a manager we tend to think more of a bureaucrat, but how valid are those distinctions? Is there a real difference between leading and managing?

This an important point! There is a HUGE difference between a Manager and a leader and most companies ignore this. I like to use the hands, head, heart analogy.

• An employee focused on the hands- doing the tasks
• A manager -brings in the head- giving strategic guidance. Builds skills, planning
• A leader must bring in the heart! A leader no longer manages the business, but leads the people who manage the business. Here the focus is on managing motivation, tough-love feedback, aligning tasks to passion areas and strengths. It’s a very diff ball game.

Sadly, most companies ignore this difference.  You get some training on how to become a manager but you are not trained on becoming a leader. At P&G my first manager identified this gap and created a ‘people development’ course. I later joined him and when he left continued the program. This has become the basis for my ‘Aspiring leader’ program I now run with conscious companies like Microsoft, Google, HP and others.

It all starts with self-leadership: finding your own purpose, building your mental and physical wellness as you cannot lead others when you are not happy and congruent. It continues with the art of feedback, psychological safety and belonging and it ends with how each leader can foster a contagiously positive disposition. As we know people learn best when they apply- I have developed (together with my partners Oren Appel and Happiness expert Tal Ben shahar a game that we use to apply all our learnings encouraging employees to reflect on daily challenges using a variety of tools from the science of positive psychology.

These training show a very strong ROI as measured by employee self-assessment but more importantly their team’s assessment. The only person who can determine whether you are a good leader-are the people reporting to you!

That’s why I always use a tool called LAT- Leadership assessment tool- how much your direct reports feel you care about them as a human being, how open you are to their thoughts etc.

Another methodology change I believe all companies should adopt is the dual assessment methodology. In P&G you received an assessment on ‘Building the business’ (how well you delivered you KPIs) but also an assessment on ‘Building the organization’ (this includes both your own direct team but also other initiatives that help the culture and the people. You would only be promoted if you were top rated on both measures. If you deliver results but are a lousy people-person (as many of the ‘toxic’ managers could be), you cannot move on to the next level.

If all companies adopt this approach of leadership development on the one hand and this dual assessment, I would expect we would see much stronger leaders out there – leaders who lead like a girl– with their hands, heads and hearts.

Grit Daily: Are there any points you want to make that I have not raised in my questions?

Dahlia Feldheim: These are great thought provoking questions- thank you!

The post Dalia Feldheim, Author of Dare to Lead Like a Girl, Discusses Leadership and Happiness appeared first on Grit Daily News.

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ruth Health, the progressive telehealth and comprehensive care platform built for women by women, is proud to announce its $2.4 million seed funding round led by Giant Ventures, with participation from Citylight VC, Cleo Capital Scout Fund, Crista Galli Ventures, Duro VC, Emmeline Ventures, Gaingels, Global Founders Capital, Pentas Ventures, SOMA Capital, Techstars, Torch Capital, YCombinator, and various strategic angels. This collective investment — a rarity for ventures in the female healthcare sector — is a testament to the demand for accessible, inclusive, and comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care for American women, bringing Ruth Health’s total funding to $3.1 million.

Through its suite of remote patient services, including pelvic floor training, lactation counseling, C-section recovery resources, intimacy and sexual support, and exercises on demand, which are performed by certified and experienced providers for pregnant or recently pregnant women, Ruth Health is bringing an outdated, historically inadequate system into the 21st century, while empowering the people who are birthing our next generations with empathy, education, and support.

“Pregnancy care outside of the hospital or clinic setting is critical to the wellbeing of womankind, but it’s currently fractured, variable in quality, and filled with hurtful, alienating, and misinformed stigmas,” said Alison Greenberg, Ruth Health’s Co-Founder & CEO. “Our mission is to make women’s healthcare an accessible, superior quality, and even joyful experience for everyone. It’s an honor to provide these long-overdue services with the women’s anatomy and experience at the center of a simple, welcoming, evidence-based telehealth platform that does not shy away from cultural taboos while elevating the female voice.”

The female-founded company boasts a cap table of primarily women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ investors, signaling the truth that women are ready and able to develop, drive and invest in the future of their healthcare, where most of the women’s healthcare vertical has been historically defined by men. Led by founders Greenberg and Audrey Wu, Ruth Health was created to address the huge, costly gaps in American pregnancy care, as evidenced by this country’s rising maternal mortality rates and frustratingly segmented after-birth care continuum. The Ruth Health platform works as an extension of a patient’s existing primary care physician and/or OBGYN (rather than replacing them), offering birthing people the comprehensive care they need to inclusively enhance the birthing experience, improve quality of life, and accelerate holistic healing and recovery without judgment.

“Through our work, we aim to not only improve maternal health outcomes in America but to also reduce the Pregnancy Tax. Women pay steeply in time, money, and career to have babies,” said Wu. “There is no equity across gender, race, sexuality, or other factors when it comes to social determinants of health without greater access to birth workers. Meaningful, supportive, comprehensive care – both prenatal, postpartum and beyond the traditional OBGYN scope – can and must be easier and more accessible for all.”

For more information about Ruth Health, please visit https://www.ruthhealth.com/.

About Ruth Health:

Ruth Health is the progressive telehealth and comprehensive care platform that is revolutionizing women’s healthcare systems and experience for the 21st century by empowering birthing people with remote prenatal, perinatal, and postpartum support services designed by women. We deliver quick, comprehensive, evidenced-based remote counseling sessions with licensed practitioners to help the 83% of women with Pelvic Floor Prolapse post-pregnancy, the 92% who experience breastfeeding challenges, and many birthing people beyond. Using conversational data and biometric readings, we’re building the largest, most diverse maternal health database on Earth — which will help us collectively improve health outcomes for mom and baby alike. Ultimately, Ruth Health’s mission is to ensure every birthing person can be represented, feel heard, and receive the support and the services they really want/need but have not traditionally had access to. Ruth Health is based in New York City and Los Angeles.

Ruth Health’s services — Pelvic Floor Training + Recovery, C-Section Recovery, and Lactation Support — are available to birthing people anywhere in packages at http://www.ruthhealth.com.

Read more from Alison Greenberg about why Ruth Health builds for pregnancy here: https://medium.com/@alisongreenberg/why-we-build-for-pregnancy-d0e194941407

The original article can be found on Business Wire.

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Women entrepreneurs today come from all walks of life and now hold top corporate positions in the new ventures, while outpacing their male counterparts in some of these areas.

Women-owned new business enterprises are playing a prominent role in the society. They are a source of inspiration for other women, which in turn generates many more employment opportunities for women. Not only have their prominent ventures strengthened the women entrepreneurship ecosystem, some venture capitalists have made a conscious decision to invest in them. They use tools for businesses by checking sites like Top10 to ensure higher productivity and better time management.

The consistent development of the start-up system has enabled more and more women to chase their entrepreneurial dream to drive their new ventures. Women have proven leadership skills and now dominate the new age industries, like electronic manufacturing, where because of the high precision work involved and increased productivity levels they have garnered more than 50% of the employee workforce. This attitude also emphasizes the importance of women in modern start-ups because of their business skills.

Moreover, there are hundreds of women entrepreneurs engaged in start-ups in today’s world that have proved they can do everything perfectly on their own and that no amount of sheer force can prevent them from going forward. Over the last twenty years, women-owned start-ups have amplified by as much as 74%, which gives an idea of how these new businesses have empowered them to be their own boss and demand a salary they rightly deserve.

That said, even after years of efforts to create equality between men and women on the start-up front, both socially and economically, the gap between them is still quite large. This is the sole reason women have begun to start new businesses on their own in order to create more job creation for other women, which in turn helps reduce the gender gap in the workforce of their business. After all, when women become successful in any new field it inspires the next generation to emulate their success.

The rise in female-dominated start-ups has increased, as the woman of today is well equipped with all the necessary tools and techniques to help them stay ahead of their competitors. For instance, despite the female start-up founders in Africa being among the most underfunded, they are the driving force in some of the most exciting changes in the continent.

The list of this year highlights women innovators to make robots for waste collection in Cameroon, addressing insurance-related issues in Kenya or tackling freight logistical challenges in Ghana. Despite the coronavirus hit, which became paramount for the survival of their business, the resilient ones lent a hand towards digital entrepreneurship to drive its economy towards recovery.

In an undeveloped country, women are not encouraged to think big, but despite that, there are some who have scaled new heights in a conservative environment. These are the wonder girls who are inspiring other women to take the path of start-up entrepreneurship, in spite of all the challenges and struggles.

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