Feminist Founders: Building People-First (and Profitable!) Businesses

NOTE: Feminist Founders is a listener-funded podcast. To support the mission (and to receive bonus content from this episode), sign up for a Substack subscription at https://feministfounders.substack.com/

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Organizational health and teamwork specialist Faith Clarke (she/her), is committed to helping business leaders cultivate a values-infused, inclusive culture where people feel like they belong, so that they can deliver on their business and social impact promises. Faith is particularly passionate about inclusion for BIPOC and neurodistinct individuals, grounded in her experience as a Caribbean immigrant and as a mother of neurodistinct humans.

Faith’s background in computer engineering, doctoral research and numerous experiences with organizations that care about their social impact curate a high-touch, systematic approach to building strong teams, which has helped her clients improve operations, maximize productivity and double their revenue. Faith is a published researcher, author of the Amazon bestseller, “Parenting like a Ninja,” and host of the Peak Performing Team podcast. She has contributed widely to publications and online shows in the US and UK, and delivers workshops and lectures in a variety of academic and professional settings.

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Discussed in this episode:

• Faith’s relationship with feminism
• The differences in racial dynamics in Jamaica vs. the US
• Why we must widen the “Circle of Concern” vs. falling into the “us vs. them” trap
• Why changing individual behaviors is only 20% of the solution
• Watching for triggers and tending to your needs as an activist
• Shame and burnout don’t do anything to change systemic problems
• What decolonization means, and how it looks in the workplace
• How workplace cultures form and how they can change through micro actions
• Why top-up revolution works, but top-down leadership is more compassionate and effective
• The role that compassion plays in Faith’s decolonization work
• How to maintain compassion in challenging conversations
• The role of self-care and community support for folks engaged in social change
• Faith’s self-care practices
• How Faith is challenging capitalist norms in her business

Resources mentioned:

• “Parenting like a Ninja” by Faith Clarke
• Peak Performing Team podcast
• “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson
• The Circle of Human Concern by John Powell from the Othering & Belonging Institute
• Faith’s ‘Decolonize Work’ interview series
• Jade Connolly Duggan
• Kaiser’s Room in NYC

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com

A full transcript of this interview is available at FeministFoundersPodcast.com

SUMMARY: Nichole Beiner Powell-Newman, an unwavering advocate for intersectional wellness and CEO of Nichole Gabrielle and Co., LLC. shares her transformative journey from law to leadership consulting, and back to blogging. We delve into the challenges of disability in traditional workspaces, visionary steps towards truly inclusive workplaces, and creating liberatory communities. Nichole challenges us to consider how ableism might infiltrate our business practices and invites us to turn our professed values into actionable, everyday guides. Join us for a conversation that redefines community and courage in leadership.

Nichole Alcántara Beiner Powell-Newman (she/her) is an intersectional wellness advocate, speaker and consultant. She seeks equity, belonging and liberation at the crossroads of race, gender, and (dis)ability, through courageous conversations about lived truths, collective healing/care, and through community-centered action. She enjoys creating spaces that allow vulnerable explorations of unbridled joy for those who hold multiple marginalized identities and cultivating communities committed to intersectional belonging.

Nichole serves as the CEO and Co-Founder of Nichole Gabrielle and Co., LLC, a Leadership and Culture Consultancy focused on creating cultures of belonging for people with marginalized identities. Using the skills she's gained from years of facilitation work, legal practice, and her own experiences as a disabled and chronically ill Afro-Latina, Nichole is able to help companies tackle systemic inequities, have hard conversations, and create spaces where people feel safe and confident that they can be their full selves.

When she’s not spending time in community, Nichole enjoys reading, spending time with her husband, Vince, and learning about new foods and places. Lately, you can find her reconnecting with her roots in food anthropology, studying yoga philosophy, or planning out the big, beautiful life she believes we’re all deserving of.

Website | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn

Discussed in this episode:

• Nichole’s exploration of feminism and womanism
• Why working as a lawyer and have a disability became incompatible for Nichole
• The journey from lawyer to blogger to DEI consultant and back to blogging
• Finding a truly liberatory yoga practice and how it helped Nichole shift her thinking
• Nichole’s vision for inclusive workplaces
• Why return-to-work orders are ableist (and may not be financially wise)
• How ableism may be showing up in your business
• Why it’s liberatory to be in aligned community
• The problem with turning community into an industry
• How to reimagine community through a womanist lens
• Having difficult (and political) conversations as a business thought leader
• Turning values from words on a website into a guide for every choice
• Science fiction as a pathway to reimagining a more liberated world

Resources mentioned:

• “All the Black Girls Are Activists” by Ebony Janice
• Melanin and Moxie
• Spoon Theory
• Susana Barkataki
• “The Power of Sitting in the Mess,” Nichole’s Fearless Fire talk
• Sins Invalid
• “The Myth of Normal” by Gabor Maté
• “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
• Feminist Book Club

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com

NOTE: Feminist Founders is a listener-funded podcast. Your contributions enable me to continue bringing you these important conversations. To support the mission, sign up for a paid Substack subscription at https://feministfounders.substack.com/
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Vivienne Miles (she/her) doesn’t believe a traditional bio is authentic to who she came here to be. Instead, she shares experiences that don't define her, but that have given her a lens to see herself through and a foundation to define who she came here to be.

• Childhood abuse.
• An unplanned pregnancy at 20.
• Sexual assault and physical abuse in her 20s.
• An abortion at 30.
• Another birth at 34.
• A divorce at 22.
• A bankruptcy, foreclosure, and car repossession.
• $50,000+ in healthcare debt from depression and 12 suicide attempts before age 27.
• A model who posed in Playboy ad used her sexuality as a currency for a decade.

Vivienne has grit and resiliency like no fucking other, but none of those things define who she is or how she interacts and engages in her life. With her Saturn Return, a giant beacon of light began to illuminate a path forward; one where she was no longer willing to tolerate abuse from boyfriends and addictions that kept her in low frequencies and shitty situations.

Her vocation might seem shallow, but it’s full of her heart and a love language of healing, connection and unapologetic love, which transcends the four walls of her Co-Op Movement and Social Club.

Website | Instagram

Discussed in this episode:

• Vivienne’s relationship with feminism
• The meaning of her company’s name, Co-Op Movement and Social Club
• How Vivienne bought into diet culture early in life and eventually rejected it
• The ways Co-Op is challenging diet culture norms in the fitness space
• Why community is as important at Vivienne’s gym as movement
• How Vivienne finds employees who share her values
• The challenges of marketing a gym without shame-based approaches
• The ways privilege plays into gym membership and participation
• How ground-breaking it is to have a gym that isn’t focused on weight loss
• The sustainability of her business model beyond her initial 5-year investment
• Why her business isn’t a passion project or charitable endeavor, and the importance of making money
• What helped Vivienne confront her privilege and set out to begin using it to create meaningful change
• Vivienne’s abortion story
• The journey from struggle to privilege and how the former inspired how Vivienne uses the latter
• Her partner’s journey to feminism and supporting her vision

Resources mentioned:

• Podcast Abundance with Virginia Elder
• Jessamyn Stanley on Instagram
• “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie
• “Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
• AimWell Kids in Kansas City
• Debonie Lewis at Co-Op KC
• The Loveland Foundation from Rachel Cargle

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com

A full transcript of this interview is available at FeministFoundersPodcast.com

NOTE: Feminist Founders is a listener-funded podcast. To support the mission (and to receive bonus content from this episode), subscribe at https://feministfounders.substack.com/

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Jenn Harper (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of Cheekbone Beauty Cosmetics, Inc.. Cheekbone Beauty is a digital direct-to-consumer brand helping Indigenous youth see themselves in a beauty brand while using the concept of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) in the brand’s ethos and in developing products. Cheekbone Beauty’s mission is to help every Indigenous youth see and feel their enormous value in the world while creating sustainable cosmetics. Cheekbone Beauty is a B Corp Certified company committed to meeting and exceeding high standards of transparency, employee benefits, and charitable giving not only to staff but to supply chain practices.

During Cheekbone Beauty’s infancy, Jenn endured a heavy personal loss with the suicide of her brother B.J. This loss, though difficult, has remained a driving force behind the desire to see Cheekbone Beauty succeed with its mission, to empower Indigenous youth. In addition to Cheekbone’s mission, she strives to educate as many people as possible about the Residential School System, and the effects it has had on her family and friends through decades of generational trauma. She speaks regularly to university, college and high school students about social entrepreneurship, empathy and the history of her First Nations family.

Website | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube | TikTok

Discussed in this episode:

• How Jenn’s Indigenous roots inform her understanding and practice of feminism
• Jenn’s journey away from and back to her Indigenous family
• The power of representation for empowering others like you
• The role residential schools played in her family’s history and in inspiring her
• Why Jenn doesn’t believe in luck, and how sobriety helped her take a big chance on her business
• How being naive about the industry was a benefit, and helped Cheekbone Beauty end up in JC Penney and Sephora
• The moment that Jenn knew her work around representation was making a difference
• How Jenn is integrating her Indigenous roots and commitment to visibility for her people into Cheekbone Beauty
• The benefits of B Corp certification
• Starting the business with $500, 3 products, and a Shopify website
• Securing financing with a values-aligned funder to grow the company
• Starting where you are, and growing with an eye toward the values you want to exemplify
• What she’d change if she started her business over today
• How Cheekbone Beauty is part of her brother’s legacy
• The ways she honors her heritage in the names and ingredients of her products
• The story behind the name of Cheekbone Beauty

Resources mentioned:

• B Corp Certification
• Raven Indigenous Impact Fund
• How I Built This with Sarah Blakely
• “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey
• 1% For the Planet
• Cheekbone Beauty Scholarship Fund

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com

A full transcript of this interview is available at FeministFoundersPodcast.com

NOTE: Feminist Founders is a listener-funded podcast. Your contributions enable me to continue bringing you these important conversations. To support the mission, sign up for a paid Substack subscription at https://feministfounders.substack.com/

SUMMARY: In this episode, Bianca Jordan, founder of Rebel Immigration, shares her journey from disillusionment with feminism to entrepreneurship. She discusses the impact of the pink pussy hat movement, her unconventional path from an MBA and JD to homelessness, and John Adams' influence on her legal career. Bianca delves into the necessity and tenacity driving her ventures, challenges in the legal industry, and misconceptions about immigration. She highlights racism in the immigration process and offers insights on how business owners can support immigrants. Additionally, she introduces her resources and approach to leadership.

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Bianca Jordan (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Rebel Immigration, a legal education and consulting company that provides marketing and growth strategy to solo attorneys.

Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Threads

Discussed in this episode:

• How the pink pussy hat movement turned Bianca off to feminism
• Why an MBA and JD ended up unhoused
• John Adams’ role in making Bianca want to be an attorney
• Necessity and tenacity (plus a sprinkle of spite) as drivers for entrepreneurship
• How lawyers responded to Bianca’s virtual law firm pre- and post-COVID
• The role Bianca’s mom played in creating her second business, Rebel Immigration
• The many ways Bianca is challenging legal industry norms
• What made Bianca want to be like Elle Woods
• The many ways that Americans misunderstand immigration
• Racism in the US immigration process
• How business owners can help immigrants
• The low-cost resources available through Brazen Legal University
• Bianca’s newest offer, New Solo Blueprint
• How Bianca approaches leadership of her small team

Resources mentioned:

• “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho
• “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight
• Girl Scouts of the USA

Learn more about accountability coaching with host Becky Mollenkamp at https://beckymollenkamp.com