Intrepid Woman: Dayle Haddon, Founder, WomenOne

Dayle1004_7MA10576007-0025 - Version 2By Hadley Catalano

Dayle Haddon is working to change the world, one woman at a time. The former model, of the 1970s and ‘80s L’Oréal and Estée Lauder fame, began with her own sovereign growth. An act that has helped reshape the cosmetic industry standards, challenged society-based definitions of ageless beauty, and culminated in a redefined commitment to active gratitude.

Haddon’s intrepid story of personal development began in Canada, where the Québécoise began her career with the ballet. She began modeling during her teenage years to help pay for her dance lessons and was soon discovered by Eileen Ford. The young Haddon pursued her modeling career in New York – even though her 5’7’’ frame and curly brunette look were starkly dissimilar from the early 1970s tall-blond beauty standards.

“I was always looking for ways to support myself, and it took me a long time to be successful,” explained Haddon, who was recently honored by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York as an extraordinary leader and role model. “However, at the height of my career, I was working with top magazines, top photographers, and had four major cosmetic contracts.”

While Haddon’s career wove through a variety of high-profile professions, including small acting roles for French and American films, she eventually settled in Paris with her husband and their young daughter. Then, unexpectedly in 1986 Haddon’s husband died, leaving her with little money or support. She returned to Los Angeles desperate to find work to support her teenage daughter.

“This was a life-changing event; losing someone close to me was a painful experience,” Haddon recalled. “But it was transformative. Challenges make you more than you are. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you handle it.”

Redefining Beauty
Starting over, Haddon found herself at the bottom of the ladder. At the age of 38, she was considered “over the hill,” and not desirable to modeling agencies or her former cosmetic employers. After having worked as a top model, only to be rejected by her profession, forced Haddon into a desk job as an office receptionist – an unexpected but didactic situation.

“It was good for me to recognize at the time that this was a humbling experience. I knew I wouldn’t stay there. If you give me an opportunity, I will work it. Challenges are there to build character and to grow.”

Haddon’s passion for women’s advocacy began as she struggled to climb the “glass walls” back into the beauty and fashion industry. She longed to break down the stereotypical age-image barriers and change the perception of “older woman” from inside the industry. She formulated a campaign and pitched major cosmetic labels the image of evolving, age-defying beauty. After many rejections Haddon landed a job as the face of Estée Lauder’s new anti-aging line and later became the spokeswoman for L’Oréal’s Age-Perfect skin care. The career move, the New York Times later quoted, “shattered age taboos,” and helped to launch the careers of models over 40.

“We were on the forefront of something different, and (at the time) most beauty companies hadn’t caught up yet,” Haddon explained of the early 1990’s beauty-from-within movement. “I researched in libraries and found information that explained that the 43 million female Baby Boomers felt they were more vital than generations before. So I started my own company, Dayle Haddon Concepts.”

For the next 20 years Haddon continued her work in the beauty industry, bringing progressive change to the industry and promoting awareness of the inner and outer beauty of all women. Through her personal company, her contributions to CBS’s The Early Show, the Huffington Post and many other publications, and with her two books, “Ageless Beauty” and “The 5 Principles of Ageless Living,” she has provided women an outlet to explore a balance between their health, beauty, and overall well-being.

A Model Activist
However, central to Haddon’s upbringing was the reinforced message to “give back,” and with her high visibility providing a public forum to elicit change, Haddon seized the opportunity to express her gratitude by pursuing a social justice agenda. She became a UNICEF Ambassador in 2008 and traveled to Darfur to interview women in the camps, visited earthquake-ravaged Haiti to vaccinate newborns, and brought home stories from Angola about the lack of medical equipment in rural clinics. She shared this information in lectures, wrote articles for publications, and helped to raise money for children’s issues worldwide.

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Intrepid Women: Reshma Saujani, CEO and Founder, Girls Who Code

imageBy Jarod Cerf

When Reshma Saujani was introduced at an event recently, the CEO and Founder of Girls Who Code, former Deputy Public Advocate of New York City, and 2010 candidate for U.S. Congress, was given the mantle of a “poster child for persistence.”

Saujani, however, credits that diligence and desire to serve the public to the courage of her parents, who departed from Idi Amin’s reign in Uganda, and to the insistence of the politicians who advocated for the refugees’ asylum. “I always wanted to be a lawyer,” she reflected. “Even when I was ten, I had that as a goal on our fridge door: that I would go to Yale Law School, and only Yale Law.”

“I think, toward the end, that my family began to wonder if I was too dedicated to that dream. But I spoke to the dean directly—after two prior rejections and taking the train and walking straight up to his office—and he said, ‘if you go elsewhere for a year and make the top 10% of your class, you can come here’.”

Seeing the Need for Change
During her 2010 campaign, though, Saujani became starkly aware of the disparities between the various public schools and the degree to which the students received skill-based training. “It was over a couple days of meetings,” Saujani remarked, “that I saw how little the girls in our schools were engaged with technology as a means of building toward their future careers.”

“And I knew then,” she continued, “that Girls Who Code would have to exist; that we needed to give these young women and potential industry leaders the right access to the right people, to the role models and thought leaders who were contributing to the rise of New York as the next Silicon Valley.”

While the tech industry and supporting regions themselves have flourished, the number of women who receive a Bachelor’s degree in computer science has declined from 29.6% in 1991 to 18.2% as of 2013 (master’s degrees, by contrast, have remained fairly static, with doctorates showing a 7.9% increase over the same period).

One of the most immediate causes, according to Saujani, is the absence of sufficiently positive role models and detailed career paths, as well a lack of industry focus on the issues that women want to address. “We need film and television companies like Disney,” she explained, “to think about the images they put on the screen; we need technology companies to be educators and advocates, to encourage the application of computer science skills in the classroom.”

“This is the literacy of the future,” Saujani affirmed, “and the ability to create something using science, to engineer solutions, to innovate ideas through new and emerging technologies, is what keeps you in the workforce and relevant.”

Making Your Vision a Reality
Though Saujani admitted that the initial summer immersion class in 2012 was “a bit bootstrapped,” with friends and business contacts providing workrooms, computers, and fresh lunches for the twenty young women who attended, she noticed a marked increase in both their technical skills and the confidence they expressed midway through the program.

By August 2012, when Saujani was invited to speak at the United Nation’s 11th Youth Assembly, the newly minted alumni were receiving requests from local and community leaders to build websites, applications, and databases for their businesses.

The most important quality Saujani demonstrates to her students and her team is the willingness to embrace uncertainty, risk, and rejection and to understand the lessons they can teach. “Sure, I lost my Public Advocate race with only 82,000 votes,” she said. “But those were still 82,000 people I’d never met before the campaign, who believed enough in me to say I should be the first South Asian woman elected in the entire city or state of New York, and that I should represent what they need.”

“Too often,” Saujani continued, “women tend to think that they have to ‘do’ the job before they can get it. The good news is, when you teach these girls how to design an app to confront obesity, poverty or the bullying that they witness at school, they’ll invite three or four of their friends to learn along with them and work together with other girls—sometimes from incredibly diverse backgrounds—to create solutions for the world they want.”

Speaking proudly, she stated: “We started in 2012 and we’ll train 3,000 girls this year, and I’m confident that by 2020, we’ll reach a million.”

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Intrepid Woman: Dara Richardson-Heron, M.D., CEO of the YWCA USA

rsz_1dara_richardson_heron_ywcaBy Michelle Hendelman

When Dara Richardson-Heron was a young girl, her parents dispelled an important piece of advice. They advised, “Don’t ever be limited by your race or gender.”

“They told me I could succeed at anything I wanted to do in life,” said Richardson-Heron, who added that her parents are her role models because they taught her how to lead with integrity and ethics and to never compromise her standards.

Now, as CEO of the YWCA USA, Richardson-Heron embodies the principles she learned as a young girl through the organization’s mission to empower women by providing them with the tools and resources necessary to make a positive impact in their families and communities.

Challenges Women Face
According to Richardson-Heron, there are three primary factors holding women back from reaching their full potential: gender inequality, racial injustice, and the lack of economic empowerment. “I wish things were different,” she said, “but it is clear that racism still exists and that women do not have equal opportunities.”

She emphasized the importance of evening the playing field for women in business, politics, and the economy by addressing the institutional inequalities and positioning more women to succeed in the highest levels of leadership.

“Many women are alone at the top,” Richardson-Heron remarked, “and we need more resources and support in place to take the demands off of these women so they can focus on being great role models, performing at a high level, and righting the stereotypes that exist against women.”

Change in Action
The YWCA has 227 associations nationwide and each one offers distinct programming to meet the needs of the women in the local community. For adults, the YWCA provides job training, career counseling, education, and even refuge. Children have access to afterschool educational programs including a focus on STEM education which begins as early as preschool.

“When you educate a woman, you educate her entire family,” explained Richardson-Heron. “The core purpose of our programs is to provide self-esteem and confidence in addition to knowledge and skills training.”

One of the most rewarding aspects of leading the YWCA, according to Richardson-Heron, is being able to see the transformation from sadness to optimism in women who have benefited from the organization’s life-changing services. “I visit the facilities –many of which have shelters for women in transition –and it is so humbling to meet women who came to the YWCA with nothing more than the clothes on their back and are in the process of turning their life around.”

Fighting the Good Fight: Advice for Her Peers
“Never give up,” advised Richardson-Heron. “It is not easy being a change agent, but the end result is worth it. You have to be resilient and prove yourself every day.” This is the advice Richardson-Heron gives to female leaders who are leading the way in the fight to balance the scales for women.

As a physician, Richardson-Heron also stresses the importance of focusing on personal health by taking time to relax and recharge. “Saying ‘yes’ to everything will leave you exhausted and ineffective,” she said. “When you take time off and allow your mind and body to take a break, you can come back rejuvenated and renewed.”

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Intrepid Woman: Loreen Arbus, Film Producer and Executive, Chair of Women Who Care Luncheon.

rsz_1rsz_loreenarbusBy CEO and Founder Nicki Gilmour

Loreen Arbus is a woman of many worlds and has certainly lived a life less ordinary.

She is already known by many as a change leader, a thinker and a doer, a career woman, a supporter of the arts, a member of numerous boards, an ally for people with disabilities and a major philanthropist in the US. When I recently spoke with her, I was delighted to experience firsthand her relentless bravery to tackle the hard topics with grace, which makes her completely deserving of the “Intrepid Woman’ mantle bestowed upon her.

How does she manage to be in so many worlds at once?

“I grew up as an outsider. It can be the best and worst thing to be not included since it can make you a better person, or do great damage to the individual,” Loreen said. She continued, “I feel lucky that it has made me a better person as I can identify with other people’s experiences as outsiders and help them to navigate their way to success.”

Perhaps her background of growing up as a once marginalized child has allowed her to defy labels or categories. It may have also given her the impetus to continue learning via new experiences, which span cultural aspects as well as humanistic endeavors, such as Co-Chairing the upcoming 13th Annual Women Who Care Luncheon to benefit United Cerebral Palsy of New York City Women who Care Luncheon at Cipriani’s in NYC on Wednesday May, 7th.

Loreen founded The Women Who Care Luncheon as an ode to unsung heroines like her sister’s caretaker Miss Karen Hansen. Loreen recounted to me that her interactions with Miss Hansen were life enhancing, and she accredits Miss Hansen with teaching her unconditional love due to the way that she cared for her older sister who had severe disabilities. The Karen Hansen Caregiver Award is a major part of the luncheon. It was Loreen’s parents Leonard H. and Isabelle Goldenson who co-founded the nation-wide organization of United Cerebral Palsy in 1949. UCP has a number of programs to help children with disabilities, including a favorite program of Loreen’s –an advocacy program that empowers adults and young people with skills to go to Albany and advocate directly for themselves with state representatives.

“I most often support causes in a specific way. I like to meet the people that I am helping, it replenishes my soul to experience the change that is taking place,” explained Loreen.

She encourages others to tour UCP and see how eager the children are to learn, play sports and word games. Loreen believes that connection to the mission of any charity can come alive; the closer one can get to connecting with the people driving it. Loreen also currently is the Executive Producer of the award winning documentary, “A Whole Lott More”, a film that aims to bring more awareness to employment issues for people with disabilities

On Being a Change Leader
Loreen’s trailblazing career in television meant that she pioneered where no woman had gone before as she was the first woman in to head up programming at a major U.S. television network, a feat she accomplished twice. Another noteworthy achievement to mention is that she spearheaded the inclusion of cable to be recognized within the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences EMMYs award system whilst she was at the Showtime television network. She understands the power of asking and ‘darn hard work,’ and mentions that she wishes women would be less apologetic around owning their hard work.

Loreen commented, “The greatest gift that I was given is that I can look at all sides of an issue. It is very exciting to be part of my mission that can lead to changes being made.”

Certainly, her unwavering dedication to helping others, and her ability to create space for other perspectives to come alive and become working ideas, is a striking feature about her.

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Intrepid Woman: Nell Merlino, Founder and President, Count Me In

nell_merlino_headshotBy Michelle Hendelman

When Nell Merlino created Take Our Daughters to Work Day, it was a natural extension of the work she always envisioned herself doing – that is creating opportunities for women to advance themselves and showing them the pathways available to achieve their goals. “For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in the role women play in the economy and helping women understand their own economic impact,” said Merlino.

According to Merlino, both of her parents always emphasized the importance of being self-sufficient and acting as a change agent within the community. Now, Merlino, the Founder of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence –the leading non-profit provider of resources for female entrepreneurs who want to grow their business into a million dollar enterprise –is accomplishing both of those things very well.

“The structure of Count Me In gives aspiring female business owners the opportunity to focus on the growth of their business by giving them a robust peer-to-peer community of other ambitious women to work through the challenges with,” said Merlino. “I am so proud of creating a group where women can learn from each other,” she added.

According to Merlino, a central tenet of each Count Me In program is teaching women how to pitch their business succinctly and persuasively. “We challenge women to condense their business idea into a two minute pitch, which forces them to drill down to the essence of who they are and what they have to offer,” she said.

On Having a Rewarding Career
Merlino stressed how important it is to understand the value of coupling your passion in life with the prospect of making money. “Many people think that in order to enjoy the freedom of entrepreneurship, you have to let go of the idea that you will make a lot of money,” said Merlino. She continued, “You can find something that you love to do, or that you are really good at doing, and figure out a way to make a great living out of it.”

This is one reason why Merlino believes it is important for young women and girls to see professional women being successful. She noted, “Young women need to be able to see themselves in that role and be shown the pathways to get there.” By exposing young business women to conferences, meetings, or networking events where they can visualize what their own future can look like, they will begin to believe in the possibilities and opportunities available to them in their own career path.

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Intrepid Woman: Lois Braverman, President & CEO, Ackerman Institute for the Family

lois_bravermanBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

Lois Braverman, President & CEO of the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City, lived and worked for thirty-two years in Iowa before joining the Ackerman Institute in her current role seven years ago. “The Ackerman Institute is one of the premier family therapy training institutes in the world. Some of the most innovative ideas and strategies for helping families and members of families get better,” said Braverman.

Being asked to lead the Ackerman Institute would be an honor for anyone in Braverman’s field, but the fact that throughout her career she has always regarded the Ackerman Institute as thought leaders in family therapy certainly seems to have foreshadowed Braverman’s appointment as the leader of the institute.

She was excited to come to the Ackerman Institute and become a part of the approach to family therapy that involves approaching issues both contextually and systemically, according to Braverman. “My whole team is thinking about best practices all the time.” added Braverman, “We are like a think tank and we are always pushing the envelope to find the best treatment interventions for each family.”

Exploring the Role of Women in Relationships

“From very early on in my career I was very interested in the intersection and interworking between feminism and psychotherapy,” explained Braverman. To this end, she was the founding editor of the Journal of Feminist Family Therapy where she published some of the earliest collections of writings on women, feminism and family therapy.

Braverman added, “I bring a very long history of interest in this field to be able to ask the question: how does a woman’s role in the workplace affect their physical health, mental health, and the health of the relationships they have with their family members?”

One of the biggest questions that Braverman strives to answer through her work is: What does it take to have a truly egalitarian relationship? She noted, “While most of the early work on this topic is focused on heterosexual relationships, I also approach this question from the perspective of a same sex couple as well.” She focuses a lot on the dynamics of power and privilege within relationships, especially with regard to ideas about gender roles and stereotypes.

“Although some things have changed, women are still the primary caretakers of their children, they use mental health services more than men, and they feel more burdened when something is going wrong with their kids,” Braverman noted.

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Intrepid Woman: Yesi Morillo-Gual, Founder and President, Proud To Be Latina

rsz_morilloThe Glass Hammer is celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by featuring profiles of Hispanic Women Business Leaders all week long!

By Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

As a successful senior level Latina at one of the largest global financial services firms, Yesi Morillo-Gual recognized that she was one of few Latinas to hold a Director position. This was one of her primary motivations for starting her Latina networking organization, Proud to Be Latina, three years ago.

“I have been in Corporate America for twenty-one years,” said Morillo-Gual, “starting at the administrative level and working my way up to where I am now.” She continued, “I started Proud To Be Latina because of some of the challenges I faced in my own career. These included things like not knowing how to navigate the landscape, not knowing about the unwritten rules, not having a lot of support, and also not really believing that I belonged because the majority of my colleagues did not look like me.”

As a result, Morillo-Gual found herself creating individual barriers that she admits, in hindsight, probably did not exist. She explained, “I saw other women around me doing this same thing, and that is not to say barriers did not exist, but we were creating more barriers for ourselves. This motivated me to create a platform of empowerment for Latinas to learn from one another, empower, and encourage each other to reach their full potential.”

One of the most important ways Morillo-Gual carries out the mission of Proud To Be Latina is to be a role model and mentor for other professional Latinas who also feel like they are the only Latina in the room at times. The organization also has several programs [PDF] designed to bring professional Latinas together to network and share experiences.

Networking Opportunities for Latina Professionals

Morillo-Gual said, “One of these programs is the EmPower Hour, which is a conference call held on the first Monday of every month. We bring in experts in a field or topic and individuals on the call can ask important questions and discuss relevant issues.” Morillo-Gual mentioned topics discussed in previous EmPower Hours include how to build wealth, learning how to say ‘no,’ and how heritage can be a source of strength for advancement.

“Some Latinas think they have to leave their heritage behind to succeed in corporate America, which is not true at all,” explained Morillo-Gual.

Another program Proud To Be Latina hosts is EmPowered Latinas Connect, a networking event held three to four times a year. At their most recent event, which took place last Friday, they addressed the issue of the unconscious bias Latinas have created against each other and how to overcome this. “We had a really honest conversation about what our responsibilities are to other Latinas,” said Morillo-Gual. These events offer a safe space for professional Latinas to express themselves on these important issues impacting their career advancement.

Finally, Proud To Be Latina hosts an annual Latina EmPowerment Conference to help women bridge the gap being Latina, being American, and never compromising their identity to succeed in their careers, according to Morillo-Gual.

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Intrepid Woman: Robin Morgan, Co-Founder Women’s Media Center and Host of “Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan” Radio Show

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robin_morganBy Michelle Hendelman, Editor-in-Chief

“Despite all of the myths of women’s competitiveness, we know how to stick together,” said Robin Morgan. To Morgan, this is one of the things that make women so special. “Solidarity is not just an abstraction to women,” she continued, “it’s a practical reality, day in and day out.” It is this unique element, according to Morgan, that keeps the women’s movement going strong in the 21st century.

Morgan stated, “I am extremely proud of the fact that I have had the opportunity to be a political activist in what is the most important social and political movement on the planet, at this point in history.”

Forging Her Own Path in Activism

Morgan explained, “I had been active in the antiwar movement and in the Civil Rights movement during the sixties and seventies, and like many young women I assumed we were all fighting for equality for everyone. I thought we were going to march with our brothers, arm-in-arm, toward this great revolutionary transformation– only to find that it didn’t include women.”

She continued, “Women were expected to make coffee, not policy. It was a complete mirror image of the patriarchy we were supposed to be fighting.” This realization was a radicalizing experience for Morgan, and influenced her involvement in founding the first feminist caucus in the Civil Rights organization SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), together with now-Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Morgan and women in other feminist caucuses of New Left groups faced staunch opposition from men, who pelted them with tomatoes, eggs, and even rocks when they tried to speak in meetings. This backlash was a major catalyst for Morgan’s decision to distance herself from what she came to refer to as the “male left.”

Another key moment for Morgan occurred in 1968, when the Democratic National Convention was being held in Chicago, and was expected to draw (and did) a significant amount of protest activity from radical groups. Instead of joining these protests, Morgan had already decided to organize what would become a historical protest at the annual Miss America Pageant. Here, during this nationally televised event, Morgan and other members of New York Radical Women brought attention to the Women’s Movement by outwardly protesting against symbols of female oppression.

In her final public display of separation from the male left, Morgan published a piece in an underground newspaper, entitled, “Goodbye to All That,” in which she named popular male leaders of the left and called them out for their degradation of women being no different than men of the odious right. “Being a writer, first and foremost, the pen was my most powerful tool. Depending on how you look at it, this piece became very famous–or infamous,” said Morgan.

“That shut the door,” she recalled. From here, Morgan went on to publish Sisterhood Is Powerful, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed books of the 20th century. Many people credit this collection of women’s essays with starting contemporary American feminism.

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Transgender Professional Women: Authenticity and Transitioning in the Workplace

MichellleFigueiredoBy Hadley Catalano (Boston)

After a successful managerial climb at State Street, a large global financial services company in Boston, Michelle Figueiredo made the most difficult decision of her professional career. She had her first conversation with the company’s human resources department about her true identity.

“I spoke for three hours with the woman in HR,” Figueiredo, who was professionally known as Michael before she transitioned, recalled. “She said to me, ‘we have never had this happen before, we’ll work with you. We support you 100 percent.”

A similar conversation occurred a year later at the Boston office of the large multi-national law firm Edwards Wildman where Sara Schnorr had been a lawyer for 30 plus years (Edwards Wildman is the successor to Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge). Schnorr, who was named partner at the Boston office in 1987, had made the decision in 2009, at the age of 61, to professionally acknowledge her true identity. The law firm’s senior management, having known Sara as Tom – her given birth name – as an invaluable partner, told her, “of course we’ll support you.”

These two stories of male-to-female transition (MTF) are becoming more frequent in working environments throughout the state of Massachusetts, where the state legislature and local businesses are widening their anti-discrimination clauses. A 2011 law called An Act Relative to Gender Identity prohibits discrimination in several key areas and defines gender identity as “a person’s gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person’s physiology or assigned sex at birth.”

Even before the Massachusetts legislature enacted the law and the Governor signed it effective as of July 2012, employers across the state, both locally and those with global partners, were breaking barriers through the implementation of diversity policies, including the freedom for employees to self-identify. It’s a trend that, while not federally mandated, has been included in anti-discrimination polices for many private businesses across the country.

According to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2013 Corporate Equality Index (CEI) this year has seen 54 new businesses adjust their corporate policies as they relate to LGBT employees, 42 percent of the CEI-rated employers have distinct global codes of conduct or employment standards that are inclusive of both sexual orientation and gender identity, and of those same rated employers 83 percent have a LGBT Employee Resources Group or Diversity Council (as compared to 40 Percent in 2002).

State Street, where roughly 28,000 employees are spread out over 100 geographic markets worldwide, has a similar distinct global code and Figueiredo became the company’s first transgender women to transition MTF on the job. Her journey began by first explaining her true identity to family and friends. With the encouragement of her closest supporters she inquired with her company’s human resources department and was surprised and delighted to hear about their progressive diversity policy and support of her decision.

“I wanted to tell my co-workers personally,” Figueiredo explained, noting that the pivotal point in her determination to live her life as her true self was based on a promotion to a new managerial position. “I was nervous, but I wanted them to know that I was confident and proud of who I was.”

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Intrepid Woman: Ambassador Gianna Angelopoulos on the Journey to Leadership

GIANNAANGELOPOULOSBy Ambassador Gianna Angelopoulos, Vice-Chairman of the Dean’s Council of the Harvard Kennedy School

In May 2000, I received a call asking me to take over the Athens Olympic Games Organizing Committee. Three years earlier, I had led and won Athens’ successful bid for the 2004 Olympics. Now I was being asked to rescue an operation so far off its tracks that the president of the International Olympic Committee suggested publicly that the Olympics might be taken away from Greece.

Host cities are given seven years to prepare for the Olympics. We now had four. I had to build and lead an organization the size of a Fortune 200 company. The entire world waited, watching to see whether I would fail or succeed in this Herculean challenge.

I had always wanted to serve my country. As a child, I dreamed of being an ambassador, because it seemed to me that ambassadors had mysterious, glamorous jobs that impacted the fates of nations. When I confessed my dream, I was reminded that I had no family connections, no diplomatic lineage, and, besides, there were no women ambassadors at that time.

When I was born, Greek women were still two years away from winning the right to vote. Growing up on the island of Crete, I had two strikes against me: I came from very modest means, and I was a woman in a male-dominated culture. Fortunately for me, I had a father who was very progressive. When other men would ask him if he was disappointed to have two daughters, he would say: “I don’t need a son, I have Gianna.” He convinced me that I could do anything a man could do.

But to compete on an equal playing field with men required breaking glass ceilings, being bold, and being persistent. At almost every stage of my life, this is what I had to do – and did.

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