Intrepid Woman: Building the Future in Uganda

chrissiBy Chrissi McCarthy, Founder of Constructing Equality (Liverpool, UK)

In the summer of 2005 I was asked to go to Uganda with an English charity to help build a school in the small village of Keyo in the North of the country, just outside of Gulu. It was an area struggling to progress itself, having been caught up in the civil war that is still affecting the country and was badly in need of new educational facilities to help educate the next generation and provide a future.

Having spent four years in the UK construction industry working as a site engineer before taking a recent promotion into site management, I was asked to set out the two buildings before the rest of the team of English volunteers arrived to help with the general labouring.

In that first week there was only me, the two fundraising coordinators, and the English appointed site manager representing the charity, the rest of the workforce were local Ugandans working on the project at that time.

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Calling All Intrepid Women!

iStock_000010491842XSmallBy Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

The Glass Hammer is looking for more stories on Intrepid Women – professional women who have a flair for adventure, a love of the unknown, and the courage to step out of their comfort zone. Sound like you, or someone you know?

Previous Intrepid Women have included a lawyer / volunteer fire fighter, a marketing executive who scaled the Great Wall, and our former editor Pamela Weinsaft – who wrote about her expedition to Antarctica. We’ve also visited trapeze school, sky diving class, and even a Russian Bath House here in New York.

And now we want to know about your adventure.

How have you challenged yourself physically or emotionally lately? What was the outcome? What has your adventuresome, limit-pushing experience taught you about yourself, and how has it helped you professionally?

Are you an intrepid woman? Tell us why! Email me and tell me what you’d like to write about, and we’ll discuss the next steps.

Can’t wait to hear about your adventure!

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Next Generation Sustainability: WNSF’S Annual Summit

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Frances Hesselbein

Frances Hesselbein

By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

On Tuesday, the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future held its 7th annual summit, entitled “Sustainability, We Get it… Now What?”

Ann Goodman, Ph.D., Executive Director of WNSF, said, “By now the term sustainability has entered the vernacular. Now that everybody gets sustainability, how can we use it to drive [business].

Kathy Robb, Head of Environmental Practice at Hunton & Williams and a WNSF board member, explained explained that WNSF was founded around the belief that “women in business want to bolster sustainability efforts in their companies.”

She continued, “Caring about the environment allows companies to attract and retain women employees, customers, stockholders, and stakeholders – and create a better world for everyone.”

Dr. Goodman introduced the program’s keynote speaker, Frances Hesselbein as a personal “she-ro.” Hesselbein, Chair, Leader to Leader Institute; Chair, Study of Leadership, West Point Military Academy; former CEO, Girl Scouts of the USA is someone who has accomplished much, including being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the US’s highest civilian honor. Yet, in spite of her achievements, Goodman said, Hesselbein continues to be “generous, friendly, down to earth, straight forward, direct, [and] empathetic.”

Hesselbein opened her discussion on creating a sustainable society with a poem:

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.
– Anonymous

“Today is all about destiny,” she began.

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Intrepid Woman: Betty Ross, Financial Advisor, Sapient Financial Group

BettyRossBy Tina Vasquez (Los Angeles)

After speaking to Betty Ross, you realize the power that comes with being honest and straightforward and that sometimes, a frank approach is the best approach. So let’s begin: What are the chances that a young black girl growing up in the segregated South during some of the region’s most tumultuous times would persevere and make a grand life for herself after growing up in low-income housing to parents with eighth grade educations? Are her chances even further diminished when she becomes the woman of the house after her mother passed away when she’s just thirteen, baring her with the full brunt of domestic responsibilities for her father and four siblings? What are her chances when she becomes a teenage bride and mother for the first time at eighteen, and a divorced mother of two at twenty?

For Betty Ross, a seventy-year-old financial advisor currently with Sapient Financial Group, who grew up in an area where high school was the height of education, succeeding and going beyond what was expected of her was never a choice, but rather the only option – no matter how long it took.

In 1971, Ross left San Antonio, Texas – where she was born and raised and currently lives today – just seven years after the city had officially been integrated, though it was still experiencing a great deal of racial unrest. “I decided that being in Texas wasn’t good for me or my sons; it held too many painful memories and the city was slow to progress,” Ross said. “I wanted to provide my sons with a different outlook on life.” If you’ve encountered Ross – even for a moment – you’ll understand that her sons would have turned out just fine without the change of location because her strong spirit, fearlessness, and tenacity are enough to facilitate any change necessary.

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Thriving with Breast Cancer

Kim_Michel_Photo[1]By Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

“Thank god for hot flashes,” said Kim Michel, owner of Michel Financial Services firm in Los Angeles, “They very likely saved my life.”

Last year, just as Michel turned fifty, she began to be troubled by those telltale signs of menopause, and went to consult with a doctor about hormone replacement therapy. During that examination, the doctor felt something “very deep down” in her left breast. And although the annual mammogram and ultrasound she’d had just 30 days prior had disclosed nothing, the doctor wasn’t convinced, and sent her for an urgent MRI.

Just a couple of days later, the doctor called with the results. “He said, ‘You have four tumors on both sides.’ I was shocked, stunned,” said Michel.
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Intrepid Women: Sense of Safety in My Own Skin

selfdefense.jpg by Kelley Vollmer (New York City)

Since moving to Manhattan, self defense had been something I’d always meant to learn, but I kept finding excuses as to why I couldn’t take a class: it didn’t fit into my schedule; I didn’t know which course to take; or it was just too expensive. I told myself that since I lived in a safe neighborhood and made smart choices, I was fine. But, routinely, I’d find myself in situations – from men walking by me with catcalls to walking by myself late at night after work – in which I would feel vulnerable and fearful. It was at those times that I would remind myself that I needed to take a self defense class.

One night last summer upped the ante for me. I responded to an ad on Craigslist for free concert tickets. Of course, I now recognize how supremely naive I was but, at the time, my only thought was that the tickets were third row center for one of my favorite bands. The guy even claimed to not be looking for a date, saying he was too old. Even though he gave me “uh-oh” feeling the moment I met him and kept his fists clenched throughout the evening (in addition to having a curious bulge near his ankle and asking inappropriate questions about my sexuality), I stuck out the concert because I didn’t want to be rude. At the end, I thanked him for his generosity and left or, rather, attempted to leave.

When I said I was heading to Brooklyn, he said he had a car and could drive me as he was going that way. When I said, “No, thanks I’ll take the subway,” he responded with, “I’ll go with you.” I was feeling very uncomfortable so I sprinted into the chaos that is Times Square after all the Broadway shows let out.

Without looking back, I ran into the subway and down to the train platform right as an express train was pulling up. I jumped onto the train and sat down in the only available seat in a packed car. As I was about to sigh with relief, I felt a presence. I discreetly looked up and saw the old man from the concert – he had followed me onto the train and was now hiding behind someone so I would not see him.

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Intrepid Women: The White Continent (a/k/a Bonding with Penguins)

Antarctica_165.JPGby Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

When I told friends and family that I was planning to go to Antarctica (one of the”to do’s” on my “400 before 40” list), the overwhelming response was: “why would you want to do that?” My response was to wonder how someone could NOT want to go. The penguins, exquisite ice formations, penguins, raw natural landscapes…and did I mention the penguins?

“But it is so cold! And dangerous!” Well, not really. I mean, these are not the days of Shackelton. I knew from the start that it was pretty unlikely that I would get trapped on an Antarctic island with no shelter or provisions waiting for the captain to return to rescue us (like the crew of the Endurance). But, still, it is far from “civilization”; the jumping off point of Ushuaia, Argentina, is about 1200 km (approximately 746 miles) from Antarctica. And, right as I was preparing to head down to South America to catch my ship, a different cruise ship hit some ice and sank (although all the passengers were rescued without incident).

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Intrepid Women: Ice Dreams

ice hotel_1.JPGby Kate St. Vincent Vogl (New York City)

Walking pneumonia would not keep Christin Walth from attending her business meeting. She was Microsoft’s representative to the Bluetooth team, and she could and would pull her weight for that lineup of seven industry leaders now that she wasn’t contagious. The conference had started two days before, and she knew at the backend she’d have to go directly to Israel to outfit those border guards, but she wasn’t about to miss this first meeting—at the Ice Hotel.

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Intrepid Women: My Life on the Street, Part II

by Paige Churchman (New York City)

The next morning, Genro and Paco marveled that we hadn’t been chased out, and we set off for breakfast at the St. Francis Mission, more than 50 blocks north. Outside a church on some midtown street, we joined a long line, spreading ourselves out among the real homeless people as Genro and Paco had urged. The streets hadn’t really come alive yet, but a few people in suits scuffed by without seeing us. I wondered what breakfast would be. I pictured a big basement room with tables and bowls of oatmeal. But when the line finally started moving, I found the payoff was a table on the sidewalk where a monk silently handed me two ham and cheese sandwiches in clear wrap. I gave one to another woman who hesitated and then took it with a smile. I saved the other for someone else later. I wondered, if I really were homeless, would I have to eat meat so as not to starve?

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Intrepid Women: My Life on the Street, Part I

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parkbench.JPGby Paige Churchman (New York City)

Labor Day weekend approached, and all week I’d answered what-are-you-doing-this-weekend with “oh, sticking around.” True, but… For the next four days and three nights, I would be living like, and with, the homeless. I had signed up for a Street Retreat run by the Zen Peacemakers. The street that I would be living on was as much a state of mind as the street that peppered financial conversations, but the two were worlds apart.

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