Tag Archive for: Intrepid Woman

Intrepid Woman: Adrienne Rubin, Author and Entrepreneur

Adrienne Rubin “Don’t think too hard about your next career step; try whatever is your fancy and give it a go. That’s how you will find success in both your personal and professional life,” says Adrienne Rubin.

In fact, the first page of her soon-to-be-released book Diamonds and Scoundrels: My Life in the Jewelry Business is a poem with the first line, “Somebody said that it couldn’t be done.” But it can, Rubin says. “Whatever you want to do, make it happen. You have it within you.”

From Teaching to Business Building

Rubin started as a French teacher in the ‘60s and ‘70s; even though she had thought about law school, most women in that era didn’t tackle that sort of career—instead, if women worked at all, it was mostly either teaching or stenography as the breadth of careers available.

After Rubin’s second child was born, she became a substitute teacher, but quickly found that they weren’t respected, unlike her attorney husband, which caused frustration. She turned her attention to volunteer work, but she soon learned that volunteer work also wasn’t for her. On vacation she was offered the opportunity to be an importer of silver jewelry, and she jumped at the chance finding that business offered both money and respect.

However, Rubin soon found that silver wasn’t the top seller she had expected….instead, gold was the trend, and women were even buying it for themselves. She pivoted to gold and soon added rubies, sapphires and other gems to her line. “I learned on the road, taking my merchandise to jewelry stores, where I would listen to their advice about what they needed from suppliers and manufacturers.” After more research, Rubin became a supplier for charms, charm holders and chains, and expanded her marketing by attending industry conferences where she connected to gift stores, which became a large part of her selling success.

“What drove me wasn’t a passion for jewelry itself, but for helping other people make money; I found that if I had the right product and could sell it to the retailer for the right price, they would prosper as well,” Rubin said.  For that reason she traveled extensively to find new products each and every season.

One of her biggest challenges was to avoid being taken advantage of as a businesswomen, and in hindsight, she realizes she wasn’t always strict enough in whom she sold to, which meant she often wasn’t paid. In fact, that’s the impetus behind the “scoundrels” reference in her book’s title. For example, one of her early clients was a gambler who took diamonds on loan and gambled them away. It required determination to get out of that situation—and others she encountered along the way—but she was able to do so with ingenuity.

Of course, trends change, and Rubin soon found herself working against a wide variety of factors. First of all, today’s younger generation isn’t as interested in jewelry, as they have turned to other priorities. “When it comes down to getting a new computer or a gold bracelet, they are apt to turn to the prospect of a new tech gadget,” she points out. In addition, gold prices have skyrocketed, necessitating a large amount of capital, and there is fierce competition from the internet. For this and other reasons, her attention now has turned to real estate, often refurbishing properties, which is her current way to stay in the business game.

Advice for Women, No Matter What the Business

“Be your own boss if you can,” Rubin recommends, and take equal care with those you hire and those you sell to. “It’s vital to vet both parties,” she says. “In any business you will run across unethical people, so you have to be business-minded to make sure they aren’t taking advantage of you or using poor judgement that could reflect on your own success.”

And to really go full steam ahead, don’t be afraid to make bold decisions, such as borrowing money as needed to get your business to the next level.

Finally, she recommends realizing that you need to find balance to be content. “Business can become a 24/7 proposition if you let it, particularly at the beginning when you want to be successful and get your career on the ground.” But that can lead to neglecting other parts of your life unless you pay attention and vow to keep things balanced. Rubin, for example, focused on making sure to have uninterrupted family time on an annual vacation to balance her other travel.

Today she is an active volunteer with Cedars Sinai Hospital and the Arthritis Foundation. In addition, she became an avid cyclist and for many years has participated in the “California Coast Classic,” biking from San Francisco to Los Angeles. While she initially wasn’t a bike rider per se, she equates acquiring the skill to learning many aspects of business. “You have to commit to learning in order to succeed.”

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Intrepid Woman: Stephanie Sandberg, Executive Director, Team LPAC

Stephanie SandbergStephanie Sandberg is a fan of bringing your whole self to the lunch table, or anywhere.

“There’s so much energy that is consumed by not saying the things you are thinking,” she says. So right up front when she was at a business lunch and someone would ask what her husband does, she would blurt out early that she was with a woman. “It helped ease the conversation and provided me a sense of wholeness,” she says, in urging young gay people to be open with their reality.

A Career in Media As the Foundation for Her Current Work

Sandberg spent the first 25 years of her career in magazine publishing, working on marketing for titles like the L.A. Times, Newsweek and the New Yorker before becoming president and publisher of the New Republic and, later, executive publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. Then she pivoted to consultant work.

After dabbling in a variety of projects, she realized she wanted to focus on one area and became interested in women’s leadership and the barriers to advancement women faced at the top echelons. Sandberg joined Out Leadership on a project basis, which aligned with her interests in diversity and inclusion.

But, she found, “inclusion” was often male-dominated.

“Lesbians are underrepresented, underleveraged and don’t have a voice at the table,” she says. “The gay world is very similar to the straight world in how gendered it is.”

So she helped the organization launch OutWOMEN, running discussion dinners to get people around the table.

“We realized that women don’t come together as intentionally around professional matters,” Sandberg notes, so they launched both formal and informal events. The satisfaction she derived from this work pointed her consulting in that direction, and she ended up at a holiday party for LPAC in 2018, where she learned they were looking for an executive director.

Leveraging the Voices of Gay Women

Today Sandberg heads LPAC as a political voice for the LGBTQ+ community. One of her first moves was officially shortening the name from “Lesbian Political Action Committee” to its acronym, as she found the name wasn’t embraced by everyone.

Then she began leveraging what she learned at OUTWomen about how women come together. Just as she had previously discovered that women prefer to socialize differently, she learned in her early days with LPAC that LGBTQ women’s political concerns are different, but rarely discussed as such. “Gay women don’t always have the same priorities as gay men,” she points out, adding that healthcare, choice and women’s equality are paramount to gay women. “We needed to carve out a place and build a voice for this subset from the LGBTQ community and address inequalities by championing candidates who support us.”

Right now her mission is to make sure the community knows about LPAC, particularly people who have the financial capacity to support the group. The biggest challenge, she finds, is building the group out to where potential donors not only know about it, but also choose it as a priority among so many worthy causes.

“If they understand that their investment is an investment in strengthening this community, and then convert that enthusiasm and awareness by including us in their giving, I will have done my job,” she says.

Sandberg believes that will come as they build empirical data about how they have amplified the effect for the candidates they endorse. To that end, they launched a nonprofit group Project LPAC and have a fundraising event—Levity and Justice for All –scheduled for June 25, the only official World Pride event specifically for women.

Sandberg has the benefit of knowing the work she does will benefit her personal life, too, including for her wife of 20 years and two daughters, ages 16 and 12, but she also knows the importance of making them the focal point of her life aside from work.

“While my work is important, a broader wholeness comes from have a balance; a lot of career people find themselves too deep in the work, and while it matters, it can’t at the expense of family,” she says. “You have to treasure being able to have family experiences at the end of the day; my main goal is to spend that time with my girls.”

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Intrepid Woman: Noha Waibsnaider, Founder & CEO, GatheringUs

Noha WaibsnaiderWhen one of Noha Waibsnaider’s loved ones passed away, she was overwhelmed by grief—which made the logistical hurdles of coordination and communication that much more challenging during an already difficult time.

She yearned for a simpler way to find support, conduct all the necessary tasks and purposefully commemorate a life. That was the catalyst for the website GatheringUs, a lasting online space that brings communities together after a death to support each other and celebrate the life of their loved ones.

As part of a large family, she has organized many memorials and funerals, and so knew firsthand the challenges of coordinating family and friends—trying to keep everyone in the loop while planning multiple events and logistics, and doing it all through the emotional roller coaster of mourning.“I was grateful for the outpouring of support from my community, and I realized many wanted to help, yet struggled to find ways to be supportive. I created GatheringUs to provide resources and a simpler way to mobilize everyone and commemorate loved ones,” Waibsnaider explains.

The need is so clear, she says, noting that after launching the site just three months ago, they have already had 30,000 visitors and memorials from all over the world, representing diverse groups of different ethnicities, religions and generations.

“Death scares people, and they don’t want to talk about it, and then you add in the preconceived notions about how funerals are supposed to be. Our goal is to empower people to celebrate and honor their loved ones in a meaningful and personal way that helps them process the loss.”

An Impressive Pedigree

This latest venture sprang from a personal, relatable need, but Waibsnaider already possessed the business acumen that has allowed her to build it so successfully. A serial social entrepreneur and brand builder, she holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and started her career in brand management at Unilever for consumer staples such as Ragu and Lipton. She parlayed that success into a new venture and founded Peeled Snacks, an organic food company, in 2004. She grew and ran the brand for 13 years—vaulting it into the upper echelon by raising $20 million in equity financing and bringing healthy fruit and vegetable snacks to millions of consumers nationwide.

“When I started my last company, I was in a rush to grow and sell within a very short time. I wish in retrospect that I had set my sights on a longer-term horizon,” she says, which would have made it easier to ride the highs and lows and put less pressure on immediate results. Nevertheless, even with that perspective, there’s no denying the impact she made on the business world with her ambition and ingenuity.

Along the way Waibsnaider has been honored with numerous awards, having been recognized as a White House Champion of Change; one of the “Women to Watch,” from Jewish Women International; named to the list of “50 Fastest-Growing Women-Led Companies” by the Women Presidents’ Organization; recognized as a Columbia Business School Distinguished Alumna; and received the Ecademy Award for Entrepreneurship, also from Columbia Business School.

She advises other would-be entrepreneurs to identify a cause or void that they are passionate about, which will allow you to sustain meaning and purpose over time. However, you also have to make sure it has a viable financial model because you can only keep doing it if you can support the business. In addition, she urges entrepreneurs to ask for help from their community. “They want to be there to support you and be part of your success story,” Waibsnaider says.

While she builds her new company, she is in a mode of continuous education and outreach. Notably, she is a 360° Council Member of Reimagine, a nonprofit that hosts a public conversation around death and life celebrations, including a week-long festival in various cities on the topic. The festival in New York in October included 350 events that ranged from presentations by end-of-life doulas and palliative care physicians to art, music, comedians and more, in an inspiring collaboration designed to help others in their stages of grief.

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