International Women's Day 2021 - Fight. Inspire. Cooler

As a husband, a dad, and guy always trying to do right, I just wanted to wish every woman out there a very special International Women's Day 2021.

I'm not big on celebrating birthdays, but something about seeing women combat for equality, inspire our youth, and just making the world cooler for everyone, thank you. 

And, don't stop.

I don't know how to celebrate this day as it should always be celebrated. But I thought this would be a great opportunity to call out a few projects I work on where women are leading. Each of these projects is impacting people's minds, attitudes and I'm the first to admit, I learn a ton from them all.

PreparationTech - Inspire future generations

I met Deborah a while back during EUCodeWeek when we taught kids about websites and technology.

Today, Deborah Carter is a TedX speaker and founder of PrepareationTech, a non-profit registered in The Netherlands. She recognized that in the tech world, it was difficult for students of "diverse backgrounds" to find role models to learn from of similar backgrounds.

She started PreparationTech to build a network of role models of different genders, ethnicities and individual traits to ultimately inspire future generations and develop more inclusive workforce environments. I'm helping her initiative as acting as her platform CTO.

I designed and developed her current website and will help to build the next phrase of the business which will include a learning portal.

Reimaginary - Cultivating Cultures of Sustainability

I met Kelli Pearson through a mutual friend in the education space. Kelli and her Reimaginary team received a grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and wanted to build a space online where they could share various creative tools to support deep change towards just and ecological cultures.

Originally developed as a paper book, we took the materials to create a large online index of different tools that can be filtered in many varieties. Each tool is designed to spark mindset shifts for deep change towards sustainability.

‍Check out there creative methods and resource database and become inspired.

TheDirection Project - Student platform

I met Stephanie Corso at a conference we both spoke at. She spoke about design thinking and how people within communications can tackle tough problems and creating an inclusive learning center.

Stephanie is a visionary in the education space who is developing new approaches to teaching and being resourceful. Together, we developed TheDirection Project an online toolkit to teach students about research and identify "black holes of student learnings." In the toolkit, students indicate what they have/haven't completed with their research. The platform collects anonymous data to reveal if any topic areas appear troublesome and need to be addressed in the future curriculum.

With Stephanie, we setup research focus groups with students to learn about types of website designs they like and then I got the chance to develop a fun-feeling, kid-focused brand (logo) and platform. Super excited to see where this project goes next!

Curiosity Calls - Sales coaching

Vanessa Merit Nornberg is a repeat-listee on Inc Magazine's Inc 5000 as the founder of Metal Mafia, a wholesale jewelry company. With over 15 years of experience, she observed that many businesses struggle with sales because of having the wrong mindset. I could totally relate and so I attended one of her workshops and was blown away. She really helped me rid the negative thoughts and focus on being enthusiastic about how you can help. I love her mission and eventually we started to become friends. I was contracted to build out her new website where she offers sales coaching for individuals and teams. Here's the links to her sales consultancy called CuriosityCalls.

Cecilia Poullain - Coach

Cecilia Poullain was referred to me from a mutual friend. It's been amazing to see her transformation come to life from a corporate work with a side idea to a full-on entrepreneur.

Today Cecilia a life coach that aims to empower women through voice, confidence and sharing relatable stories. To complement her coaching services, she launched a podcast entitled Brave New Women - stories from women around the world doing amazing things.

One of the aims was listening to women that ordinary women could relate to and learn how they took the dive into something spectacular. Tune into hearing very inspiring stories that come from women around the world.

Laura Capinas - Psychotherapy

If holidays are about food, meeting interesting people is a close second. I met Laura when I was back home for the Christmas holidays. I came to learn that Laura is a licensed clinical social worker striving to provide the best mental and behavioral health treatment for children and adults.

Every day, she is helping people overcome some very difficult situations. While having an online presence isn't a great need to her due to the nature of her business and how it's most based on referrals, I was still able to put together a website for her.

And it's a great thing because now after getting some experience of having an online presence, she's dabbing at how to scale her services to people around the world.

Learn about International Women's Day

You can learn more by visiting International Women's Day website‍

Each year has a unique campaign theme. This year is 'Choose To Challenge'. A challenged world is an alert world. And from challenge comes change. So let's all #ChooseToChallenge. #IWD2021 #ChooseToChallenge

Ok, back to the grind, but again...wishing every woman out there a Happy International Women's Day ✊

And because this is my blog, and can do whatever I want, I just wanted to say Happy International Day to the ladies in my life: my mom, my wife Zheng, and daughter Mina! Love you always!

Wifey

My Blueberry

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