Women on the Move Podcast

Creating a safe space for conversations around mental health, with influencer and advocate Victoria Garrick Browne

When Victoria Garrick Browne began experiencing anxiety and depression as a Division 1 college volleyball player, she recorded a TED talk about her experiences. The recording instantly went viral, leading her to become a social media influencer, mental health advocate and podcast host. Here she sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to talk about her journey.

The decision to speak up

It was during her sophomore year at USC that Victoria began struggling with the demands of being a high-level competitive athlete. “I was really struggling with my own mental health and just the intensity of the stressful environment that I was in competing at that level,” she tells Sam. “In going through that performance anxiety and a depressive episode, I kind of realized that if I'm feeling so alone, there's probably other athletes who are feeling alone.”

She also realized that she wasn’t hearing anyone else talk about the issue. Her solution was to talk honestly about it in a TED talk. “I just did not want someone else to kind of suffer in silence the way that I did,” she recalls. “So I gave that TED talk purely to come up on Google search and comfort someone else. It spiraled and it went viral in the athletic community.”

Hurdles and the strategies that helped

That TED talk catapulted Victoria to popularity, especially among athletes and coaches who started following her online and reaching out. In those early days, she says, her goal was for people to genuinely be able to validate themselves and know that it's okay to not be perfect or to experience failure or struggle. “I've literally never met a student athlete who said they got through four years of college athletics, no matter the division, no matter the sport, and said it was a breeze,” she says. “Everyone can relate to the struggle.”

Victoria discusses the challenges that she typically sees people face when confronting mental health issues. One of the biggest ones, she says, is not understanding the change in mental health as it happens. “These things happen gradually,” she says. “You don't wake up one day in the midst of your depression, you slowly drop down to that place.” A second hurdle, she says, is the stigma around being worthy of getting help.

As far as strategies and approaches that worked for her, Victoria says one of the main ones is therapy. “It's powerful to have an expert hear what you are going through and then kind of offer their advice and guidance.” If connecting with a therapist isn’t an option, she says talking to a trusted friend or journaling can also help people handle their complicated emotions.

Meditation is another strategy that Victoria says she finds helpful—and this doesn’t have to be as scary as it might sound, she adds. “It can be as simple as 10 minutes without your phone in the morning sitting with yourself, maybe you're thinking a lot, listen to your thoughts and then you'll recognize, oh my gosh, my thoughts always take me to work,” she explains. “My thoughts always take me to the situation. I'm gonna try to bring 'em back here. That 10 minutes to slow down your entire day and just be with yourself. I think that that's powerful and I do that in the mornings.”

The Hidden Opponent

Soon after her TED talk went viral, Victoria created the Hidden Opponent, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on creating a platform and a community for athletes to discuss topics like mental health. “We highlight student athletes and their stories,” she tells Sam. “We give them a voice. We're always publishing and posting articles that the athletes have written about what they've been through. I remember feeling like, Where do you talk about this? Where do you say it? How's it gonna be received? And so we've created that safe space where athletes who do want to be vocal can be, [and] we educate the members of our community.”

As far as ambition in her own life, Victoria says she’s trying to manage it in a good way—in a relentless pursuit of helping herself rather than being perfect. “I definitely consider myself ambitious, consider myself a go-getter,” she says. “However, I do think that that ambition has become a default state of who I am and the default state being constantly better, constantly improved, constantly do more. And of course it serves you well when you can become successful and you can build something, and that's great. However, it doesn't allow you to ever turn off, reap the benefits or take a break or pause. And it's funny because my whole message started as it's okay not to be okay, take a break.”

 

Full transcript here 

Mentor Moment: How companies are tackling personal wellness post-pandemic

Are you seeing a difference in the types of benefits that companies are providing since the pandemic? And if so, what are employees taking advantage of these days?

 

Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, is joined by Lilly Wyttenbach, the Head of Global Wellness at JPMorgan Chase, to discuss workplace wellness and how companies recognize a greater need to support their employees.

 

Full transcript here 

On a mission to end period poverty, with Unicorn co-founders and co-CEOS

Denielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan are on a mission to make high quality period products available in restroom stalls across America. In this episode, they sit down with host Sam Saperstein to talk about the company they co-founded, Unicorn.

The Triple Co

Denielle and Thyme call themselves the Triple Co to reflect their stats as cousins, co-founders, and co-CEOs. They both had successful careers in corporate America—Denielle spent 20-plus years in fashion with Ann Taylor, Coach, and Kate Spade, and Thyme worked with beverage and food giants Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Nestle for 27 years. But as Denielle explains, “I'd gotten to that amazing C-suite job, that job I'd always dreamed of—and I was completely unfulfilled. I was working in a toxic environment. I had sort of lost that love of learning and the passion and really where that purpose was.”

She made the decision to walk away from her corporate career, and before long she reached out to her cousin Thyme who was similarly feeling unsatisfied and ready for a transition. Thyme says her background as a “grocery geek” provided inspiration for the idea of producing high-quality, organic tampons and other period products. “Going up and down the aisles for years on end, I just saw as everything was changing to organic and to sustainable and non-GMO and gluten-free and transparency became so important,” she tells Sam. “Yet when you got to what is called the feminine care aisle, and saw the period products, it looked like you were shopping back in the seventies. There'd been little innovation, and nobody was talking about it.”

Once they started researching and learning facts—such as the stat that in the U.S., one in four girls has missed school or work because she didn't have access to period products—they were even more motivated to start a business in the category that “nobody else wanted to talk about.” It didn’t hurt, Denielle says, that they’re perfect complements for each other: “Thyme came with an amazing, amazing pedigree with sales and operations and supply chain, and that complemented mine and where I came from as this brand-building and this marketing background.”

The challengers become disruptors

While providing quality, organic period products was the motivator, it wasn’t long before Thyme and Denielle zeroed in on a mission to address period poverty. Thyme says that their mission was always to advance women in society, and they didn’t initially see themselves as disruptors. “A disruptor by definition is more like an Uber, your Netflix, your Airbnb, it's something that's never been done before,” she says. “When we started this company, we were much more of a challenger brand. We were challenging the category, challenging the transparency and the efficacy and better getting access to better products for women. But we've actually evolved into a disruptor and we're incredibly proud of that.”

Specifically, they wanted to disrupt the outdated period product machines in public restrooms. “A lot of places don't [offer period products] because the big metal machines are very expensive, they're difficult to install, they're difficult to service from the staff, they don't hold very much product,” she explains. “They certainly don't hold quality products. Nobody has coins, and often they're broken and empty. And we were thinking long and hard about that's a real problem, and the solution goes even deeper.”

They spent a year and a half developing a low-cost, low profile dispenser that goes in the stalls, right next to the toilet paper. Then came the fun of fundraising—or as Denielle says, the non-fun. (“We have a phrase that there's no fun in fundraising, and it is real.”) The two had what they call a summer of un-love during which they spoke to about a hundred VCs without success. Then they found Barbara Clark, who they say changed their trajectory overnight. She not only believed in their mission and offered funding, she provided expert advice in terms of how they should shift their pitches to other VCs.

Another huge break came last summer when JPMorgan Chase became [one] the first big organization to adopt their dispensers. It started when they found CEO Jamie Dimon’s ear during his annual summer bus tour. “So everybody's asking about Bitcoin and world economics, and we're like, we know you got daughters, we want to talk about period products,” Thyme says. “And he listened. We had a good enough elevator pitch and he understood as a father of daughters and granddaughters.”

 

Full transcript here 

Mentor Moment: Knowing when to start investing

Investing feels complicated and there's a lot of uncertainty around how to start and what to do. How do you know when it's the right time and the right amount to start investing?

 

Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, is joined by the head of Women and Investing at JPMorgan Wealth Management, Iliana Taormina. During the episode, Iliana gives tips on how to get into investing and how in 30 years, the average woman could end up with a portfolio worth 25% more than the average man.

 

During the chat, Iliana also mused on how she wished she understood the benefits of investing earlier and consistently. “ A 25-year-old college graduate invests a hundred dollars a month in a tax-deferred account and earns 12% annual return when that person retires at age 65, their investment can be worth just over a million dollars. If that same person were to start investing a hundred dollars per month at age 35, instead, they could only have around 300,000 by the time they reach 65, those 10 years could cost them $700,000.

 

Full transcript here 

A conscious culture of wellness and empowerment, with Cisco’s Chief People Officer

From the World Economic Forum in Davos, Francine Katsoudas, Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer at Cisco, joins Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to talk about her journey at Cisco, the idea of empowering managers in a hybrid workplace, and why Cisco includes mental health professionals in company meetings to support a culture of wellness.

Francine started working in Cisco’s contact center more than 25 years ago. Her first job was providing first-level technical support, despite not having much of a technical background. Francine credits the leader who hired her for believing in her potential to learn the skills needed for the role. Since then, she’s sought a variety of positions within the company, telling Sam that she believes there’s power in collecting experiences. “And so I would have one role and I would [ask myself] okay, what have I learned on this role and what do I still need to learn?” she says. “And I think that focus on learning really helped to navigate me through the company.”

She says she moved into HR about 15 years ago, which led to her current role of Chief People Officer. “I focus on people, policy, and purpose,” she tells Sam. “And what that means is that together with our team, we focus on how our people organization, how government affairs, how real estate, how building a digital agenda all come together in service of our company and our purpose, which is the power and inclusive future for all.”

Empowering managers

One focus of her job in the last few years has been hybrid work and work-life balance. At Cisco, she says, technology had enabled virtual work even before the pandemic—and so when the pandemic forced people out of offices, Cisco already had historical data showing that employees’ “promotion velocity” was the same whether they worked remotely or onsite.

“The approach that we have within the company is to really focus on the work and what is best as it relates to the team,” she says. “And so we've basically decentralized that decision. We ask leaders to make the best decision for their team. We also ask them to experiment.”

She notes that over time, the role of leaders has evolved. “I think it will continue to evolve, meaning that our leaders now I think have to be a bit more customized as it relates to how they approach every individual” she explains. “As we went through the pandemic, we asked our leaders to understand, how are your people doing? What do they have going on? Check in on them, right? I think we got rid of this belief that there's a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership.”

A culture of wellness

When it comes to helping women in particular navigate and succeed in their careers, Francine notes that Cisco relies on what they call their conscious culture. “Our conscious culture is this belief that every single employee owns the culture,” she notes. “We as a company have to focus on the environment, we have to focus on the experience and our principles. Part of how we do that is we have to be really overt in talking about what's not working. And I think when you do that, you build trust with your teams and they know that if there's something that you can do better, that you're willing to work it because you were willing to say it in front of the entire company.”

Once specific strategy that’s worked at Cisco is having a mental health practitioner attend every monthly meeting. “What will end up happening is we'll take questions about, hey, what's our strategy for security? Where are we going? Hey, there's this new program. Oh wait, we have a question for Dr. Zane. Dr. Zane, there's a question here about how do you handle anxiety?" Francine says. And when employees have actively received that message that it’s okay to ask about mental health issues, they feel empowered to embrace their mental health as a critical component of their work life.

Looking forward, Francine has three main goals on her 2023 agenda. The first priority is around hybrid work and ensuring that leaders are making the best decisions about how their teams can be at their best. Next is something the company calls resilient communities: the idea of how they show up in the communities in a way that builds lasting success. And her third item is focusing on people and taking the conversation around wellbeing and career growth to the next level.

 

Full transcript here 

Mentor Moment: Critical points for recruiting and hiring

It's important to me that I hire the best people and create a diverse and inclusive team. What are the most critical points in the recruitment and hiring process to consider?

 

Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, Women on The Move Podcast host, Sam Saperstein, welcomes Daniel Chait, CEO of Greenhouse to discuss how the hiring process at an organization can drive positive change and big impact.

 

Full transcript here 

 

The speakers’ opinions belong to them and may differ from opinions of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co and its affiliates. Views presented on this podcast are those of the speakers; they are as of April 6, 2023 and they may not materialize.

Empathy, vulnerability, authenticity, and more: why women are innately effective leaders, with CNBC reporter and author Julia Boorstin

In this episode, host Sam Saperstein kicks off Women’s History Month by sitting down with Julia Boorstin, CNBC's senior media and technology reporter, and the author of When Women Lead, a book focused on leadership for which she interviewed 120 women from various sectors and backgrounds. Sam and Julia talk about the lessons she learned and the key commonalities her research uncovered in terms of the skills and strategies of successful leaders.

Digging into women’s leadership styles

Julia tells Sam that she was inspired to write her book after her 20-plus years as a business journalist. Her career spanned six years as a writer at Fortune Magazine and then 16 years as a business reporter with CNBC. Along the way she created and launched the CNBC Disruptor 50, an annual list that highlights private companies that are transforming the economy. “And in that time I've been really grateful to get to interview thousands and thousands of leaders, CEOs, founders, [and] executives,” she says. “And the vast majority of those people have been men. The vast majority of them have been white men.”

In the past five or 10 years, she says, she’s noticed more and more women entering the conversation, and more female founders in particular. “And it was interesting for me through my work doing the Disruptor 50 list to see women founders create companies that were tackling different types of problems than the male founders were,” she says. “And also to approach that problem solving and approach their businesses, managing their businesses, leading their businesses differently.”

What she learned once she dug in, she says, is that women's leadership styles are incredibly effective. And she found a wealth of research indicating that if men were to adopt their styles, they would be more effective too. “It started as a storytelling exercise, and it turned into a research project, and I really wanted to combine the stories with the research to illustrate a new vision for what success looks like, a new vision of what leadership looks like, and a new type of path that people should be thinking about to pursue their own leadership strengths,” she says.

What makes women leaders shine?

Julia notes that while each of the 120 individuals she interviewed for her book are unique, she did find common threads in the attributes of successful business people. One of the those is having a growth mindset, which she defines as having a combination of the humility to understand you don't know everything and the confidence to believe that you could grow and push yourself to do the things that you aren't currently capable of. A second commonality, she says, is having authenticity. “The women who had succeeded did so by not trying to fit into any sort of stereotype or archetype of what leaders are supposed to look or sound like, but by leading in ways that were really honest and true to themselves,” she says.

Julia also discusses a list of more specific skills and strategies that she says research has shown to be effective. And she notes that an important footnote to these findings is that they are not anything that are biological differences between men and women. “Almost everything I write about are things that are socialized, and therefore they are things that if men want to get better at, they can learn as well,” she notes.

Her list starts with empathy. “Empathy is really about the ability to see things from someone else's perspective, which can be incredibly strategic if you're negotiating a deal or if you're trying to motivate your employees or to figure out what's gonna be more successful working with a team,” she says.

Other items on her list include vulnerability, a “communal leadership style,” and a divergent approach to problem solving rather than a convergent approach. Men, she says, are more likely to have a convergent approach where they focus in on solving the problem as quickly and efficiently as possible, whereas women are more likely to have divergent approach, where they're more likely to ask about things that may appear to be tangential but really are about taking the time to understand the broader landscape.

Julia also responds to audience questions that dig deeper into her findings on the nuanced differences between men’s and women’s leadership styles, on ideas such as intersectionality, and on traits including extroversion and introversion. Overall, she says, what she learned in the course of writing the book made her optimistic. “I'm very optimistic about the power that women have to drive change not just in the industry but to help each other succeed,” she says.

 

Full transcript here 

Mentor Moment: Navigating the application process and finding success

I'm looking for my next opportunity and not sure how to get myself noticed in the application process. How do I give myself the best shot at my next job?

 

Live from the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, Women on The Move Podcast host, Sam Saperstein, welcomes Daniel Chait, CEO of Greenhouse to discuss how the application process has changed over time and how staying focused on jobs that excite you can give you a better chance at success.

 

Full transcript here 

From Davos, JPMorgan Chase CEO and his Chief of Staff discuss the values of diversity and business efficiency

In this special feature from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Women on the Move Host Sam Saperstein sits down with JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon and his Chief of Staff Judy Miller. They discuss the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion at JPMorgan Chase and the equal importance of all stakeholders to the firm, and Jamie shares tips on being more efficient every day.

Jamie talks about what he sees as the biggest global issues facing the world today. “There's only one thing taking place in 2023 that matters for the future of the world, and that's what's going on in Russia, Ukraine, related trade, China, security, the trade issues around national security, what it's going to do to energy prices, oil prices, poor nations,” he says.

Being together with the world’s economic leaders at Davos is critical, Jamie says, because the issue today is about how the Western world can stay united—in terms of security and energy in particular. And although many of the solutions will come from government policy, global corporate leaders like J.P. Morgan have an important role to play as well. “We have a really complex problem here, which is we all want to get CO2 down, but we also need reliable, secure energy and cheap,” he notes. People yelling at banks and corporations isn’t going to solve the problem, he adds. But people coming together for R&D and solution seeking can impact change.

DE&I at JPMorgan Chase

Diversity, Sam notes, is one area where JPMorgan Chase has been a change leader. Judy says that for Women on the Move, it’s both internal—helping women thrive and take on leadership roles within the firm—as well as external—helping women entrepreneurs with training and resources. Women on the Move, she points out, started internally as a group of senior women who really wanted to help support women throughout the firm.

“I think that the roles that women are in at the company is really outstanding,” Judy tells Sam. “When you look at Jamie's direct reports, about half of them are women and they are leading some of our biggest businesses. It wasn't that way when I first started. And I think the women in these positions, they both can act as role models and the younger women can look at them as role models and see there is a path for themselves.”

Jamie adds that all areas of diversity are equally important to the company, and he notes that the challenges faced by people of color can be more substantial than those faced by women. “We want [everybody] to feel treated with respect and decency where they can contribute to the company to the best of their ability.”

Finding efficiency amidst the bureaucracy

Another core value for the firm, Jamie says, is efficiency. In such an immense global firm, bureaucracy is inevitable. The challenge, he says, is to not let it stifle growth. People are going to get bogged down in the details—sometimes to an unhealthy degree. But the way to fix that, he says, is not to resent it. “It's to understand that it's like weeds in the garden,” he tells Sam. “It's always growing. Meetings are getting bigger. Meetings taking longer. People want to collaborate. I want you all to come here to collaborate, but I don't want you to over collaborate.”

One of Jamie’s strategies for ensuring momentum rather than getting bogged down by bureaucracy is his to-do lists. He says he consistently maintains both short-term and long-term lists. “People throughout the company know about Jamie's list,” Judy vouches. “So I can just send an email and say, ‘Okay, you're on the list, let's work to get off it.’ Jamie rewrites this follow-up list every Sunday and there's nothing worse than being transferred from one week's follow-up list to the next week..” Judy describes Jamie’s list as something that keeps the company moving: “It keeps that constant forward progress.”

Jamie describes himself as relentless. “Nothing gets by me [where] I don't say, ‘Cut that out. We don't need that. That's too long.’ Every meeting starts on time. It ends on time.” Jamie says he’s relentless about it is because bureaucracy leads to politics. And that leads to stasis. “That's why you can't take it lightly and why I don't.”

 

Full transcript here 

Mentor Moment: How to go from manager to leader

How do you shift your mindset from being a manager to being a leader?

 

Women on The Move host, Sam Saperstein, shares how to take it to the next level and start thinking and acting as a true leader.

 

Full transcript here