A recap and some wisdom gained along the way.
Her Way Podcast began four years ago with the goal of making female mentorship accessible. Since then, we’ve had the privilege of talking to women in business and entrepreneurship, academia, local politics, technology, journalism, and much more. Through these conversations, we’ve learned that oftentimes, they arrived at their work through a nonlinear and unpredictable path. Some dissected a specific field they grew passionate about, such as climate tech or voter mobilization, while others advanced their career by embracing the contrarian point of view.
In earlier episodes, we explored the journey of interviewees, learning that the most brilliant ideas are not immediately apparent or the clear-cut career trajectory, and that you don’t need a massive demographic to have a profound impact. Later, we started two new spin-offs, Her Way Climate and Her Way AAPI, where we delved more technically into areas we are passionate about. Her Way Climate explores the changing and nuanced climate landscape of the world through economic, social, and political lens; topics range from environmental litigation to climate advocacy and sustainable sanitation. Her Way AAPI discusses what the Asian American identity means through both culture and politics, and how both of these intersect to create the Asian American narratives we see in education today.
We’re also taking female mentorship globally. This past summer, we hosted two Her Way live events with the WAAW Foundation, a women’s nonprofit in Africa.
In lieu of the 40th episode published last Monday, 8/25, we wanted to recap five episodes and share some pieces of wisdom we’re learned along the way.
Thank you for tuning in to the podcast, we are so grateful for your support!
Sincerely,
Caroline and Sophie
Gloria Chen, 12/29/2022: You know yourself the best.
Gloria Chen, Chief People Officer and Executive Vice President at Adobe joined us for our first podcast. We were certainly intimidated to debut Her Way with such a prominent leader. But as someone who began as a chemistry major and then transitioned to corporate strategy, Gloria advises us: “be courageous about listening to your inner voice, but try things out, don’t judge before you try. I learned from every experience, even the ones that I didn’t like.”
She also explains the beauty of generalism. For us as young adults, it’s normal to love a lot of different things. Yet hustle culture glorifies constant busyness and urges us to become experts on one specific discipline. Gloria rebukes this mindset: “In a lot of different situations, you don’t have to be an expert to be useful and to have impact. I did mergers and acquisitions to human resources, and there are common skills in problem solving that do apply.”
We also asked about what success means. She puts it simply: “Be open to what you think success is. Success is not always a straight up corporate ladder. Success isn’t always a bigger and bigger job. Sometimes, success, depending on how you define success for yourself, can just be, I’m always learning and being challenged and growing.”
→ Listen to Gloria Chen’s episode here.
Beth Gerstein, 1/26/2023: Just start. Every experience is valuable.
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Brilliant Earth Beth Gerstein describes the reward in starting her ethnically sourced and sustainable jewelry company. She knows firsthand what it’s like to take the risk in leaving her previous corporate job: “I do think it’s hard to take the plunge…But that also creates more motivation to succeed, because you have so much more that’s riding on it and you’re in control of your own success, so there’s so much upside.” For some, this risk might not culminate in creating a 260 million dollar company that pioneers fine jewelry across the world. But Beth’s dedication to embark in a new field can resonate with anyone.
She addresses a statistic that weighs on the minds of most aspiring entrepreneurs: Approximately ⅔ of new businesses fail, especially within the first ten years of starting. She finds value in just creating; “I think my fear of the company not succeeding really would have been fine because ultimately, regardless, it’s going to be a great experience for you. You’re going to learn from it. People have new inventions in their life all the time… they say the average person has three careers in their life.”
→ Listen to Beth Gerstein’s episode here.
Madison Mcllwain, 3/9/2023: Be curious.
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the career path and technicality of day-to-day work. As a young accomplished leader and venture capitalist, Madison Mcllwain- former partner and investor at Defy.VC and co-host of her podcast The Room– shares insight into something else: Developing the mindset and character to distinguish yourself in a ruthless industry.
- Asking questions can seem overly dependent and vulnerable. Madison disagrees: “You can make a job and career out of asking questions, which I ended up doing… I’m frequently asking other people big questions about big ideas and about what they might be building.”
- How does one gain experience as an investor? Investing is inherently risky, aimless, and unforgiving. And it’s hard to know until you try. Madison explains how she’s navigated this landscape: “What’s the process when there’s no roadmap, right? It’s literally the future so how do you think about it? There’s two avenues. One is having a thesis on where the world might go based on some of your own research you’ve done…the other side is the people side. The biggest thing as an investor is balancing the work that you do to understand the ecosystems and then looking at people and saying, ‘do I think you’re the person to do it?’”
- Madison mentions one trait she sees consistently in successful entrepreneurs: “Tenacity. I am going to run through walls to make this happen, even when the rest of the world is telling you you’re crazy. And you have to believe in yourself. And so I think tenacity coupled with self conviction is really incredibly important for success in a founder.”
→ Listen to Madison’s episode here.
Dr. Christa Hasenkopf 8/8/2025: Data leads to equity.
What does it take to make clean air access equitable? Dr. Hasenkopf believes the answer is data. As the Director of the Clean Air Program at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, Dr. Hasenkopf leads at the intersection of air pollution policy and technology. She highlights the causal relationship between air quality monitoring and actual reductions in air pollution levels, calling to attention the extreme disparity in philanthropy for low-income and high-income countries: “ We’re investing about $238,000 a year in the whole continent of Africa for all air pollution efforts. It’s a fraction of the cost of a house in many places in the US. That’s it.”
Dr. Hasenkopf’s goal to increase air quality monitoring globally demonstrates the importance of transparent and objective statistics to catalyze climate protection. Data, she tells us, “ is not sufficient to fix everything. But it’s a necessary starting condition from everything we’ve seen across the world with how we go from dirty air to cleaner air…You need policy, you need data.”
→ Listen to Christa Hasenkopf’s episode here.
Shelley Lee 8/25/2025: Empathy builds perspective.
Teaching requires immense dedication and passion. It also takes empathy, a theme that arose in Professor Shelley Lee’s (American Studies, History, and Humanities and Affiliate of Urban Studies at Brown University) episode. And though she primarily focuses on the Asian American experience, embracing a similar mindset when looking at all cultures and social constructs can go a long way. Shelley shares a few reflections on this:
- “I discovered in college and taking history classes that there was this whole other way to look at the past. And that was from the bottom up. Through the lives and perspectives of ordinary people.”
- “ Even though a lot of the content doesn’t change, the way we interpret the past changes. The importance and urgency that people assign to history can change.”
- “ I like to help create community where I see the potential for community. But it doesn’t quite exist.”
- “ We can’t do our work in isolation. Even though the work can feel very solitary and isolating, I think you have to find your scholarly communities, and if you can’t find them, then you have to form them.”
→ Listen to Shelley’s episode here.
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