S1, E11: Beyond DEI: The Data Behind Women’s Corporate Influence

Amy Willard: [00:00:00] My husband, I have to credit him, he’s a genius. I love him. He made a lot of money. And he said to me something like, you either have power or you take power, nobody gives it to you. And that actually helped me also come up with this idea of using women’s economic power.

Georgi: Did you know the average person will work 90, 000 hours in their lifetime?

What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment and become a disruptor for good? Welcome to the Work That’s Worth It podcast. I’m Georgi Enthoven, and I’m here to demonstrate that in an important way. It’s not just a dream, it’s achievable. Each episode will dive into conversations with global change makers who’ve cracked the code on combining income and impact.

If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a paycheck and your purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the ambitious humans who have done it themselves. Ready to make your work worth it? Let’s get started.[00:01:00]

Amy Willard Cross is an ambitious woman on a mission in the later stage of her career, proving that anytime is a good time for impact work today. She’s the founder of Gender Fair, the first consumer rating system for gender equality, which produces ratings on brands, colleges, B2B vendors, and not for profits.

So people can align their dollars. With their value of equality, she was named as a global thinker by foreign policy for her work in economic girl power. And she’s on a mission to help people see how their money equals power and how we can all use economic power to create more fairness in the world by spending, investing, donating with a gender and racial lens.

Hi, Amy. So lovely to have you on the work. That’s worth it. Podcast.

Amy Willard: Thanks. I love talking to strangers.

Georgi: Hopefully after this we will not be strangers. But I would love to jump in and find out from [00:02:00] you your origin story of Gender Fair.

Amy Willard: Okay, well, we can go way, way back to 2008. And that was the year that a lot of women won congressional seats and a lot of Democratic women won congressional seats.

So I was writing a story at the time and I went to go look to see which industries funded them. It’s a thing you have an open secrets. And I found there’s, I could see pharma or law, and can you guess which industries funded the women candidates that year? Who won?

Georgi: No.

Amy Willard: Okay, well I couldn’t guess either, but guess what?

None. So, that’s how this group called Open Secrets will put it in tranches. The major funding for women candidates were either ActBlue, which is basically a fundraising platform like GoFundMe, Or something like that, and I’d go fund both of it, and, or Emily’s List. And so that was like a huge, the light bulb burst over my head, and I realized, oh my gosh, the reason why we don’t have more women in Congress is because they cannot, they are outside of the funding mechanism of politics.

So I realized what’s really the problem, why we don’t have [00:03:00] what I want in America for women, the Equal Rights Amendment, it’s under dispute whether we actually have it or not yet, is because we don’t have enough money to be in, in Congress and we don’t have enough money to be in Congress because we’re not taking enough money out of the bit, the corporate system.

So that’s where it actually came from, from back in 2008 and then later on it sort of evolved and then I started doing a new site and then I was, then I realized actually if I want to make change, I was doing a women’s news site in the early 2010s. News doesn’t really create things as much as I can do it with data.

So data journalism is known to one, create change and two, have financial viability, which is I know a concern of yours. So if you look at, at the time, you’d look at consumer reports. Do you know that? I mean, you pay to have, you pay, people pay for the reports or people pay for financial information. So it seemed to me I wanted to do feminist journalism, but I wanted to make sure it was sustainable.

So that was why I chose to do data because data will have more words. Then just

Georgi: yeah, well, tell us tell us about Gender Fair. What [00:04:00] is that?

Amy Willard: Okay, gender fair is something that I explain it sort of like fair trade for women We provide information to people about which companies serve women Well, so they know which companies were nonprofits and even colleges deserve their money So the idea is that women have all this economic power in our culture, but we do not use it Right?

Women are known to be, they say, the best, you know, the most important consumers. But if you’re the most important consumers, shouldn’t you be asking the companies from which you buy to have women’s leadership, and provide parental leave, and do equal pay studies, and give back to the community of women, and provide reproductive health care?

And so that’s what Gender Fair does. So Gender Fair is a measurement. We use it to measure companies on five categories that are based on the UN Women Empowerment Principles. So, I didn’t just make them up, we, these are, these are sort of codified principles of the WEPs, and then we also chose which of those, where we could find a metric, sort of, from SEC reporting or in CSR reporting.

So, it’s basically a report card for women in companies, [00:05:00] and they mostly do terribly. That’s the sad thing. Companies mostly do terribly. Mostly do terribly, yes.

Georgi: And universities you’re also tracking, correct? Yes,

Amy Willard: universities also, yeah. They’re just, it’s, women are not in leadership, there’s not equal pay studies.

We have so far to go, and I think that when you make a measurement, people can understand. A company might say, well we do great by women, I’ve got a girl in marketing, and we have Matt leave on six weeks, well, that’s not enough, you, we, we’re asking for a sort of compensation. Gender fairness to, to move throughout an organization to make it.

And when, when that happens, it’s good for everyone. Right.

Georgi: Yeah. Well, I would love to ask you about the name and I appreciate that the word fair is in there and it sort of takes away some of the controversy perhaps, but I would love to hear about your naming.

Amy Willard: Interesting. Yeah. So originally I came up with a different idea.

I can’t remember. I was working with like, I’m just a journalist. I’m not a branding person, but I remember my first name was called buy up because I wanted to be sort of opposite of boycott. And that wasn’t that great. And then somehow I was at Ted [00:06:00] women. I remember I was talking to someone who won the woman, someone who runs, I fund women, which is a great organization.

And she said, scorecard needs to be something different, gender scorecard. And so for some reason, and then after that, I came up with gender fair. And I think fair is a word. You like the word fair, right?

Georgi: What I appreciate about it is it takes out some of the feeling like somebody has to give up something, which may actually be the case, but when you’re asking for something that’s fair, then it feels reasonable.

Amy Willard: Fair. I think actually, you know, you’re right on it, Georgi, because at the moment, you know, in America, there’s this terrible backlash against the words diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are all very nice words. My mother would have liked that very much, but fairness doesn’t seem to elicit the same response.

And I think, so, I, I’m happy to hear you say that, and I talk about that a lot, like, even with my children, when people talk about equal pay, I was like, well, why, why do we have to be secret about pay? When I would cut pieces of cake for my children, I didn’t give it to them under the table. They could see I was [00:07:00] fairly cutting the pieces of cake the same size.

So, yeah, fairness is, I think, a very good word, and gender as opposed to women, because I don’t think people want to hear the word women fair.

Georgi: Yeah. I see this deep, long passion for you of interest in promoting the interest of women. And I talk about in my book, figuring out a contribution. That’s something that’s really important to you.

And either with just one word, which could be women or a mission that is sort of, I help X and Y you’re doing that. And how are you doing it? And I wondered if you can share with me a little bit about how did you. Take a hold of women as something that you wanted to wrap your career around.

Amy Willard: Well, it wasn’t originally, that wasn’t my life originally, but when I was 10 years old, I wrote a play called Men’s Liberation.

I did it in my high school, in my elementary school cafeteria. Like my great, great grandmother’s a suffragist. My grandmother was the first professor to teach at the University of Damascus. So I come from a line of women who were able to [00:08:00] achieve thanks to, you know, just privilege. But no, I, this was my passions as a kid.

Women’s rights were. Right on it since age 10. So that’s that’s why and I worked in women’s magazine a little bit I didn’t like them but I worked in journalism for a long time and I didn’t get to this till later in life because I didn’t and it was Through also doing journalism. I realized that there was unfairness and more unfairness than I thought.

I thought it was all done, right? I don’t know. I’m much older than you are But the year I graduated university was the first year that women were 50 percent of graduates

Georgi: Okay. And so you thought, all right, this, this is a non issue. Yeah,

Amy Willard: we’ve done it. So, you know, some of my classmates went on to create companies like BlackRock or help take Google public and they did great things.

But when you look at that’s just a small percentage of the women of my generation, we still didn’t achieve equality. And it was actually. I don’t know if you want to get into history or just more about how we get into, how we got into building, but I read it. I used to review books and I reviewed a book about women in the magazine industry, you know, read a book [00:09:00] by Naomi Wolf and she did a byline count of women in the magazine industry.

And women were like a small percentage of the top magazines where I always thought I’d work. And I realized, Oh my gosh, it’s very unlikely that I’m going to be working at the New Yorker. Very unlikely, like statistically improbable. And that was enough to actually determine, realize, okay, I’ll go work for women’s magazines.

Even though I’d already written books by that time, but yeah, and I really didn’t realize it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t like Cognitively appreciated that so that’s why I want to try to make things better for the women who come behind me and the women who Aren’t privileged to be white and middle class.

That’s gender fair is about that Like we’re not just about trying to get women in the c suite We’re about trying to make things better for the lowest level workers in the American workforce

Georgi: Yeah, so accessibility for women in opportunities all throughout the workforce.

Amy Willard: Mm hmm. I mean, all the policies that we promote in, in the measurement of our app, in our measurements would benefit all, like if we, if we count parental leave for [00:10:00] baristas, not just the corporate people in a company.

So yeah.

Georgi: And at a time like this where we are in the U. S. in a political time where DEI is, I’ll say, being attacked, does that help your business in a way? Because it’s more clear who are the right people for your product and service, or how are you thinking about that?

Amy Willard: I don’t know. That’s a really great question.

We’re going to, you know, everyone’s sort of taken a beat in the last couple of weeks and trying to think of what to do next. I hope, I mean, I’ve always said that I, what I want to do is I want to create a consumer revolution of women because I don’t think that women have actually stood up enough in the marketplace to demand what they could demand.

If the customer is really queen, the queen is taking poultry crumbs. So I think perhaps, I mean, I wish we didn’t have to exist. I’m, I’m hoping that we can be a way for. Women and people to demonstrate that they believe in fairness for all and they can do that in the marketplace Even if we’re not [00:11:00] maybe doing it politically We can say we’re gonna buy from companies that support women and people of color because that’s also part of our measurements, right?

Georgi: Yeah, ideally politically and economically, but there’s multiple avenues to show policy the

Amy Willard: most important But even if you look at so, I mean, I think that in the very long tail of things we measure parental leave And, uh, we grade companies on that. And eventually, because, of course, you know, America, we don’t give that.

Every other country does. I think eventually, if the private sector is pushed to provide parental leave, eventually that’ll move into the public realm in policy. Because policy is really where you make change, right? That’s That’s, that’s more powerful.

Georgi: If some, someone getting started in their career really wants to support women, wants to work in an environment that is supportive of women, what should they be looking at and maybe where would they access your information?

Amy Willard: The information for gender fair or the information of where to work for women?

Georgi: Both, like if they are interested in a corporate environment that’s very supportive of [00:12:00] women.

Amy Willard: Oh, well, that’s great. Then if they want to do that, then look at the gender fair ratings and or just call me and I’ll tell you what we can’t always tell you what the culture is at a company, but we can tell you when policies are in place.

Like there’s some companies that are on our, that are credited as being gender fair, but we, we’ve heard that that’s not really that positive for women because you can’t. Change the culture or all people. So look, there may be

Georgi: microcultures, microcultures within certain

Amy Willard: uncertainties. So it’s very hard to, you know, de bias or make, make a world fair when it’s not really set up to be fair, but working for women’s organizations now is very tricky back to the point.

One of the points of your podcast is that there is. Very little funding and the culture sort of says that women aren’t important like, you know, VC funding women, women’s companies get like 2 percent of VC funding. I’m sure you’ve heard all this. So without money, we can’t really do much, but we’re really do women do have money is again in our consumer pocketbooks or our investments.

So working for a women’s nonprofit is a not a very good deal at the moment. Like there’s someone I know [00:13:00] who calls it says it’s like the. Female funding hunger games. There’s very little money to go around and there’s many organizations trying to get it to fix a lot of the problems for women, right?

There’s millions of problems. So nonprofits is not a great place to be right now for, for women’s nonprofits. This is a hard place to be, but maybe. someplace that does have a good gender program. If they’re in the non profit sector or in the profit sector, yeah, find, find companies that have women in leadership.

That often does create a difference. We can see that quite clearly that a significant number of women in leadership and not just one or two on the website changes the culture, often changes the culture of a company.

Georgi: Yeah. And can a, like a consumer have access to your data?

Amy Willard: Yes. There’s a free app. Oh, I prefer that they pay for it.

There’s all more data on the, on the paid app. We also, we also list the, the companies that are Genifer on our website and the app will tell you which brands are. So our app, you can scan, you can scan a logo and if it says Georgi, you’ll go, Oh, Georgi. It’ll scan it, come pull up the data. Oh yeah, Georgi is.

[00:14:00] It’s gender fair. It’s part of the, the ICO. So you can

Georgi: use it for where you want to work, but you can use it for how you’re shopping and. Absolutely.

Amy Willard: Yeah. That was the major point of like to, you know, show consumers which companies deserve their money because most don’t. And I’m hoping that, I mean, it’s, it’s going to be a long game to exercise women’s consumer power.

I thought I could do it in 10 years, but it’s probably a 30 year project.

Georgi: Yeah, so you’re betting on data to help you win this race of gender fairness.

Amy Willard: Data plus action, yeah. So there’s a, there’s a group called the Human Rights Campaign. They inspired this, my work. They do something called the Guide to Corporate Equality.

And they started it, you know, 20 years ago. It was just a simple survey. They sent it out to companies asking for the LGBTQ policies. And if a company didn’t fill it out, they just got an F. And that was very motivating, and companies really did well, and I think now 800 companies performed well on this, and maybe 800 get a perfect score, it’s like, it’s great!

So, in my mind, why can’t women do that? But I haven’t, you know, we haven’t made the same [00:15:00] kinds of changes that, that HRC has, but there’s one place where we do make change, and we’re going to be moving to that in the coming year. As well as doing these databases on which I hope people act because data is nothing unless you act on it is we’re going to, we do, we also certify smaller businesses.

Georgi: Okay. Tell us about that.

Amy Willard: Yeah. Well, that’s a great, that’s also great sort of economically. I think it’ll help us do better even is that Procter and Gamble, they support us, but they don’t need to have gender fairs accreditation to make people buy their products. They already people know they’re a good company, but sort of a smaller company might want to say that, look, we have.

great policies. We have women in leadership. We donate to the community of women. They are, I’m getting, we’re getting more calls from smaller businesses or smaller organizations that like this idea because it’s a shorthand to say that they’re doing well. Like we have a law firm that’s been certified. It was the first law firm to get certified many years ago, save the children wanted to be certified gender fair, which is great because they, they met us a product.

So this, I [00:16:00] think will be a way for us to spread the idea through the culture and actually become. Even more economically viable.

Georgi: Yeah. That’s so interesting. I don’t know if you have one or two examples you can share of sort of a tangible result from some of the work you’ve done that have, you know, watching it, reading it, listening to it.

You have felt off. This is, this is why I’m doing this work.

Amy Willard: Well, when I see companies, I can see all together, we’re part of a wave, but all this measurement, all this talking, people are aware. There will be measure on this. I can see companies making changes based on that. And I can also see in the smaller cases, I can see when a company will add something like this law firm.

They were inspired. It’s called Dorf, Nelson and Zerota in New York. And they were inspired to create scholarship. for underrepresented women who are changing careers in law school. And that’s like, I can see the people, I can see them on their website. Now one of them works as an associate in this firm. So this is, that actually is one of my favorite [00:17:00] stories.

Save the Children, I think they added some people of color on their board and they started adding supplier diversity. So we can get companies when they do this measurement to just start doing better or even communicating better. Sometimes we also, in our Project on procurement with Salesforce and Logitech.

They would make their vendors take the gender fair assessment. And so by that they learned which policies people were watching. And, and I think that would change how they hoarded on it too. So they might say things privately a minute, publish things on their website, but maybe after being measured, then they actually are more likely to want to publicize things.

Yeah.

Georgi: And they can measure progress too. And, um, so they, they know what they’re tracking for, quite frankly, they don’t care enough.

Amy Willard: They do not care enough about women and I think that’s why our work is even more important as you say now because I really want to make them care and show that they have to care because it just can’t be performative and I think most women [00:18:00] now, and I can’t say most women, but people do care about fairness.

Georgi: I would love your take, Amy, on dealing with something systemic in society and your biggest obstacle is a large obstacle, something that is difficult to overcome. How do you show up for work every day when it sometimes probably feels like David and Goliath or like, you know, how do you, how do you motivate?

Amy Willard: That’s such a great question. Sometimes not. Sometimes not, but I have to believe that you have, you can try little things and you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Things are systemic. So how could I think that this little thing would change it, would make any change. But I think you can also think that you’re part of a larger movement.

Like when I started a long time, I started nearly 10 years ago. Since then, many similar things have. Started like Gretchen Carlson would lift our voices. This using data sort of to show how women were doing in culture didn’t really exist. But yeah. How do you motivate? Uh, that’s a really hard, I think when I do get motivated as being, feeling part of the community, like, [00:19:00] and women who are working for greater fairness in society, like a.

One time that there was a power shift conference, there was a power up conference in San Francisco and I met with all these people who were doing similar great work and that felt great, just know that we’re not alone in this struggle actually, that’s the key thing. I think unity is key when you’re talking about trying to affect any change systemically, because as you, as you’re saying, it’s pretty much impossible, isn’t it?

Georgi: Yeah. Okay. So collaboration, how does that play into what you do?

Amy Willard: Ah, well, it’s great because from what I’m talking about is, is moving the collective voice of women in the marketplace. Then the more we work with other organizations, the more we can do that. So we do partner with several other organizations that are working in fields like, you know, Vote Rent Lead or the National Organization of Women was partnered with us, I think, last year.

So this is maybe how we can Have women act in concert, because there are so many, I would say, disaggregated communities of women. And when you’re disaggregating, everyone’s asking for different things. It’s hard to make progress on any of [00:20:00] them, right? I think that’s one of the problems now. And I tried to work on this 10 years ago when I started my first news site.

I was trying to gather together. I wanted to be a, I wanted to be a new source for women who followed all these different women’s advocacy organizations. I didn’t succeed. I only had a few partners, but in my mind, if you could aggregate that audience of women who care about women’s fairness and progress in society, that’s a big audience of people who care.

Georgi: Yeah. In the book that I have coming out in April, I refer to, I think what you’re talking about is a sphere of influence and often like your business is a piece of it, but where you contribute is well beyond your business, but it’s to a cause or solving a much bigger problem. But if you can grow the pie that also does grow the business for you, which is good for you and ideally good for the world.

And what I’m hearing from you is there’s a calling for somebody who can bring all these organizations that have a similar mission [00:21:00] together on a larger scale.

Amy Willard: That’s right. To action. To specific action. To drive action. And, you know, I think the unity of, we’re, we’re hoping to be working with something called the Black Dollar Index, which is run by a great person called Kelly Rosell, and she measures what we measure, but for a black community, a very similar metrics to what we measure.

And we’re hoping to do something together this year, because together, if you add population of women and black people, that’s a lot of people.

Georgi: Yeah. And also the clients probably for one are similar to the other.

Amy Willard: Right. I don’t, yeah. She’s a nonprofit at the moment, I think, but yeah, actually. And back to your, back to the point of this podcast is how do you do work and, and earn a living.

Making it worthwhile for you. Right. Purposely, I decided not to have a non profit because I did not want to take money away from organizations that really need that, those funds, like Planned Parenthood among so many of them. So

Georgi: that’s the first time I’ve heard that as a motivation. Tell us more.

Amy Willard: Well, we’re a public benefit [00:22:00] corporation.

I don’t do this to get rich, but because. I really felt it was possible for the market to pay for this. So the market does pay for our work instead of donations.

Georgi: Yeah. Your clients are consumer or, uh, companies who get rated. Companies

Amy Willard: that do well in the rating. Do well in the

Georgi: rating. Yeah.

Amy Willard: That can be objectively shown to do well.

I mean, I, I’m not making that. Isn’t there’s a lot of pay to play stuff in this field now too, which is all garbage. The best company for this, the best company for that. Like they don’t show their methodology. Basically, they pay for it. So that’s actually, that’s diluted the field in a terrible way. And these are all publications owned by rich white guys.

Georgi: Yeah. But so the fact that you’re not a not for profit could potentially hurt that. But since you’re a public benefit corporation, is the ethics behind it in fairness, a big part of what you offer?

Amy Willard: Right. I mean, that’s the, that’s the raison d’etre is to, to create social change. So public benefit corporations have no tax, different tax debt or something like that.

It’s just like, it’s a public declaration. You apply for it. So [00:23:00] we are registered as that, but I hope that I make millions and millions in coming years of extra profits. So I can donate it to the organizations that are helping women in the field. That would be my ultimate goal.

Georgi: Well, that I love that you say that Amy, because part of my mission is so many of the kind hearted, really good humans that I meet end up playing really small in small organizations, small not for profits and their voices are kept small.

And how do we get. Those people into positions of leadership and not only leadership, but to have the possibility to spend that money in places that matter. And so it’s nice to hear that you are a fellow, a fellow thinker along those lines.

Amy Willard: Right. I mean, I’m still not right. I think. The best is my, my CEO is a former corporate executive who worked for JPMorgan Chase and my husband is a very successful entrepreneur.

So they helped me sort of see more of the financial side of things and I think it’s very important to [00:24:00] our, our culture measures things with money. So that’s why it’s important to try to. Earn money in whatever you do, so it’s valued. If you give away whatever you do, the culture doesn’t consider it valuable.

Georgi: What do you do to think bigger? What steps have you taken to allow yourself to not stay small?

Amy Willard: I think too big, Georgi. Like, you know, I don’t know. That’s not your problem? No, actually. My problem is like, uh, adjusting to systemic realities. And I think my, my father, I think he has three daughters. A son too who’s nicer than the daughter.

We all have outsized confidence. Like the fact that I, this one woman, thought I could like make a dent in a systemic, these systemic issues of of a capitalist system which consistently throws women away and devalues them. And keeps them far away from any power and money. It’s like, I thought I could change.

I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize how bad it was actually. And yeah, and I’m just logical. So it seemed as if the gay community can do that, women can do it too. [00:25:00]

Georgi: Yeah. And that outsized confidence. I mean, I think we often underestimate how our upbringing shapes us and helps us to be successful in what we choose and having that.

So I think that oversized confidence, as you say, is a huge asset to what you do.

Amy Willard: Right. But also my husband. My husband, I have to credit him as a genius. I love him. He made a lot of money and he said to me something like, you either have power or you take power. Nobody gives it to you. And that actually helped me also come up with this idea of using women’s economic power.

I was like thinking about this, but I hadn’t kind of figured it out.

Georgi: I like that you say that. My equivalent of that is I don’t like the word deserve. Because it feels very passive, that you have to wait for it and something’s going to come and fall in your lap because you deserve it. You’re

Amy Willard: going to be served it, right.

Versus you desire

Georgi: it,

Amy Willard: or something

Georgi: you want to make happen. But I feel like deserve means that you are powerless.

Amy Willard: Interesting. You know, since your, your book and what you’re [00:26:00] working on is about people finding purpose in their lives and meaning, like one thing you find very, I find all the time, we get, we get contacted by people all the time who are like tired of the corporate life, especially women who get usually tossed out the window when they’re 40 and they want to do something with some social good.

I mean, if I could, if I had tons and tons of money, I could have hired some of the best people ever. And because they often want to, after about 20 years in the regular workforce, women and men, but I would say more women, they really want to do something with some sort of social good. But the trick is, as you say, is paying for it.

That’s the very. Tricky trick.

Georgi: And Amy, are there any books you recommend that young people may be interested in reading that support women?

Amy Willard: Well, yes. Melinda Gates wrote this great book called A Moment of Lift. And of course, she’s the major champion of women who is using her economic power to advance these issues and so strongly, and there’s no one we admire more than that.

And then in the very last chapter. There are six things she lists to do to promote gender equality and one of them is [00:27:00] buying gender fair. So that’s another reason why I would support that book. But to know that someone of her privilege and her power is So now spending her entire life on fairness, that’s quite inspiring to me.

And so I think people might enjoy that book.

Georgi: Yeah. Wonderful advice. Thank you so much. Okay. This concept of 90, 000 hours, the average career is 90, 000 hours. You’re talking about being at the later stage of your career. How are you so energized at this stage?

Amy Willard: That there’s so much work to do really, you know, and maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe the culture doesn’t care. Maybe I should just give up and play tennis, but you know, we have some great champions and I have to say that the best champions of our work are men because men have the power, like the CEO and, and the COO and other, the powerful male leadership at Logitech. Now it’s actually a CEO is a woman.

They, they supported this brilliant. Coalition for gender fair procurement that we launched a couple years ago Which is actually much more massive than consumer dollars and we have [00:28:00] someone at salesforce a man who’s very Supportive and same our first P and G. And these usually men are the ones who have the money and the power to support our work.

Ironically, it’s not women in the workforce because they even executive women often don’t have the power or they don’t want to be seen as complaining about women’s issues. It makes them look bad in corporations. We’ve heard this from people.

Georgi: That’s amazing. I know. So it’s so interesting because from the outside you would imagine that your best advocates would be women.

But as you explain this, it makes so much sense is currently the power sits with men and women may be faulted for

Amy Willard: exactly pushing an agenda. Yeah. So it’s like the one, one of our, one company that we worked with once was Eli Lilly, which is fabulously. ethical company in many respects. And their CEO was the one who came up with this idea of looking into their, the experience of women in the workforce.

And he spent like a million dollars to interview women employees and find out what they thought. And then he played back their texts with the video actors [00:29:00] and it moved. the male executives in the company so much that they’ve changed a lot of policies. So back to talking with other people in storytelling, this is how you create change.

It’s probably not just by saying women are only 19 or 14 percent of the top paid executive women. And that’s probably not it. It’s when you hear a narrative of a woman executive in your company who, who had her hair cut, who asked someone asked to touch her hair, you know, when she’s in a big meeting, that’s, that’s going to be more powerful than citing statistics.

Georgi: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not only data plus action, it’s data plus action plus storytelling is the secret sauce to getting people interested. Yeah. I think maybe the storytelling

Amy Willard: is what makes people take action because yeah, data itself is nothing and there’s a lot of data, data, data, data, data, but yeah, we have to inspire people to take action that’s meaningful.

And right now I’m hoping that I can provide people some action they can take that makes them feel like a little bit, they’re making a vote somewhere and I’m not going to give you my money or if you’re not treating your workers right.

Georgi: [00:30:00] Yeah, yeah. Last words of wisdom for men or women wanting to start off in their career supporting women.

Amy Willard: Just be fair in all that you do. Like try to, try to rid, I mean, when, when you’re working, it’s, we, we do have biases all the time. Like my children used to point out that I even have sexist biases and I thought I was a perfect feminist. So I think we all have to try to do better and think of others who don’t have our, privileges and try to bring everyone up.

You know, there was that great saying in the civil rights movement, lift as you rise, and I think that’s Those are great words for all of us, is that if we just think of ourselves in the workplace or in our own personal lives, we just have one happy self. But if we, you know, lend our hand out to someone else, we have two happier people.

Georgi: Amy, thank you so much for being on the show and I really appreciate you taking time to shine the light on this really important topic. And I, yeah, thank you for being here.

Amy Willard: Thank you. And I’m looking forward to seeing your [00:31:00] book and seeing how you could inspire people to Merge their passion with their purpose.

Georgi: Yeah. Thank you so much.

Amy Willard: Thank you.

Georgi: Here’s my hot take on this conversation with Amy. The first is about this power paradox. One of the most surprising revelations that she shared with me was that men, not women. are the strongest champions of gender fairs work. As Amy explained, this is because men currently hold the positions of power in corporations, while executive women often hesitate to advocate for women’s issues to avoid being seen as pushing an agenda.

This highlights the complex dynamics of creating change from within existing power structures. The second is. Her decision to stay away from a not for profit business model. Amy’s decision to structure gender fair as a public benefit corporation, rather than not for profit was particularly interesting to me.

Her reasoning was twofold to avoid competing for limited not for profit funding with [00:32:00] organizations like. Planned Parenthood. And because she believes that what isn’t valued monetarily in our culture isn’t valued at all, and this challenge is the common assumption that social impact work must be not-for-profit.

And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Work That’s Worth It. Remember. Every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy. There are future Disruptors out there just like you who would appreciate the conversations in this podcast. Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two, or visit my website at georgienthoven.com. That’s spelled G E O R G I E N T H O V E N dot com. Until next time, ask yourself, what problems am I solving and are they worth my valuable time? Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow. Thanks for [00:33:00] listening!