Why Women Innovate

Why Women Innovate

Creating a Catalyst for Change

Lindsey Kunz

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 Lindsey Kunz

All rights reserved.

Why Women Innovate

Creating a Catalyst for Change

ISBN

978-1-64137-957-1 Paperback

978-1-64137-777-5 Kindle Ebook

978-1-64137-778-2 Ebook

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I. Rejecting the Perfect Path

Chapter 1. Rise of The Female Economy

Chapter 2. The Bottleneck Effect

Chapter 3. Farewell to the Perfect Path

Part II. Laying a New Foundation

Chapter 4. Mind the Gap

Chapter 5. Don’t Fake It ‘Till You Make It

Chapter 6. Build Your Brand

Chapter 7. Create Healthy Boundaries

Chapter 8. Stand for Something

Part III. Creating a Sustainable Career

Chapter 9. Stay Engaged

Chapter 10. Ask for Help

Chapter 11. Pivot

Chapter 12. Say Yes

Appendix

To my mom, For reading aloud to us every night and producing a love of storytelling. Love you, mean it.

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.

—Aristotle

Acknowledgements

A book is like an iceberg—you only see the top ten percent. I would like to thank the people who saw the other 90 percent and told me to keep going. Why Women Innovate would not be possible without your love and support.

To my mom and dad, thank you for shaping my faith, modeling perseverance, and supporting all of my life choices. I am who I am because of you. To Kristin, thank you for your honest opinion and open ear. You are one of the strongest women I know. To Justin and Branden, thank you for the constant banter and teaching me how to prove my point. To Matt, thank you for telling me every day that I could do this and that you were proud of me. You were right, it didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be done.

To Stephanie and Cate, thanks for sparking this crazy idea. To my Soul City sisters, thanks for filling my life with joy and encouragement. To Tyler and Cason, thanks for checking in and pumping me up. To Rachel and Chelsea, thanks for letting me take over the couch and drink all the coffee. To my coworkers, thanks for cheering me on and being my biggest fans.

A special thanks to my amazing team at New Degree Press. Specifically, Eric Koester, Brian Bies, and Pea Richelle White. I appreciate your fresh, knew new eyes that caught all of my 2 a.m. typos. Without you, this dream would not be a reality.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone who gave of their time and resources: the women I interviewed, those who pre-ordered the eBook, paperback, and multiple copies to make publishing possible, those who spread the word and generated momentum about Why Women Innovate. You helped me publish a book I am proud of, and I am sincerely grateful.

A.J. Dunlap ~

Alex Adler

Alexis Craddock

Amanda Carpenter ~

Amanda Herbert

Amanda Onest

Annie Giebelhaus

Ashleigh Whitney

Ashley Vander Linde *

Austin Bain *

Becca Workman

Beth Kornegay

Brittany Blackwelder ~

Brittany Colagerakis

Brittany Genelin

Calia Harakaly

Camille Gibbs ~

Carol Anne Benson

Caroline Eberhardt

Cason Cavanaugh

Cate LeSourd

Chelsea Glasnow *

Christina Brunk

Dan Mitchell *

Dasha Hamrick

Debra Glasnow

Elizabeth Baldwin

Elizabeth Weingarten

Elizabeth Woodall

Emilie Mathura

Emily Brake

Emily Dohm

Emily Engeman

Emily Stone

Emma Thorpe

Enrika Sinkeviciute

Eric Koester

Erica Gardunio

Erick Garcia

Faith Cross

George W. Smith

Gretchen Carhart

Hannah Sobhan

Heather Omdal

Ina Dickson

Izabela Webster

Jaclyn Langosch *

Jamila Simpson

Jarrod Smith

Jen Kamins Giacchino ~

Jenna Goetze

Jennifer Fried *

Jennifer Harmon *

Jesse Wilson

Jessica Jones

Jessie Hoover

Jessy Huang

Jim Kunz *

Josiah Ewart *

Julia Hanson

Julian Garcia

Julie & Dennis McCrary *

Justin Balczo

Kaitlyn Hove

Karen Hinkley

Karen Kunz *

Katharine Davis *

Kathleen A. Hoover

Kathryn Coughlin *

Kathy Williamson

Katie Ragsdale

Kelsey Kruzel

Kevin McCrary

Kiana Kaempf

Kris Petterson

Kristen Wotsch *

Kristin Reynolds *

Kristina Buzin

Krystal Kramer *

Lanie Walkup

Laura Brookins

Laura Nassim-Sobhan

Lauren Bozarth

Lauren Feldman

Lauren Garrett

Lauren Gross

Lauren Klosowski

Lauren McCrary

Lauren Reese

Lilian Berger-Wyss

Lisa Workman

Lou & Cindy Davis *

Lydia Nassim-Sobhan

Maddie Thurman

Madeline Dyke *

Madeline Hall

Marie Benson *

Marina Harris

Marion Muller

Marla Kay Kvaal

Marta Ruiz Olalla

Marteki Codjoe

Matt McCrary

Mattie Thompson

Megan Antol

Megan Bozarth

Megan Schenewerk

Mekael Wesley-Rosa

Michelle Howard

Nan Onest ~

Nancy Lippmann *

Noelle Hirsch

P. Richelle White

Patrick Burkhart *

Paul Burke *

Perla Lozoya

Rachael Brown

Rachel Amey

Rachel Schaefer

Rachel Yates

Robert Stineman

Robert von Jess

Sally Morton

Samantha Gagnon

Samuel Shain

Sandy Will

Sarah Gallagher ~

Sarah Grigg

Sarah Sirotkin Lynn

Sharon Stone

Sophia DuVall

Stephanie Few

Stephanie Rocco

Stephanie Wisner

Steven Workman

Teri Turner ~

Tess Moran

Tessa Larsen

Travis Dalton

Tyler Will

Wendy Aquino

Key: *multiple copies/campaign contributions, ~featured interviewee

Introduction

I think my dream job would have been an executive assistant because I love keeping people in order and on task and organized. But I was always sort of told ‘be the person with the assistant,’ said Britt Blackwelder, founder of The Brittish Way.

Have you ever felt guided by external opinions rather than internal motives? Like you had a dream or a plan for your life, but it didn’t line up with everyone else’s expectations?

Maybe you had a clear-cut path but ran into unforeseen obstacles—you didn’t get the acceptance letter or lost the dream job. On the other hand, maybe you followed the exact path you wanted, only to realize it wasn’t what you expected when you got to the end of the road.

If so, you’re not alone. Instead of becoming an executive assistant, Britt went on to be a director of finance at a prominent senior living community. We all know a Britt Blackwelder in our own lives. Maybe you are a Britt Blackwelder. The woman who followed the perfect path: earned her degree, got a good job, married a loving spouse, even went back to graduate school to further her education and increase her earning potential. Britt thought she was on a straight shot and almost hit cruise control. But she soon ran into a question that sent her spinning off course.

Where do my skills and passions intersect? Britt’s accounting and administrative skills coupled with her love of helping people and organizing things intersected at The Brittish Way. The Brittish Way is the professional organizing service company she founded to help people declutter and organize their homes.

If Britt’s career was plotted on a chart, every decision up to this point would’ve formed a diagonal line headed toward the top right corner. However, if you asked an outside observer to plot this career move, I guarantee you the line would’ve plummeted straight down or taken a 180-degree turn. But that’s what is interesting about Britt’s decision to start The Brittish Way—it made perfect sense to her, even if no one else understood it. In reality, Britt’s career did not plummet or move backward; her passions came full circle.

When it comes to choosing a career, the possibilities are endless—it’s both freeing and limiting all at the same time. How do you tune out the external noise long enough to pick a career that makes sense for you? In my search to discover the answer to this question, I turned to female role models who had successfully accomplished this task in their own lives.

As I started paying more attention to women in the workforce, two distinct categories emerged: Women who were passively following a set career path, and women who were actively creating a career they loved. The women in the latter category were rising through the ranks, upending industries, and building companies from the ground up. This second group of women all had one thing in common: innovation.

Innovation is the act of making changes in something established by introducing something new. But why were some women actively innovating while others were not? To answer that question, we need to step back and examine some contributing factors that influence the twenty-first-century workforce.

I think we can all agree the history of working women in America is filled with some serious struggles and notable triumphs. The end of World War II marked a prominent rise of women in the workforce. During both world wars, women kept the economy running by proving they could work jobs typically occupied by men. At the end of the second war, almost 6 million women had started working outside the home. By 1945, they composed nearly 37 percent of America’s total workforce.¹ Unfortunately, this milestone was short-lived.

Despite women’s valiant war-time response, they were quickly sent home when the soldiers returned in search of civilian jobs. The years following WWII were characterized by the largest baby boom in American history, a drop of women in the workforce, and mainstream media’s proliferation of 1950s gender dichotomies.², ³ But not every woman looked like June Cleaver. Many women continued working throughout the ’50s and ’60s; they just earned less than men while battling societal expectations to stay home.

In the early ’60s, the second wave of feminism resulted in a slow increase in the rate of women’s labor force participation. The ’60s and ’70s were monumental decades where legislation was written to recognize and protect women’s rights. There was the Equal Pay Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, to name a few. The ’80s were also filled with promise, as we sent Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court and Sally Ride to outer space.

Women’s labor force participation rate continued to increase throughout the ’90s, peaking in 1999 at 60 percent.⁴ At the highest rate of participation, 60 percent of all working-age women in America were actively engaged in jobs outside the home. But according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this rate has continued to decline ever since. It dropped from 60 percent in 1999 to 56.7 percent in 2015, and is projected to drop as low as 55.8 percent by 2024.⁵

In a surprising contrast, the number of college-educated women entering the workforce is on the rise. Today, an estimated 56 percent of enrolled college students are women, surpassing the number of enrolled men.⁶ Additionally, a Pew Center of Research analysis accurately predicted that 2019 would be the first year where women would represent the majority of the college-educated labor force.⁷ In the first quarter of 2019, the 29.5 million college-educated women inched past the 29.3 million college-educated men to make up 50.2 percent of the college-educated workforce.⁸

What exactly does this mean? It means more and more college-educated women are joining the workforce each year, but they aren’t staying. From a historical perspective, it’s not hard to see why. Over the years, the working world has been less than welcoming to women. But what about today? What is it like to be a woman in the twenty-first-century workforce? It’s good, but not great.

While it’s true that women are increasingly more educated, it’s also true that they hold few C-suite positions, receive little venture capital funding, and battle the ongoing wage gap. That brings us back to the original question of why some women actively innovate while others do not. In order to navigate the uneven terrain of the twenty-first-century workforce, many women passively follow a set career path because it’s the most clear-cut option they see for success. More often than not, these perfect paths lead to good careers. But maybe not great ones.

That’s where innovation comes in. If we want to pursue great careers, not just good ones, we need to reject the fallacy of the perfect path and embrace a mindset of innovation. I’m not an expert in this area because my story is unique. Ironically, I’m an expert because my story is quite common. I’m a walking, talking illustration of what happens when someone passively follows a perfect path only to realize it’s not foolproof.

I was well on my way to becoming Britt Blackwelder 2.0—the girl who did everything right. My career chart had Medical Professional in the top right corner, and I was headed there fast. I excelled in my pre-med curriculum, accumulated observation hours, worked part-time, and even participated in research throughout my college years. But then I chose not to pursue medicine.

As a rising senior, I was too invested in my biology degree to alter course. I assumed I could work for a year or two until I figured out my next move. I was in for a rude awakening. As graduation quickly approached, I realized the following truths. A good degree cannot replace the right degree, and without good timing, good plans are just good dreams. My job search revealed I had neither good timing nor the right degree. My Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences turned out to be some real BS. I’d submit application after application into the abyss, never to hear so much as a cold, hard no.

Those student loans weren’t going to pay themselves, so when the first opportunity knocked, I jumped on the offer. Barely eight months into my entry level job in a ubiquitous cubicle farm, I was miserably bored and desperate for a challenge. From the outside looking in, this is not a tragic story—I got the degree and I got the job. Ta-da! But internally, I was wrestling with feelings of stagnation and the underlying sense that I was capable of more.

I didn’t know what more meant, but I knew something was missing. Since my current job felt like the problem, I assumed a new job would be the solution. I unknowingly traded my slow yet stable desk job for a chaotic and unpredictable sales role. As a result, I went from miserably bored to flat-out miserable. I had a bone to pick with the perfect path.

The fallacy of the perfect path is that if you don’t follow it all the way to the end, it actually limits your options. It’s all or nothing. If you’re like me and change your mind halfway through, the whole thing falls apart. I had picked a path headed toward a career in healthcare not realizing the implications of the double checkpoint. I had passed the undergraduate checkpoint with flying colors, but without the clearance of the graduate checkpoint I was in career limbo. Your experience might not be related to a career in healthcare, but I bet you’ve encountered some form of dissonance in your own life where you altered course and realized it was no longer smooth sailing.

I realized that I’d made a mistake by assuming a perfect path would lead to a successful career. As John C. Maxwell put it, A wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others’ mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others’ successes.⁹ In my attempt to learn from others’ successes, I turned once again to the female role models I admired. These women had created careers they loved, and I wanted to know how.

When I researched their products, ideas, and organizations, I saw a direct correlation to my own pain points. I could picture their proposed solutions meeting my perceived needs. When I asked how they had created careers that made sense for them, their stories did not disappoint. Their answers were filled with rich insights and unique perspectives that only come from trial and error.

After listening to these women share their stories, what I now believe is this: Our careers (and lives, for that matter) will be successful when what we’re doing lines up with what we love. Despite what you may have heard, there are no right or wrong paths. The most important thing you can do is figure out where you’re needed in this world and be fully there.

So how did the women in this book figure it out? How did they discover where they needed to be and what they needed to be doing?

They actively embraced innovation. For the entirety of my brief yet frustrating career, I had done the exact opposite. I had passively followed an established path. What I got from following an established path was societal affirmation that I was headed toward a successful life. What I didn’t have was an innovative mindset.

Individuals with an innovative mindset have identified the intersection of their skills and passions. When you work toward your passions using your talents, you create a catalyst for success and change. In sharing the stories of why women innovate, I hope to demonstrate how a life and career others don’t understand might be the perfect one for you to pursue. Throughout this journey I have discovered a different way to view my own career, and I hope this book can do the same for you.

If you picked up this book hoping to find your purpose, you’re in the wrong place. In fact, you’ll never find your purpose reading someone else’s writing. I know because I’ve tried. So, if not purpose, what will you find? Inspiration. This book is for young, ambitious women trying to figure out where they belong in our complicated workforce. This book is also for women launching their comeback careers, reentering the workforce as mothers, or pivoting to a new field after years in the same industry. There is no age or experience discrimination here—all are welcome. And fear