This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests on the podcast. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments to remind us all of these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
This is a challenging time for everyone, so this first episode explores resilience. Our guests share some of the toughest challenges they've faced, whether unexpected hurdles in their personal lives, profound moments of self-doubt, or macro-economic downturns.
We hope you are inspired by how these women accepted their realities, organized their thinking and moved past barriers - all to bounce back stronger than before.
Featuring:
- Gail Maderis, President and CEO of Antiva, a company developing novel therapeutics for HPV-related diseases (a set of diseases that is not only stigmatized and underserved by therapeutics, but disproportionately affects women)
- Dr. Odette Harris, MD MPH, professor of neurosurgery at Stanford -- America’s first black female tenured neurosurgery professor ever.
- Glo Harris, an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies
- Julia Collins, Founder and CEO of Planet FWD, a company helping to reverse climate change by making craveable snacks from regenerative ingredients
- Julie Wainwright, Founder and CEO of luxury consignment juggernaut The RealReal
Want more WoVen? Check out all our episodes here and wherever you get your podcasts.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NINA: You're listening to Woven, a podcast from Canaan. WoVen stands for Women Who Venture, and represents a platform, a community and really a celebration of venturesome and adventurous women in healthcare, tech and business.
This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests on the podcast. We've picked a few of the most inspirational, powerful, and hilarious moments to remind us all of these women's stories and how they can translate to our own lives.
This is a challenging time for everyone, so this first episode explores resilience. Our guests share some of the toughest challenges they've faced, whether unexpected hurdles in their personal lives, profound moments of self-doubt, or macro-economic downturns.
We hope you are inspired by how these women accepted their realities, organized their thinking and moved past barriers - all to bounce back stronger than before.
First, you'll be hearing from Gail Maderis, a woman with a fierce determination to excel and achieve, even after her own diagnosis of multiple sclerosis 13 years ago. Her steadfastness has served her well in 22+ years in the biopharma industry.
In 2015, just when Gail thought she’d retire and enjoy some traveling, Canaan’s partner, Wende Hutton, had a better idea: recruit Gail to build and run Antiva, a company developing novel therapeutics for HPV-related diseases (a set of diseases that is not only stigmatized and underserved by therapeutics, but disproportionately affects women). As CEO, she has been a champion not just to the company but to the women's’ health cause. Gail spun the challenge of MS on its head, finding three hidden benefits that have since shaped her worldview.
Gail: Well, while I was at Five Prime, I ended up getting diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And that probably was the single toughest challenge I faced in my career. It made me realize -- well, actually, I didn't realize, but my doctors kind of enforced on me -- that I couldn't continue to run the same schedule that I had been used to. I've always been kind of a workaholic, and--
NINA: Internal limitations, not external limitations, and all of a sudden there were boundaries.
GAIL: Exactly. And sadly, fatigue and just the physical consequences of M.S. were just too much to manage with a really tough CEO job. So I made the decision to retire. But I wasn't really ready to retire. But I think that the M.S. actually had three hidden benefits. One is that it made me really focus on what matters. I don't have time to do everything. So I focus on the things that really count. And I've learned to be more efficient and let go of the small stuff. The second is it's given me some unique opportunities.
When I stepped down from Five Prime, I was almost immediately asked to run BayBio which was the Bay Area's life science industry organization. And I never would have considered taking on a non-profit role. But it turned out to be a wonderful way to give back, to expand my network, and really contributed a whole different level to the industry.
GAIL: And the third thing is that it really, on a very personal level, reinforced my commitment to helping patients. When I joined the industry there were no treatments for M.S. And I literally can stand and walk today because of the breakthroughs of this industry. And having that personal impact has just, kind of re-committed me to the value that our industry can bring to really changing lives.
NINA: Gail used the reality of her illness to actually build and fortify her personal and professional resilience. We had another guest who showed us that resilience is really a mindset.
Dr. Odette Harris is a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford -- and the second African-American female professor of neurosurgery anywhere. Odette operates right at the razor’s edge, with peoples’ lives literally in the balance, armed with poise, positivity, and an impervious nerve.
NINA: So you live in a baseline intensity. Your adrenaline levels are fairly high. Must be. And then you also, as you're practicing and operating, you have the intensity of that. How do you think about that level of stress and manage your grace and calm under pressure?
ODETTE: So, again, I think that -- I think the question on its face might not be correct in that I think stress is relative, and I don't know what my cortisol or adrenaline levels might be. I don't feel like I'm operating at a level of that intensity, because I think it's one that I chose, and it's an existence that is meaningful to me and doesn't have those negative connotations.
NINA: Incredible. So stress to you is context dependent, and your sense of competency and resilience and self empowerment to deal with it is an antidote to what other people might view as an incredibly stressful--
ODETTE: Well, it's pairing that with your path. And I actually really love my job. Again, I feel so blessed. I mean, I get to interact with some of the most talented and brilliant people on the planet, like, in terms of my residents. I get to have, like, that repertoire, like, every day. Like it's so much fun to, like, talk to really bright people and -- and to be mission-driven in that. Right. So we're not just shooting the breeze. We're actually interacting on the benefit of someone else, on the behalf of someone else. And then to interact with families is an honor. To be able to help people.
NINA: From very personal challenges to even bigger changes in the world, these next guests share their experiences of bouncing back in the face of a company’s evolution and larger economic changes.
First is Glo Harris, an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies. In her work, she trades in concepts such as self-confidence, self-awareness, truth-speaking, team alignment, legacy and succession. Glo gets really deep into the mud of it, looking at what it is to aspire and to achieve, and also how all of us wrestle with personal and institutional demons along the way.
Glo, like her clients, is human and has felt intense hardship, personal pain, and financial uncertainty. Here is her perspective on what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to moving forward, even if it’s into the unknown.
GLO: How do we move on? You know, I can feel hurt for a while. I remember when the market crashed in 2008. In one day, I lost 90 percent of my work because companies couldn't pay me anymore, and 50 percent of my portfolio. And I'm the breadwinner. And I was anxious, really anxious for about six weeks. And when I would share my anxiety with my friends, they'd say, oh, you're so resilient. You'll land on your feet. You always land on your feet. Which was so not useful. And I called my son Steve, who's now 58. But at that point, he was only 48. And he came out and we talked. And I said exactly what I'm saying to you, that it's so frustrating for me that my friends just don't know how to listen. And I feel cheerlead and it sucks, and I don't know if I'm going to recover. And I whined for a while, and he took my hand and he said, "Mom, what I want to say to you, you're not gonna like hearing." He said, I also have watched you, time and time again, recover from suffering or a loss.
NINA: Or a setback.
GLO: A setback. And I have watched how resilient you are. And that's been an amazing model for me. And I assume that you're going to recover from this one, too. But if you don't, I'm there for you. It was like all I needed to hear. And I think that's what I offer to my clients when they are in the abyss, when they've had a setback. Now, is that unique to me? Probably not. But is it something that I feel good about? I do.
NINA: And I think it is absolutely true to you.
NINA: Second, we have Julia Collins, a woman who has dedicated her career to food. Today, she is Founder and CEO of Planet FWD, a company helping to reverse climate change by making craveable snacks from regenerative ingredients. She previously was a restaurateur working alongside Danny Meyer to open some of New York City's hottest restaurants, and then co-founded Zume, a robotic pizza delivery company based in the Bay Area. Julia, like so many of us, is acutely aware of how an organization can change as it grows, and, having realized there wasn’t a natural place for her, has had to make the hard decision to move on.
LAURA (COHOST): Can you talk about a difficult decision or inflection point in your career?
JULIA: You know, if I've done one thing well, consistently in my career, it's knowing when it's the right time to move on. But every time is difficult. And so one of the most difficult times for me was when I realized that I had to leave Mexicue. That was hard. I still love that business so much. But you know the issue there was that we were three co-founders. We bootstrapped that business. We did not pay ourselves for years. And we just literally ran out of gas. And I had to go and start making money again as a single woman living in New York City. You know, I had to pay the bills.
JULIA: That was one of the most difficult points in my career, because I didn't want to leave. Emotionally, I didn't want to leave. But I knew that practically, it didn't make sense to stay…So, you know, that was one of those times when I just had to be very honest with myself and just make the tough decision, and talk honestly with my partners, and create a really reasonable timeline, so that I wasn't waiting until I was completely out of gas…That was really a difficult time.
NINA: Finally, we have Julie Wainwright, founder and CEO of The RealReal, who has also had her share of failure at the hands of larger economic forces. Before The RealReal, she was CEO to Pets.com, a high-profile victim of the early 2000s dot-com crash. Facing what she calls “just horrible” job prospects -- not to mention a divorce -- Julie at first felt despondent, but then questioned why she (and other women) was beating herself up, when her male counterparts weren’t, even finding analogies to baseball, of all things!
JULIE: I would say after Pets.com, I really beat myself up a lot. I don't know if the CEO of Webfan beat himself up. I bet he thought,"eh, I had lost one, I'll win one next time." So, it's something we do as women. And you need to take a breath and stop beating yourself up, because the world will beat you up in itself. And the truth is, if you've had a failure, there'll be a win. In the future, there's always someone richer. There's always someone better looking. There's always someone younger, there's always someone wiser. But so what? You're going to drive yourself nuts thinking I woulda, coulda, shoulda. And that's, I think, the key lesson.
And women do it much worse than men. That we just sort of -- you know, we do. We take on too much. We're very self-critical. We let things linger, and we have to just learn how to shake it off. I think if I had a daughter, or a son, I'd put him in sports that actually were team sports, where they had a lot of play time, because you win some, you lose some. It builds a lot of character. Sports are really always a great analogy. How many basketball games those guys play? How many baseball games? You know what? A great batting average is like 35 percent. I mean, come on, you get a 35 percent hit rate in the valley, you'd be considered a failure. So, you know, you've got to redefine the way you look at yourself. Women definitely beat themselves up too much, and we just have to stop it.
NINA: With this mindset, Julie had the confidence and wear-with-all to start and grow The RealReal, a $1.5 billion company that’s turned the fashion industry on its head.
To achieve as a woman takes a unique combination of ambition, talent, grit and contortionism. These are just a few examples of the resilience our WoVen guests have shared with us. Were you inspired by these women? Be sure to listen to the full interviews on any podcast app and find out more at canaan.com/woven