This is a highlights miniseries drawing together the wisdom and experiences of past guests. 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, especially now.
The first episode of this miniseries explored the power of resilience. In that episode, our guests share how they took on their toughest challenges to bounce back stronger than before.
This episode, we’ll dig into self-care, the yin to resilience’s yang. Resilience -- having the wherewithal to face personal and professional hurdles head on -- isn’t infinite. At a certain point, physically and emotionally, even the most successful women need to take a pause, step out of the ring, and take care of themselves. Allowing time for self-care isn’t easy amid all the day’s demands (this is specifically true for women all the time and even more acute during the current pandemic). But, as we’ll hear today, self-care is essential to being one’s best self. Whether it’s exercise, a mindfulness practice, a massage, a glass of wine, or quality time with family (without tech distractions) -- we hope this episode will inspire you to carve time out of your schedule to focus on you.
Featuring:
- Amy DuRoss, Co-Founder and CEO of Vineti, a company that’s defining a whole new software category for precision medicine therapy management by enabling vein to vein supply chain documentation and analytics for these breakthrough new therapies.
- 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).
- Glo Harris, an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies.
- Karla Gallardo, Co-Founder and CEO of of clothing and lifestyle brand, Cuyana.
- Michelle Phan, Founder of EM Cosmetics and YouTube makeup artist.
Want more WoVen? Check out all our episodes here and wherever you get your podcasts.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
LAURA: 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. 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, especially now.
The first episode of this miniseries explored the power of resilience. In that episode, our guests share how they took on their toughest challenges to bounce back stronger than before.
This episode, we’ll dig into self-care, the yin to resilience’s yang. Resilience -- having the wherewithal to face personal and professional hurdles head on -- isn’t infinite. At a certain point, physically and emotionally, even the most successful women need to take a pause, step out of the ring, and take care of themselves. Allowing time for self-care isn’t easy amid all the day’s demands (this is specifically true for women all the time and even more acute during the current pandemic). But, as we’ll hear today, self-care is essential to being one’s best self. Whether it’s exercise, a mindfulness practice, a massage, a glass of wine, or quality time with family (without tech distractions) -- we hope this episode will inspire you to carve time out of your schedule to focus on you.
First, we’re going to hear from Karla Gallardo, co-founder and CEO of clothing and lifestyle brand, Cuyana. Born and raised in Ecuador, Karla embodies an immigrant mentality, putting her all into achievement: an Ivy League education, a STEM degree, a coveted career in investment banking, and, today, building and running Cuyana, a favorite of celebrities like Meghan Markle, Reese Witherspoon, and Jessica Alba. Here, she explains how self-care -- particularly mental health -- is not only necessary for herself -- it’s vital for her effectiveness as a leader.
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LAURA: How do you think about self care for yourself?
KARLA: Uh, choppy. I wish it wasn't, but that's always what ends up giving. Uh, no, but I make sure I take care of it. Um, part of being an Ecuadorian woman is that, I mean I recognize that when I feel good with my body, with how I look, like all of that is very empowering even like, during the workday. And so, many long nights, hard to make it to the gym sometimes. But, um, when I start to feel icky, I just balance back to me and try to reset. Part of being a CEO of a company, I'm motivating people every day. And if my mindset is not there and I don't feel good, it's really hard to do that.
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LAURA: Next, we have Michelle Phan, digital entrepreneur, Founder of EM Cosmetics and the original Youtube creator and influencer. Michelle’s infectious personality and creativity quickly garnered millions of followers and customers from YouTube to Sephora. Yet, the demands of all of Michelle's fans and business partnerships, as well as the vanity of the beauty industry, led her to burn out in 2016. Faced with a choice of her career or her mental health, Michelle chose herself and took a digital hiatus that shocked her fans. She returned to the public eye last year, but this time on her own terms. Here she explains how, today, that experience has given her invaluable perspective, grounded in gratitude.
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LAURA: I wanted to know if you think that balance can exist between work and personal life, given some of your experiences?
MICHELLE: It can exist, but it's really dependent on your bandwidth.
MICHELLE: Like myself, I can work 14 hours and not be tired because I love working. But I know other people. They can't work that long. They need breaks. They need to recharge. And so it really depends on your energy level, too. Like, I can't say you can have healthy work-life balance, because it's really dependent on how do you see what balance is. That being said with me, there was a point where my personal life and my work life, there was no separation. And that was the problem.
LAURA: You said before that you felt like you had to make a choice between your mental health and your career. Do you still feel like you battle that?
MICHELLE: Not anymore. I think it is perspective. Like when you're in the grind, when you're in that lane where you're racing, all you want to do is win, win, win. But you have to remove yourself from that race to kind of see what's happening. And so I had to remove myself from the race to appreciate what I had, and then also to recharge and clear my mind into figuring out where am I going now? Because sometimes in order to move forward, you have to take two steps back.
Whenever I wake up, I always think about what I'm grateful for. I kind of go through all the people who enrich my life with love. Like my mom, my friends, my family. And that kind of helps me kind of recenter myself, cause sometimes we can get drowned out in our first world problems.
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LAURA: Next we have Amy DuRoss, a woman whose career has spanned tech, consulting, policy and healthcare. Today she’s CEO of Vineti, a company that’s defining a whole new software category for precision medicine therapy management by enabling vein to vein supply chain documentation and analytics for these breakthrough new therapies. With three young children and a writer husband, Amy is living the Bay Area dual-income, always -on chaos and is doing so with incredible finesse and stamina -- in large part because she and the family find togetherness in their weekend workouts and spiritual practice.
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AMY: So first of all, my kids are extremely active, so we play a lot of sports outside. I try to kind of roll my wellness athletic time in with my spending time with my children. As much as I can. So lots of activity, whenever I can get the access on the weekends. I'm a big yoga fan, but I don't get to do as much yoga as I'd like to. And then running. Running is the easiest way to just get some cardiovascular in, and wherever you are in the world.
So, my husband's a Buddhist, so he's a daily meditator. So, my goal, once a week, is to meditate with him. And so I'd say most weeks we're actually quite successful in that. It's not an extended period of meditation. If it's 10, 15 minutes. For me, given the pace of my life, to sit for ten to fifteen minutes is, I think is, I'm, I'm doing pretty well. I was raised Catholic. So I really do subscribe to a lot of the rituals in Catholicism. I'm a huge fan of Judaism also. So I enjoy being more of a cultural kind of admirer of that faith and the heritage and history. But I would say I'm more of an amalgam of different pieces at this point in my life.
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LAURA: Like Amy, these next two women have adopted positive practices during their days or working weeks, creating mental space and taking control of their time. First is Glo Harris, an executive and leadership coach who has worked with many Fortune 100 companies on meaty concepts like self-confidence, self-awareness, and truth-speaking. Glo is also human, and, like her clients, feels stress, hardship, insecurity and doubt. Here’s what she does to tackle those negative forces head-on.
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GLO: What I've seen, though, is a theme to today, is that when I'm in a rut, I can hear myself saying to myself, you're too old and too tired to start over again. Or no, you can't do that. Who do you think you are? And I will somehow snap to with, "Wait a minute. Who's the storyteller?” And with that awareness, I'm able to switch the story to, "Yes, I can. And why not me?"
NINA: So what goes into -- without sharing trade secrets -- what goes into the making of a successful, talented, retained McKinsey consultant?
GLO: A lot of it is belief in self. Really gaining enough awareness that you know what stories you're telling yourself, and knowing that you have agency. The word you used -- over changing your mindset of the stories. All of us grow up with stories of how we define ourselves. So becoming aware of what the story is, and then learning some techniques of creating your own story is one step toward believing in yourself.
NINA: Do you have a spiritual or mindfulness practice?
GLO: I do yoga. I don't do it as regularly as I wish I did. I have a gratitude practice. At the end of the day, I do ask myself, how was I wonderful today? I also love doing random acts of kindness, which I call a spiritual practice, that gives me a tickle. Like going through a grocery line and paying for the person behind me. Or going through a through-way thing and paying for the guy behind me. Just silly things like that.
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LAURA: Movement, in whatever form, has been a recurring means by which our remarkable guests take care of themselves. Our final speaker is Gail Maderis, a woman who has spent 22+ years in the biopharma industry. Today, she is the CEO of Antiva, a company developing novel therapeutics for HPV-related diseases. Gail is also a woman with a fierce determination to excel and achieve, even after her own diagnosis of multiple sclerosis 13 years ago.
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NINA: So let's talk a little bit about you. I know your work ethic and how relentless you are. And we were earlier talking a little bit about hiking, so I also know they are very committed to being active when you can. What do you do to bolster and maintain your mental, or your sort of, spiritual health?
GAIL: I practice qigong. It's a practice of moving energy around in the body. It's one of the five Chinese traditional medicine practices along with acupuncture.
And when I started it, being around science, it's kind of tough to embrace alternative medicine and practices. But I looked at it. And I had heard it had benefit for M.S., just in terms of working on flexibility and balance. I said, well, I'll give it a try. And what I found is that I get a lot more out of it than just those two things. And I think part of it may be that I'm not very good at meditation. I get about, you know, three or four breaths into it and I'm going.
NINA: Your brain is racing!
GAIL: But I think that the Qigong where there is a form, and where you're going through 64 movements, there's just enough focus on something else that you clear your mind. And it is just something that I've incorporated into my daily life and get a lot of benefit.
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LAURA: For a woman to reach the top ranks of a profession or to beat the odds of failure, they likely will have overachieved and hustled from a young age. Achievement isn’t easy -- more often than not, it can be back-breaking. But, as the guests today remind us, burning out is not a strategy for success. Carving out time for physical and mental restoration -- is essential to being one’s best self. These are just a few examples of self care that 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