Dare Diary, Page 2: Dare to Speak Up feat. Lisa Bowman

This is Dare Diary: an ongoing account of the human journey from paved roads to unbeaten paths. If you’re seeing this for the first time, hi! I’m Adam. Welcome, and I hope you stick around. Also, take a look at the first page of the Diary for a little context – it’ll explain what you’ll get by subscribing and reading along.

Let me begin with a quick reflection on last week. I hit “publish” without even the slightest inkling that I’d experience such a swell of support for this newsletter. As of this publication, 259 of you have followed along. Many of you I know personally – and I believe I’ve contacted most of you directly to express my thanks. If I don’t know you directly yet, I hope to at some point. Regardless – I’m deeply grateful for your vote of confidence to Dare along with me.

For new readers: I use “Dare” to mean the journey down an uncertain road – often entrepreneurial; sometimes emotional; always existential. The word is meant to encompass the good, the bad, and the ugly of that journey – and is best paired with a fearless foundation of frank honesty about the process.

My Dare has been, since late 2020, to found and run Authentic Avenue . It’s a B2B content production company specializing in video and podcasts for high-stakes demand gen and executive thought leadership. Through it, I’ve secured time with and profiled over 300 CXOs from the hottest startups to the Fortune 50.

It’s made $0 this year so far.

We’re still in January, to be fair. And that’s part of the point here – to be open. Plus, there’s plenty of new things I’m building to get that number up, and I’m confident 2023 can be a great year.

I plan to be as transparent about progress as possible (on my LinkedIn page mostly), and to be as real as I can – to show that success is far from overnight, and to serve as a foil to the corporate autoerotic pablum-washing we all too often glaze-scroll past.

In doing so, I aim to set a standard for the Dares I hope to collect and promote from this very readership. If you are interested in taking advantage of this newsletter as a channel to share your Dare, send an email to [email protected] and I’ll work with you to make it happen.

Today, I have the honor of sharing one such Dare. It is not the typical founding story Dare which OG listeners of my podcast may be familiar with. But it’s a story that needs to be told.

The Darer is the first chief executive I ever had the pleasure of earning an interview with, when I was just starting to do podcasts with businesses professionally, all the way back in January 2019: Lisa Bowman .

Lisa and I have kept in touch ever since we met at her office for that first podcast in Alexandria, VA. Some four years later, we turn the mic on again to tell a new story – one marked by bravery, boldness, and a tinge of bittersweet, shaded by what had come before.

This is her story. When helpful, my questions and context are in italics. I have also included audio from her story – the full video conversation will be published at a later date as part of To Dare is Human.?

It may be upsetting to some readers.

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What is the truth that led to the Dare?

My truth is that I was relieved – I was terminated – from my dream job as a result of taking the Dare, which was to speak out when something happened that was wrong.

I was sexually harassed by another member of the executive team at my former employer, United Way. We had a policy that basically said that if you did not report harassment or even suspected harassment, you were violating a policy and you yourself were at risk of termination for not reporting it. I violated that policy on my own behalf for 15 months by not reporting what was happening to me. I stayed quiet about it. I did follow the policy when it happened to two younger women on my team – women of color, who were in no position to go up against a white male C-Suite executive. So I brought it to HR. I followed the policy. I did what I was supposed to do. I subsequently had to go back and do that on my own behalf because he had finally crossed a line with me and once I reported it, I got retaliated against for reporting it.

What steps did you take to regain control of your story?

I really started thinking about the model of who I worked for and where their money came from. And it suddenly occurred to me that there was a bigger responsibility here.

I say responsibility because what happened next wasn't about, as some people have alleged, it wasn't about vengeance, it was about justice and truth. And for me it was really important that donors knew what was happening with the money that they were donating to this organization and what was going on at that organization.

And so I started to think about going public with the story, which candidly was the Dare here, more so than even speaking up. Because that's a really, really scary thing to do – to be a whistleblower, to go public, to be the face of that and put yourself out there.?

In November 2020, HuffPo ran the story.

As that story hit and my phone literally started to blow up, you know, it was honestly like one of the scariest things because I didn't know what was coming at me. I didn't know if I was going to have the haters coming or if I was going to get an outpouring of support.?

The latter happened. It was by and large an outpouring of support from people – people that I had worked with at United Way that texted me and said, “Hey, I saw this happening. I wish I had spoken up. I wish I had done something to protect you,” or “thank you because I don't think you knew this. It was happening to me there.”

When I got those messages, that was the moment that I thought, okay, you know what? Painful as this has been, it was the right thing to do for the right reason.?

In March 2022, Lisa published a book recounting her experience: Harasshole: A Cautionary Tale of My Time at “America’s Favorite Charity.”

I wrote the book because I felt like I had been on a learning journey through this process and wanted other people to understand how to navigate this should they find themselves in this situation. Because this happens every single day to women and to men.?

Are there any lingering hesitations about being back in any workplace, where the previous one resulted in the Dare at all?

Yes. And what I will say to that is that I recognize that this happens in the workplace, right? I know it personally. I've talked to so many other people that have experienced it. It's a fact. It happens. I think that the workplace and how they deal with it is that's what makes the difference. But I will tell you that there is a stigma around people that have spoken out about these situations. Um, I've got a whole cadre of women that I've talked to, a couple guys, but mostly women and anybody that has spoken out about this has found it incredibly difficult to secure employment. We are perceived as a risk and a problem, and that's wrong and that really needs to change.

What is justice, then?

I would like to see, and this is a big audacious wish, but I would like to see this really be addressed to the point where it's not tolerated anymore. Everybody has policies that talk about, we have zero tolerance for retaliation and zero tolerance for harassment, but it's still happening.?

I have an 18 year old stepdaughter…in four years, she's gonna be in the workforce. I do not want her entering a workforce where this is still a problem. And I think that we all have that responsibility to make things better than they were when we encountered them. And so my mission is really to raise visibility of this, and figure out how we get this to stop and how we address it appropriately.

What would you say to somebody who was in your position three years ago??

I would tell them that it is a scary thing to do. I can't sugarcoat that.

It's a scary thing to do, but if we do not start to do it and push back and say enough is enough, nothing is going to change, right? If we continue to stay quiet, if we continue to be intimidated, if we continue to fear retaliation, we're not gonna make any progress, and this is too important of an issue in 2023 that we need to address it.

So I would tell people: find the courage, find a support system. Reach out to me if you need to. I've got your back, but we need to make change.

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United Way CEO Brian Gallagher resigned in February 2021 following allegations of misconduct. Data from the organization’s annual report shows he was paid out just over $3.6 million.

Thank you for reading this page of the Diary. To tell us your story, send an email to [email protected] .

As before: let’s be open to share, create community to care, and tenaciously Dare.

Because, after all, to Dare is human.?