Recent Milestones for Lean In Seattle

It is an honor to serve as the Co-Lead of Lean In Seattle with Alicia Redmond and to collaborate with 35+ members of the Leadership Team. We are a diverse, dynamic and innovative team. We promote gender equality and #MoveWomenForward by creating spaces that provide social inclusion across dimensions of difference, and we build programs to remove barriers, identity threats, and exclusions.

The women who lead this organization consistently do incredible work and in August we reached two major milestones. Composed this article to spread to highlight the contributions of the team and to spread the word!

Milestone One

At our August CONNECT event we transformed the diversity and inclusion framework that I launched in 2016, which the team (and members of the team who have moved on since then) has iterated into practice and provided feedback on for two years into a #SocialGood.

The inclusion strategies developed have already been taught to Circle moderators and members at events led by Laura Espiru, Anna Briant, Carol Lwali, and Elis Salamone. For the remainder of 2018 and all of 2019 Ana Montalvan, Miguelina Meireles, and Carolina Hileman of the Wins Celebration team will be engaging with our 6,000+ members to capture all successes that these inclusion best practices bring to our members. Ardak Kussainova and Shweta Patira on the Data team will be measuring the impact that inclusion has for the chapter and the 100+ Lean In Circles in our Network. The Marketing team's Maggie van Winkle, Vicky Chan, Leslee Stockton, Awen Wen, and Hillary Brooks will then share the inclusion successes and impact across the organization, with our community partners, and Lean In peers across the globe. The Diversity and Inclusion team led by Di Whitman is also expanding to brainstorm new inclusion initiatives and to help launch a local branch of Lean In Women of Color. Our team is always open to new members, if you are interested in joining us, please contact us via our website.

Milestone Two

Lean In Seattle is the largest Lean In organization in the world with over 6,000 members. Our network is also has the largest number of Circles, there are over 100 Circles in our network, each led by a Circle Moderator who manages between 6-12 members (the number of Corporate Circles is growing rapidly)!

As of August, we have also been globally recognized as the most strategically inclusive and diverse organization in the world. Our organization received the Lean In More Voices Award at the 2018 Lean In Regional Leaders Conference in Palo Alto.

Lean In Leaders from more than 25 countries gathered at Stanford for the Regional Leaders Conference. On the first day, I learned that Lean in Seattle had been named as one of three finalists for the More Voices award alongside Lean In Malaysia and Lean In Saint Louis, which have both created outstanding inclusion initiatives. This award is one of five new honors that Lean In created this year to recognize organizations doing exceptional work to promote gender equality. During the conference, each of the 150+ leaders had the opportunity to vote for the community awards and at the close of the conference, I learned that our Lean In peers from around the world had selected us to receive this honor.

The four additional award categories include Always Growing, Make It Great, Own It, and People First. The winners of each category are pictured above with Rachel Thomas, Lean In Co-Founder and President of Lean In.

The winners of the Inaugural Lean In Community Awards

Always Growing Award: Claudia Caryevschi, Lean In Metlife Corporate Network

Make It Great Award: Julene Allen, Founder of Lean In Women of Color

More Voices: Me, Co-Lead, Lean In Seattle

Own It: Widney Passe, and Insaff El Hassini, Founder of Lean In France

People First: Preethi Guruswamy, Founder of Lean In Women in Tech India

Thank you to all of the leaders on the Lean In Seattle team for your dedication, to Lean In for providing us with a platform, and our peers around the world for voting for us. This honor means a lot to our community!

Will continue to spread the word about milestones as this extraordinary organization continues to #MoveWomenForward!