Superbloom Studios Newsletter

November, 2022

What’s new??

Women in the Workplace Report:

McKinsey&Co recently released the 8th edition of their?“Women in the workplace report”?and it details how women leaders are demanding more from their workplace and are leaving their organizations in unprecedented numbers. The report outlines that the ‘first rung’, which is the promotion to?a manager, is still broken with just 87 women per 100 men being promoted. Likewise, only 1 in 4 C-Suite leaders are women and only 1 in 20 are women of colour.?

Women are as ambitious as men but face stronger headwinds and microaggressions that prompt them to leave their organizations. Young women in the workplace value diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and are ready to switch to better opportunities, especially as they see more senior women leaders do so. Some major reasons why women are leaving their organizations stems from the fact that women demand more from work and in many cases do more in terms of DEI but are underrecognized for their efforts in performance evaluations. Remote work and flexibility are also more important for women and the data clearly shows that when women are allowed to choose how they want to work, outcomes dramatically improve.Much has been said about the leadership pipeline for women but it is important that companies step up to save the pipeline from further damage.?

While demanding more purpose from work seems to be a major thing mentioned in the report, would that change as major companies like Meta and Twitter are massively laying off workers right now? We would love to know your thoughts on this in the comments below!?

Fem-focus: an initiative for equal funding opportunities!?

Superbloom advisor?Kate Gunning?recently announced the launch of Fem-Focus, a joint venture between Focus Academy and Silicon Valley in Your Pocket, to disrupt funding inequity.?

Join them for a?free webinar?soon to better understand the issue of biases in the deal room!

What we have been up to: Happy hour meeting with advisors of Superbloom!??

Our partner Dr.Raji Baskaran attended the?10th anniversary?of Indiaspora, where she met people working in policy and politics, film, climate change solution advocacy, philanthropy, business and venture capital, entrepreneurship and more from the Indian diaspora. Some key takeaways for her included how intentionally inclusive community building can result in an amazing and impactful experience for all. The speakers and participants included people of Indian origin across the gender, language, religion and expertise, who not only brought diverse perspectives but also felt empowered to bring their whole complex selves. She made many amazing friendships and well wishers of Superbloom Studios' mission. Maybe, we will have new partnerships and projects evolving from these connections over time! One major highlight was also hearing from?Neera Tanden?on the Indian and South Asian community’s representation in the current White House.

After the Indiaspora event, Raji also met with Superbloom advisors: Dr.Natalie Wisniewski and Kate Gunning along with friend of Superbloom and product advisor, Dipika Jain in San Francisco. They got a tour of the wonderful coworking and event space of?Focus Academy?and discussed future collaborations including the virtual and hybrid boot camps for women-led start-ups in health and bio areas.

Advisor Highlight: Eleanor Lecocq, Corporate and Securities Attorney in the United States and Canada

In our recent conversation with Eleanor, she told us about her passion for assisting fledgling businesses and has worked with our Founder Dr. Raji Baskaran since 2021 as an attorney and advisor. She is a business attorney specializing in business transactions of all sizes and complex merger and acquisition transactions.?

In addition to being a successful attorney, Eleanor is also a jewelry designer, Youtuber and blogger.?Her jewelry business gives her an informed understanding of the environment in which a small business entrepreneur operates, and it is valued and appreciated at Superbloom.?In fact, her very first paying job at age 11 was designing and selling jewelry at a farmer’s market in Victoria, British Columbia where she grew up.?As her jewelry business has matured, she has been able to donate 10-15% of profits from special collections to Nurses House, an effort in supporting nurses impacted by COVID through their work.?She has also been able to contribute to the WHR (Women for Human Rights), a program in Nepal supporting women artisans there, and to the Women’s Fund of Hawaii.

She recalls that one of her biggest life challenges was the decision to leave Canada where she had earned her law degree and worked as a securities regulator to move to the US to study for the Washington State Bar exam, which she passed on the first try.??

As a small child she remembers her grandmother taking great care to apply her makeup while she was battling cancer, and how it became a fun time for them both and a lesson in resilience that she would always remember.?She credits the impact of this with informing her aesthetic sense which first appeared as a conversation and style guide for professional women starting out in their careers.

Ms. Lecocq thoughtfully answered that her biggest ongoing challenge is mindfully balancing her career, business and time with her growing family, and maintaining the time management that it requires.

What we are reading: “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin

If you are looking for a self-help book with clear cut directions on how to become a happier person, then this is not the book for you! The Happiness Project is one woman’s experience in trying to not just be happy, but happier. Gretchen has a family that she loves and the other aspects of her life also seem to be going well but she feels that she is not living up to her maximum ‘happiness potential’. She isn’t depressed or sad, just not as happy as she could be and the book outlines the different (but methodical) things that she does over the period of a year, trying to up the ante on her happiness.?

The book?talks about things that we all already know: exercise more, sleep well (and in a dark room!), clean your room, be grateful, do things you love etc., and you shall be happier than you are! In that sense, the book does not bring much to the table. What I would say the book does relatively well is the fact that we see a woman doing all of this and outlining how it makes her feel, with quips and stories about her family and life added in between. The book doesn’t read like a self help book but rather a person writing about their experience following a self-help book.?

All of our experiences are unique and not everyone might be in the same position as Gretchen to embark on a project solely to maximize one’s happiness. Rubin is up-front about the privileges that she has and doesn’t paint everyone’s experiences with the same brush as hers and that was refreshing. Some books are very quotable and some other books have a lot of quotes in them and this was definitely the latter. But, I did enjoy the little bits of research and loads of quotes, sandwiched in chapters focusing on her self improvement.?

She doesn’t change her entire life to be happy but instead does little things in her everyday life and that made the book seem more realistic and achievable. If you are looking for a simple read that reminds you that little actions can help you derive more purpose from life, it is a fairly good read. At the end of the book, I was reminded of Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’: “It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.”

Artist Highlight: Geethanjali M (Friend of Superbloom, Fellow IITM Alumna and science writer)?

Most of us run from creepy-crawlies but a few are able to find beauty and wonder in unlikely places!

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