What advice would you give to an entrepreneur who’s hoping to address social issues occurring on a global scale?

Any successful leader or organisation really tends to prioritise relationships first.

That is something that I tend to pride myself on being good at. I always tell new members that when I joined YWA I was really shy. I used to go to events and be so nervous, but I really started to harness the power of (I don’t like the word networking because it has a bad professional connotation) relationship building.

I think in order to be successful in building any business, you really have to be open to learning from others, accepting that you don’t know everything and thinking about how you can lean in and build a relationship with someone and have them help you.

I just don’t think you can do it alone, and sometimes our ego gets in the way.

When you’re able to build those relationships and make them so much deeper than just transactional, I think that’s really where success happens.

We’ve seen this a lot within YWA, and I think that’s a huge reason why we’ve doubled in size in the past year; we have these relationships within the Austin community. It’s more now about just deepening them, making sure the roots are really firm and that we’re helping them and they’re helping us.

How can traditional non-profit and philanthropy frameworks be adapted to enhance the social impact that they’re creating?

One of the reasons why I think YWA has been successful is we’re an entirely volunteer run organisation, but when you really think about that, every single one of us has a full-time job. A lot of us have families, yet we’re all so committed to this mission, and we’ve been incredibly successful. We’ve grown our net worth in five years by 400%. I feel like there’s not a non-profit in this world that would not want to be able to say that!

A lot of our success is because most of us have for-profit backgrounds, and so we really run the organisation like a true for-profit business by thinking about different revenue streams, how we can leverage technology and by creating amazing brand awareness.

All these things are needed to run a very successful company, so we try to do it within YWA. I try to think about it as if we’re running a for-profit company, even though we’re a non-profit.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across that are creating a positive social change?

I have to brag about one of my board members, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t brag about my amazing team! She’s been fighting for access to menstrual products here in the Austin community, and listen, it’s not a super sexy subject, but it’s one that I don’t think is even thought about personally. This just shows my privilege, but I’ve never thought, “oh my gosh, people can’t get access to these things.” Recently, this board member has been working with the city council, and they just passed for the first time ever free access to menstrual products in Austin public buildings. I just think that’s incredible; she just started this on her own, fought really hard for it, and now it’s being passed and is going to be life changing for women. It’s called the Texas Menstrual Equity Coalition.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

One book that really resonated with me is called Reality-Based Leadership, and it’s by Cy Wakeman. It really takes a leadership approach of leading in reality. Oftentimes, not just when you’re managing a team or a company (but with any relationship you have), it’s so easy for us to make up these stories in our heads. The one example I always give is when my partner doesn’t take out the trash the night before the dump truck comes. It’s so easy in your head to create a big story about it. Maybe you have an employee who has been withdrawn or something, and so in your head (you’re thinking), “maybe they don’t like me, I’m a bad leader,” when in fact they’re actually going through something, but you’ve created this different perception of reality in your head.