Tête-à-Tête Interview

I sat down with Diane Fink the Executive Director of Emerge Maryland. Emerge is a national non-profit that identifies,  trains and encourages women to run for office, get elected and to seek higher office. Their intensive, cohort-based six-month training program is unique for political careers. Here’s a recent article about the rise of Women in Politics from POLITICO.

MG: Tell me something no one knows about you.

DF:  Everyone has a story. And at the age of twelve I found myself pretty much on my own. My mother died my father was an alcoholic and pretty much abandoned us and there was no safety net for us in this impoverished neighborhood. Everyone in this neighborhood was pretty much in the same boat.

MG: Are you a Maryland girl?

DF:  No, I grew up in LA.

MG: Okay, so tell me about the transition between growing up in LA and reinventing yourself in the political world? Did you run for any political office?

I ran for Central Committee in Frederick, where I live. I served two terms, so eight years on the Democratic Central Committee. I live in a district that is not going to vote for a Democrat. I’m probably more, Takoma Park liberal than Maryland liberal and that shows. I’m sure I could not win in a conservative district that’s out numbered by Republicans. So when I realized the numbers weren’t in my favor I decided to help other women.

MG: Do you find Maryland is becoming more blue?

We have a Republican Governor. We have never had a woman serve as Governor. There is a woman running for Governor. If Hogan wins, and  it’s not a given that he’s not going to win, I think that he is a true conservative, and I think that it’s not what I view would be the best interest for us in Maryland.  So, that’s my point of view, and I know there’s others.

MG: Did anyone ever tell you you’ll never be ”_____.”

DF: Sure. I think throughout our lives we have people who can discourage us and people who encourage us. There were people along the way who said I would not be successful, or I would not have not been whatever I pursued. I’m not listening to that. I have been told that by people who should have been there to support me or to encourage me, and I did ignore it. It doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It did have a chilling effect on my efforts, but you know, you push forward. This is not unusual for women in politics and often times when women are discouraged from running for office it’s by another woman, and it’s by a woman that could be in leadership or in politics that tells her it’s not your time, and that’s something that we have to push through and ignore and change.

MG: What accomplishment or experience are you most proud of and why had done yet?

DF: I’m not done yet!

MG: I like that answer. What makes you tick? What gets you going, your motivator?

DF: What I’m doing right now, so whatever my current passion is, it gets me going. I was a stay at home mom for 18 years, and I loved it. I absolutely loved it and my kids loved it, and we had a ball. We really had a blast so that made me tick then and now what makes me tick is what I’m doing now.

MG:  When did you transition out of stay-at-home mom world?

DF: I did a lot of volunteering and I worked on a lot of campaigns while my kids were in school, even when they were small. But, as far as being paid where society says it counts was when I got the job with Emerge. That was six years ago.

MG: Are you a Founder at Emerge, a co-founder?

DF: I’m not. I’m the Executive Director, but I was there from the start. I’m was there from the absolute very beginning in 2011 when we were all getting together and talking about it. Martha McKenna’s our founder. She’s totally awesome. She’s my board chair as well, and I couldn’t ask for a better leader and board chair in our organization.

MG: Any research or articles you’ve been into lately?

DF: Oh it’s all about the 2018 elections in Maryland right now. I love stats so I’ve been putting our election stats out everywhere. I think we’re number 13 in the country for women serving in office and I want to move that up.

I work to find out what else Emerge can do for Maryland women. With Emerge, they [women] get this amazing network of women across the state. I asked the women we have given training to in the past – “give me a quote about what emerge means to you” and almost every single one of those women say “it’s the sisterhood,”  “It’s the network building,” “It’s knowing that somebody else across the state is knocking doors in the same snowstorm I am” – or – “that they’ll come across the state and help knock doors.” That’s huge for these women running for office, and it matters. It really matters because not only are their efforts amplified by other women instead of a woman telling you this isn’t your time, they’re lifting each other up, and now they fill the halls in Annapolis and on the County Council.

With other Emerge sisters they have built-in support at these tables – in many cases they may not always agree on every issue, but they’ll have each other’s back and nobody’s there to take anybody down. So, they’ve bonded.

MG: What are you reading about besides stats? Do you like listen to like Ted Talks, what do you get inspiration from?

DF: Oh, I do yes. Yes, I do I listen to Ted Talks. I like to read, reading has always been something that is a big part of my life and the last book I read was called The Warmth of Other Suns, which is about the the great migration of the African- American communities within the United States. I’ve been reading a lot about African-American history in America and getting some context.

MG: What do you laugh about, what you do you cry about?

DF: Sometimes it’s the same thing because, you know ,you got to find the humor.  Sometimes things that can be difficult. I make my kids a big part of my life, and so they make me laugh and smile a lot during their successes.

MG: What is your bliss?

DF:  I was staying at home with my kids that was my bliss at that time and now this job is my bliss. It’s not always just one thing. It’s wherever you make your bliss right now. So, my children have adopted that as well, and they have followed their bliss in what they do. And it’s not about money.  What makes me cry is somebody elses failure. I internalize these things sometimes. And if I have invested in somebody, and they’re struggling, I have hard time with that because we always learn by our failures. It’s not just by my children, but I also feel an affinity for all of the women that I’ve been in contact with.

When working on campaigns you build up, build up, build up, and then when it doesn’t happen it’s hard. So, that’s part of the dialogue that we have – don’t give up! This isn’t the end of the world, it isn’t the end of your career. It isn’t even the end of your running for office in the future. So, we encourage the women to come back out and some of them they have moved on, but they haven’t moved on from being involved, and they haven’t moved on from being activists or even politically involved. They just haven’t run again, and that doesn’t mean they won’t. I think it’s just takes time sometimes.

MG: Do you find that women are stronger? Do they come back faster than say a male counterpart in the political sphere?

DF:  I will say that men are, because they will rush headlong into something without worrying about whether they’re qualified for it more often than women will do this and women are more critical of their own qualifications.

Often a man in one District will lose, then decide to run in another district and try again. I don’t know a quantifiable way to measure that. We [women] are more critical about whether or not we are qualified. Because, the world does that to us, right? I’m sorry, but the patriarchy does it to us.

They plant in our minds things like “You don’t have the qualification.” “You don’t belong here, ” and this has gone on for so long. When Emerge offered me the job I thought they had the wrong phone number. “You sure you got the right person?” Yeah, I was shocked and terrified and questioned my qualifications over and over again, and then I thought… you know,  I’m gonna figure this out. I’m going to do it and make it work.

MG: What’s coming up for the future?

That’s a good question – November! We get through the primaries. That’s how I plan my life now, the primaries and then the general election. I suppose Emerge is always looking to find out how to open doors for more women. One of the things that I have been exploring from the start is how do we include deaf women in the program because that’s a huge barrier for them.

This summer we are planning – in the middle of trying to raise the money for two interpreters – to do a one day workshop training for deaf women. There’s always that thinking outside the box about how to include more women in the conversation and at the tables.

MG: What about the LGBTQ Community?

Danica Roem is an Emerge Virginia graduate.  Nine of the women that helped flip the State House are Emerge graduates there. They have played a big role. Absolutely, we embrace the LGBTQ community – it’s not even an issue. It’s just become so normal that it’s not even something that really talk about. It’s just that it’s part of the community, Emerge in unity.

MG: When it comes to you as a Brand. What is your philosophy?

DF: That’s really easy. As I mentioned it before,  it’s follow your bliss.  Do what you love. And be a good person and try to try to make a difference.

MG: How does this Personal Brand of yours, the bliss you follow, how does that translate into Emerge?

DF: Oh? That’s easy. That’s a good question because we [Emerge], on the very first day when we meet with our classes we ask them to tap into what’s their passion. What is it that drives them to want to be public servants and want to help other people, it may not be something pleasant. It could be that they had some terrible experiences in their lives, and they want to make a difference. Your passion, your bliss – whether it’s pleasant or not pleasant – It’s what drives you to do what you want to do, what you are driven to do every day. It’s  absolutely is the same thing.

It’s getting them to tap into their stories, into their emotions and into the feelings of why it is important.  Because when you’re on day 110 of knocking doors, it is not going to be it’s so easy if you don’t have that passion. You need that fire inside to continue –  what am I doing  and why am I doing this? Then you can win and you can do it!

MG: Part of what I do is to help elevate women and inspire them.  I love to bring women together & build communities.  I think it’s important to have these conversations with influential women. To share that story with with the community.

DF: I want to thank you again, for having come out to the very first class (I photographed the very first Emerge class). I mean it really was exciting and some of those women are running now and some of them have already been elected.

You see those women the first day, and you just imagine who’s going to be doing what in next few years. Now, we don’t have to imagine it anymore. It’s happening. It’s a competitive application process to get into the program.

MG: Whats the vetting process?

DF: There are people who want something on their resume, and so they’ll go through the whole program just to put it on their resume. Which is not the purpose of the program. The program is to get women who want to be public servants elected. We have an application they fill out with specific questions. From those applications we choose a group that goes through an interview process, and then we choose the classroom.

Brooke Lierman showed up to her interview for our first class and that night gave birth to her first child.  So, she was half in labor while she was sitting there. Talk about motivation. We had a woman literally drive through a barricade. There was a wildfire on the Eastern Shore and the fire was crossing the road. The police were stopping people and she went right through it in order to make her interview.

She could have been arrested. We have a strict attendance policy and you miss eight hours of information you fall behind fast.

The class is seven months, but we meet once or twice a month for five hours. We had an ice storm, and we had the class. One woman spun out on the highway and hit a guardrail. She waited for the tow truck to pull her out. She got in the car, adjusted her lipstick in her mirror, and she made it to the class. I mean , these women are not like not shrinking violets and are not messing around.  Shannon Sneed serves on the city council in Baltimore. We didn’t know that she was expecting. She knocked on doors throughout her entire pregnancy. She was elected. She took off that heavy coat and had her baby sitting in with her at the city council ever since.

MG: Wow! I’m just curious,  I wonder if she was at the Women’s March, if she spoke? 

DF: Yes, she did speak, as a matter fact.  I think she’s really very beloved. The crowd loved her. We have some badass women and we need more badass women in our political sphere. You know, I get inspired by that.  How exciting it is to get to know them and help them achieve their goals – it’s super exciting.

MG: Are you at every single training class?

DF: Yes, and I conduct all of the summer trainings as well. I don’t have a  large staff maybe one or two other women in the office. I have my board and the workshops. I wrote the curriculum, and it was adopted by Emerge America – now all the states are using it. I saw a gap in recruitment. So it just made sense to fill that gap with some training.

MG: I get inspired by every single woman that enters this door. Everyone I photograph, I talk to, so it must be the same for you. You just get so inspired by these women and their stories, it’s a great motivator. You feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing.

DF: It’s great and I have a daughter. It’s really nice for her to see see this. She was my first intern when I was in DC. When she was home from college in the summer, she worked with me when we were just starting Emerge. So, it was fun to have her there with me after being a stay-at-home mom and also model what it’s like to be working – and working at something that was a real challenge.

Becoming an executive director of an organization is a huge undertaking – you have to know how to run a small business, you have to know how to fundraise, manage data, etc.  Emerge isn’t something that you can take a class in college. My training was working on campaigns while being a full-time mom. I was campaign fundraising and filling in whatever role I could play and I was always interested in hands-on experience.

MG: How many Emerges are there right now?

DF:  I think there are in 23 States. Okay, don’t hold me to that the number, it literally changes daily.

I think that they’ve started taking advantage of the surge in interest in running for office and being involved. Before the election and then again after the election interest grew.

MG: How do you get your funding?

DF:  It’s hard. It’s political fundraising. Which basically means they are not tax deductible donations. Our budget is modest and you know our focus is not to grow as much as it is to get as many good women out there to run. Fundraising plays a necessary part, and we tried to use as little time as possible to raise the max amount of money. At the recent event at the Senator Theater honoring Barbara Mikulski, we grew our donor list and we picked up a couple of donors that are high dollar donors. Barbra Mikulski has been there from the start, she gave us our seed money to get started.

MG: That’s wonderful. For you to have been able to come full circle and give back to her with this wonderful tribute. I’m sure she was just delighted with that.

DF: I have to say Martha McKenna really pulled this off. It was her brain child to do this, and she worked hard to make that happen. I am grateful because it makes my job easier now. I don’t have to worry this year about how we are going to make it to the end of the year and our funding. I just have to worry about making sure that we continue to fill this pipeline of women beyond 2018. I’m already looking at the 2019 cohort. I’m starting to think about where to recruit for that.

MG: This is wonderful, thank you for the Tete-a-Tete.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Julia Marciari-Alexander in her amazing office at The Walters Art Museum . We discussed her role at the museum as executive director, analysis of coffee cup art, as well as,  the challenges & significance of art in the 21st century. She has a deep connection to accessibility of the arts and maintaining Henry Walters’ vision of a free Baltimore museum.

MG:  Where did the desk come from?

JA: It’s a 20^th-century reproduction of a late 18th century desk. It was commissioned by Henry Walters to look like an 18th century French late rococo, early classical style desk, but it was used in what is now the collectors cabinet in the chamber of wonders.

MG: So you picked it out of the collection to use in your office? Were you like, I want this piece and that piece?

JA:  Some directors do that, I am not that director. It’s just too complicated to make everyone jump like that.

I came, five years ago in April, and all the furniture in the office was furniture that the previous director had used. Before my first board meeting, I push back from the chair and [the edge of the desk] snags my nylon. I have this big long run all the way down my leg and I’m thinking “Oh my God,” this is a problem that a man has never had.

So I went to my first board meeting with this long black shawl over me, because I’m not like Don Draper with different clothes in my office. I came back and I was like, I’m gonna get a different desk. This one was not being used and we had it brought here from the conservation department.

MG: We are so visually oriented right now. Do we forget to just enjoy when we have to photograph or videotape every single moment, or are we communicating with a greater understanding of art?

JA: Only if we talk about it that way. But the problem is we don’t talk about that way, art still is something you make in school.

Everyone has hundreds of thousands of photos on their phone, but no one will talk about themselves as a photographer. So actually they’re engaging in artistic practice all the time. But we still separate professional from what I’ll call vernacular, everyday art. We place some kind of premium on choosing to do art in a professional way. That makes everything else unimportant–which is not true. That’s part of my soap box.

MG: How did you find yourself in the Museum world?

JA:  In sixth grade I went to Europe with my family, I was overwhelmed with the way the history of the world was right there. From the Roman times or beyond to contemporary–you know the artist on the street who’s drawing Saint Peter’s.

I remember being in Saint Peter’s on New Year’s morning in a service with the sights and the smells and the gold and the glitter – everything was just kind of scintillating. I wasn’t sure I was connecting to the religious part of it, but to the layers of history and people.

I did a report on Michelangelo’s Pieta for my sixth-grade class–even in sixth grade I was thinking about art. Then I sort of came back around through French literature and culture, and English literature and culture. It was not straight history, but culture as a way to recover the stories of the past.

At the Walters we have manuscripts and political papers, but we also have objects from the past, and those objects tell you about the people who lived with them.

These are not just aesthetic objects. An object lives its own life; it touches the lives of those who made it or used it or sold it or inherited it over time. Everything connects with everything. I love thinking about how the past can help shape our future–not in a backward way, but as a springboard for positive change.

photographer Susan Tobin

MG: Do you have a favorite piece in the gallery?

JA: I’m currently obsessed with this mechanical timepiece that we have, the Melanchthon watch. It’s a spherical table watch, but it’s actually a handheld object; it’s the earliest dated mechanical timepiece we know of. It was brought in by Henry Walters in 1910.

It’s actually inscribed to Philip Melanchton, the power behind Martin Luther. So he was the Theologian and Martin Luther was his speaker. It’s from Nuremberg in 1532. Henry the Eighth is on the throne. He’s beginning to get worse. It wasn’t just about sleeping with Ann Boleyn, it was also about pulling away from the church in Rome, so it’s about political power. Martin Luther is also out there preaching about separation from the power of Rome.

And this watch is from the cultural capital of Nuremberg, one of the goldsmith capitals of the world, experimenting with technology. It’s like the iPhone, made by incredible craftsman who were working in the most expensive materials of their day and then presenting it as a gift to the intellectual of the moment – who is asserting change in a religious moment. That’s all fabulous.

Then when you start to think about it, before these watches, the only ways to tell time were the church clocks and sundials–and the sky. So knowing the time was controlled by the state or the church or nature. This is literally man and humankind taking time in their hands.

It’s the first time humankind takes time and holds it in their hands. That’s right here in Baltimore. And it’s just plain old kickass.

MG: What makes you tick?

JA: Coffee.

MG: What is your brand philosophy?

JA: Linking the past and the present for a better future. It’s not about celebrating the past just to celebrate the past. It’s thinking about the past so that we can move forward.

MG: At the Bryn Mawr graduation you said, “You can have it all.” And then you turned around and said, “Guess what? No you can’t.”

JA: When I was writing the speech I was thinking ‘Oh my gosh, in my generation,1975, all the women were told we could do it, we could have it all.’ We could have a PhD; we could get pregnant when we wanted to–not before; we could control who we met…You know, everything was just like you’re command central.

And then life happened and, okay I couldn’t get pregnant. I had to go through IVF. And my husband was living in New York, and then my daughter came down with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. So, you know, there’s so much you can’t control.

So I’m sitting there telling everyone ‘Okay. Yes, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this.’ And I see all the parents are horrified, thinking, ‘She’s not going to give them that speech.” Then I’m like, “No.” And I talk about all the stuff that’s not working in my life and all the parents, are like ‘Okay, she’s not going to give them that lie.’

It’s only gotten harder for me since then. My husband still works in New York and my daughter was basically bedridden for a year. She stopped going to school. Even negotiating all of that, I’m still running The Walters.

MG: How did you manage?

It’s all about recognizing that it’s a team sport and that the team isn’t about you.

MG: Who do you rely on?

JA: I rely on the community here – we have amazing people, and the board is amazing and the staff is amazing and the Baltimore community is amazing.

MG: Do you have a tribe? A community of women you feel a part of?

JA: Increasingly I do. It’s hard to ask, but when I ask, people will be there in a second. But part of it is, I don’t have the bandwidth to help other people right now so I don’t want to impose on someone else when I can’t be there for them. That’s a really difficult exchange.

MG: What do you laugh about? What do you cry about?

JA: A) How silly I am with my friends. B) Sappy movie endings

MG: You recently went to Israel with the Weinberg Foundation.

JA: Every year the foundation takes a group of thought leaders, cultural leaders, CEOs, to Israel to learn about the country and the conflicts. It’s a very intensive six-month learning process. I was selected to go with this incredible group from Baltimore. And you’re at the site three of the world’s conflicting religions have been duking it out for 3,000 years. It was an incredible experience. Israel is right next to Syria, and there was a mile between us and Gaza–and we were talking about of this millennia-old conflict and how we can learn, and think about making change.

MG: What are you reading right now?

JA: I love really cheesy historical fiction. For the Israel trip we read amazing non-fiction books and learned all about the Middle East and about America’s relationship with the Middle East from 17th century to now. We read 10 non-fiction books and one fiction book.

It was like being a college kid. I loved it. Then at the end, I just had to read something cheesy. So I was talking to my sister and she said “I think you should read Exodus.”

The book by Leon Uris was written in the 1950s. It was like Herman Wouk’s Winds of War, but it was about the post-holocaust establishment of Israel. Exodus was best known to all of us as a movie that ran on Saturday afternoon or Thursday evening when there were only three channels.

It’s cheeseball fiction. But what’s fascinating is this was the single largest way that mainstream American public in the 1950s was introduced to the establishment of Israel.

MG: Are you enjoying the portraits of the Obamas?

JA:   I think they’re absolutely incredible. They’re great works of art by two great artists, Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley, who have each brought a nuanced and yet rooted look at contemporary America to a broad public. They’re using traditional ways to represent individuals and they’re turning them into fabulously interesting paintings.

MG: If you had a billion dollars what would you do?

JA: Invest in creating ways for people to understand and empathize with others, so that we can celebrate our commonalities and celebrate our differences – instead of celebrating difference at the expense of our commonalities, which is where I think we are right now. If you celebrate difference it’s because you don’t want to celebrate what you have in common.

MG: Whats coming up for the future?

JA: We are excited to open the totally transformed house at 1 West Mount Vernon Place, opening June 16, 2018, most often known in Baltimore as Hackerman House. A long time in coming, this $10.5 million project aims to bring people in to see our collections and buildings—art and Baltimore—in new ways!

MG: I have one last question. Like the rise of women in politics, what do you think of the rise of women in the art world?

JA: I happen to be in museum where there are slightly more women than men, so the balance is tipping. The over-$20 million museum level is very old school–lots of men, very few women.

I think what’s fascinating is that a lot of the women who work at museums are old style, so you can have women who run things very autocratically in a kind of old-fashioned-man way. Then you have consensus builders, people who try to lead from the middle rather than the top. So it’s not just about gender, it’s about style of leadership. In the non-profit sector there are more candidates who are women. It’s really an interesting moment.

I first heard Julia speak at the Bryn Mawr graduation a few years back.  When she said…psych! you can’t have it all… to a stage full of our future women leaders my first thought was “oh snap” and my second was “this woman gets it & is as authentic as they get”.  She’s been on my bucket list of people of meet.  I’m so glad I have.  She has done spectacular things for the Walters and for the Bmore art community.

I sat down with Cassandra Vincent a personal development coach and speaker here in Baltimore, MD. She works primarily with women who are committed to leading with purpose and living the life they desire, as well as mentor young women at Morgan State. Her signature VS Brunch (Vision and Strategy Brunch) is a meet up and speaker series she hosts regularly.

MG: Tell us what you’ve been up to to in the last in the last  six months?

CV: I have been engulfed in my studies with positive psychology and taking this class where I’ll be certified as an executive leadership coach. That’s through the Positive Psychology Institute with Valerie Burton. I love that group of women and group of people who are exploring not only ways to support other people in their development of leadership, but their leadership skills around resiliency and helping others.

 In addition to planning for the Vision and Strategy (VS) Branch that I host here in Baltimore, I’ve been complementing my studies to make sure that I know how to support this community of women who in some cases are looking to hone their leadership skills as well as excel personally and professionally. 

You know lot of times we’re doing a lot of outside work – doing and creating and producing relationships. As busy as we are we cannot forget about the inside work, that whole balance that we need to continually seek.  I want to be healthy – mentally, emotionally healthy. I’m on this journey to better understand and learn how to be intentional in real relationships with people.

MG: Do you keep a journal? What do you do to keep yourself steady and emotionally balanced? Do you have motivators?

CV:  Journaling is something that I really enjoy doing. I’m a big lover of words. Those give me life. I love books and I love to make sure that I am connecting with those words.  But, journaling is very key for me because I can be a very huge over-thinker.

As a visionary I could stay in my head all day, so it’s important for me to write it down. Also, something that I recently started to do is go to the local park on the walks with my dog. There’s this one little sweet little oasis and just sitting helps me a lot. To not think is my zen place.

MG: What one word do you carry around with you every day?

CV: I go back and fourth with “vision” and “purpose.” So a lot of times people are discovering purpose and I’m a huge proponent of “we are purpose” it’s the very sense of how we are created. Being here, you are purpose in living form.

“Vision”, because again my imagination and ideas are so massive that vision is extremely important to me because it’s what drives me.

MG:  You don’t say you have purpose, you say you are purpose: “ When you realize that you are purpose, greatness and love in living form.”

CV:  It’s a realization, because sometimes we’re so busy.  It’s not to have a purpose but you are purpose. I’m learning to really live by this. I’m not a mistake. Nobody’s a mistake. We don’t have to stress ourselves out about trying to become something. Because, you are what you are. There are artists, there are creators, there are people who are inclined to be able to speak words.  But at your core, you’re literally purpose in action.

MG: You think you’re born that way?

CV: I do. We are born with our purpose and we spend our journey searching for it, bring it to realization..

MG: When did you start your Vision and Strategy Brunch?

CV:  I actually started it right after a breakup. The VS brunch started in 2016 when I gathered a group of girlfriends together. It started in the Spring. There’s something about all this blooming and renewal in the Spring. I’ve always been that person even in college – I always brought women together. I’ve always gotten so much life and love from not only gathering but being a part of community, especially when we’re honest & transparent. I launched it publicly in 2017. 

MG: What is your brand philosophy?

CV: I would say, one of the biggest philosophies of my brand, whether it is hosting a brunch leadership series or it’s writing a book and wanting to continue to write, is “live your vision one chapter at a time.”

I believe that living your vision is important. Understanding that it’s not necessarily a destination. It’s a journey. Whether I’m speaking on a stage or having a coffee get together with women or even mentoring sessions of young women at Morgan State. And be okay with being bold about it. Be okay with discovering it. 

One of the things when working a 9 to 5 that I did not like was this limited mindset around growth and discovery and learning and experiencing things.

I do, however, think we’re making headway with the way that art and creativity and innovation is moving us.  Even in business you can see that there’s a lot of changes but I think we’re making headway into understanding this narrative that it doesn’t have to be perfect.

It should absolutely be a quality, but it doesn’t have to be perfect to the point that you’re not going to produce it or that you’re not going to execute it.

MG: What does your brand say visually?

CV:  It’s a constant work in progress, but I’m know that it speaks joyfulness and Community around women’s empowerment or women’s leadership.

MG: So do you think the next generation are more willing to take chances?

CV: Actually, I think that they are taking more chances. I have a mentee who launched a shop. I found myself actually calling her, and asking her for some advice. So she’s being bold, she did this on her own.

MG: What’s your hope for the next generation?

CV:  First off they are all wildly, wildly creative and innovative and I believe that they’re insanely smart – they’re so brilliant.

We were taught that perfection is the only narrative for us.  It wasn’t what you looked like . But, you had to do it perfectly or you’re a failure. My hope for this upcoming generation is that their perfection is not based on the way that we as a culture curate our brands and our businesses online.

Sometimes, I’m concerned that the upcoming generation isn’t making sure that that human connection is there. That they aren’t putting this intense pressure on themselves that “I’m a failure because I don’t look good every day” or because “I don’t have this perfect timeline” or “I don’t have these experiences” or just living through social media.

MG: You and I grew up, just being in the moment, without tools.  By living in the moment. But this generation, they experience it with their phone up to their eyes, they communicate electronically.  It’s a different life experience.

CV: I feel like it’s important to cheerlead them. We have a wide number of adults in our generation who are also , in many ways , experiencing the same thing that we’re concerned about for young people. Feeling like you have to show and tell your life or that you’re missing something, you’re not producing because you don’t have 2,600 friends or 226k, that you’re not up to par because every post isn’t about “I just got this client” or “hey just had this meeting”.

MG: Did anyone ever tell you you’ll never be “blank”? (fill in the blank)

CV: I never had that. In 2nd grade my teachers Mrs. Smith and Ms. Moody, they both told my mom you have a writer on your hands, she has an amazing imagination. I didn’t believe this for a long time. I have been blessed to have been affirmed from my parents and and even people around me.

MG: Do you ever have to deal with impostor syndrome?

CV: Instead of using the term imposter syndrome, I think I have experienced times where yes, absolutely, I’m questioning what I am. I’ve been in situations where I am questioning am “I really able to produce that?” I’ve found every time I find something that doesn’t quite fit me or quite fit what I’m feeling, I won’t think about it too much. I think to myself,  “does what is being planted go in order with my vision.”

The minute I hear impostor, I kind of pushed back because I’m on this journey of learning new skills. I think when you think about the different things that you’re learning- you have those times of “am I really that.” My attachment to growth doesn’t allow me to sit in those moments of feeling like I’m a major imposter. Why do we need to feel the need to feel like imposter syndrome?

MG: Tell me something no one knows about you?

CV: Most people don’t know that I used to play the tenor saxophone when I was in High School. I only played it because my brother played it .

MG: What accomplishment or experience are you most proud of?

CV: I really like that question. There’s this point right in women’s lives right before you turn 40.  There’s this place, and maybe some people reach it earlier than others, where you are settling into self worth, self awareness on another level.

My greatest accomplishment has been learning to grow and leaning into that place.

The book that I recently self-published, The Smart Women’s Bounce Back Guide After a Break-Up, that would be one of my greatest accomplishments. I wrote it last year in October 2017. I think even from the time of my 2nd grade teacher saying she’s going to be a writer, I have felt the pull to write. This is the first one that I actually completed. There have been several books that I actually started that are probably in Google drive in pieces.

The book is about the art of  self love that goes into bouncing back after a heartbreak. Heartbreak can be anything that’s disappointing.

One of the things I really want to share in that book was the ways that we can really take the time to cry and then get into the work of healing.

MG: What has made you so intent on seizing the day?

CV: It goes back to this pursuit of being alive and really experiencing it. It’s about this thing of – I don’t want to get to the end of life and think “I could have or should have.” I’m aware, very aware, of my purpose and who I am as purpose, and my awareness of what others bring. It’s about living.

Thank you so much Cassandra for sharing a little piece of yourself.

xo

Studio ‘elle provides monthly Profession’elle Portrait Days to women looking to up their game with new photographs. A make-up artist is provided as well as style advice for your portrait. It’s a fun day full of comradery as we find a path to your journey to unstoppable.

The next event is Oct 29th, you can find more information HERE or visit my Facebook page.

Graduations are a special event for family, students and the school as a whole. The Bryn Mawr School is no exception to this and presents these invested young women with a unique experience at graduation. The graduates wear all white, carry white daisy’s and walk as pairs, hand in hand, to their seats. The keynote speaker was the accomplished Julia M-Alexander, executive director of The Walters Art Museum. This ceremony was a delight to witness as a photographer.

The Women’s Giving Circle works to build a community of women who are philanthropic minded and dedicated to the needs of women and girls in Howard County. They work to pool their resources to make grants for programs that benefit women and girls. Author and Photographer Paola Gianturco co-authored Wonder Girls: Changing Our World with her grand-daughter Alex Sangster and signed copies for this event.