welcome to new beginnings with care and where we celebrate the creativity courage and wisdom of people creating change we highlight those who charge you pause make new life and career choices and face turning points out welcome to new beginnings with karen delk and i am thrilled to have my panel here today we are going to talk about empowering women me to movement and what these ladies are doing in their respective fields i would like to introduce eileen senate who is president speaking that connex and christine hutchinson who is involved with damsels and defense and then diane some of the who is the founder and president of b w nice business women networking involved in charity and education so  welcome thank you so ladies this was i know exactly where i was when i was thinking about this i was on the phone with christine and i was in north jersey and we were talking about you coming on the show and eileen and i had coffee a couple of weeks ahead of that call and she introduced me to diane virtually and you all are touching upon women and empowering them in different ways through education through charity through defense through speaking which touch me in such a way that i said you know what i want to have an individual show with each of you but i really want to have you all on because i think march women's month that we have something to share so that's really how this whole idea came about and i can't wait to talk to you just can't wait so christine i want to start with you because you are you have an organization called damsels and defense tell us a little bit about what that is so dems on defense as a direct sales organization that i'm involved in the premise of the company is we provide safety and education training and products to go along with it so items like pepper sprays alarms stun guns but then there's also the educational end of it of situational awareness and you know paying attention to your surroundings carrying something that you can use to defend yourself wonderful wonderful and eile you help individuals find their voice you do it in corporate settings you do individual you help with accent reduction but you've also uncovered some things in the course of helping women in their communications can you touch on that she or i thought it was maybe an isolated case but about twenty years ago in a training session at a big company there was a woman who so wowed me with her presentation i thought she was a ringer like she was there to test me and she later became individual client and in that process of coaching she uncovered and disclosed to herself this trauma this child molestation trauma that really was behind her fear of speaking and having her voice so in order to perform in the corporate setting and she was a real performer when she spoke she was on medication and she wanted to get off the medication and that's what our coaching was about and you have you know your own story but you've started in found the b w nice to help educate women and link it to charity you talk about building your bridge tell us a little bit about that yes so the premise is that you know first of all women are great networkers that's really important we all have great skills great skill sets and time and talents and experience so i felt that although networking is really important sporting for us to help each other  personally and professionally we can do so much more and when you bring a group of women together to rally around a common cause it is amazing the results and what we can accomplish so the idea was to bring business networking and tie that to charitable outreach and of course the reason that we're we've chosen domestic violence as our cause is because of the statistics and the fact that it impacts so many women it impacts men and women but much more it's much more of a woman's issue so bringing that to bridging that together and having women come and help support one another help those in need help our charity partners working together i felt we could be much more impactful in the community yeah absolutely absolutely so christine i'm going to go back to you the education and the tools to help people feel safe is important but you also talked a little bit about situational  let's touch on that let's expand on that because i think a lot of times individuals either are naive or they're unsure of what to do and they either place themselves in situations that are unsafe or they you know it is it comes about i mean it's not anything that they're doing but it could also be that they're living their life and all of a sudden stuff happens so how do you help educate people about situations regardless where you are whether it's a nice neighborhood or a dangerous neighborhood you should always be paying attention cell phones nowadays have become one of the biggest distractions drivers you can imagine driving with a cell phone in front of your face and not avoiding the cars around you so why would you expect to be walking down the street and not have that same level of awareness so it's very important to put your the way don't wear your buds pay attention to your surroundings eyeball someone if you see something if you see someone and you feel uncomfortable eyeball them walk with confidence walk in your own confidence and know that you can take care of yourself and people are less likely to to look at you as a victim predators are specifically looking for easy targets when you walk with confidence you're paying attention to your surroundings you're less likely to be a victim absolutely absolutely i tell my children that just just because you know they may be overcoming shyness they're you know entering into a group and they're not sure and i say you have to act like you belong there and that's that's part of what you're you're touching upon absolutely so don't even tell us how what you're doing in terms of education and charity how is that playing out in the communities in which b w nice is operating so with our local charity partners the local domestic violence agencies we are trying to educate and make the public aware also the attendees are attendees the women that attend are our members of our organization give them a level of awareness of what's going on in terms of the statistics and also the agencies themselves what they offer the scope of services because it's critically important many people today don't even understand the ramifications of domestic violence and how it is impacting our community so we want to share that and then we also want them to know the scope of services that are provided by these agencies because they have no clue that you know they think of a safe house and that fit and there are far more services so for us to be able to share that information again through our organization within our meetings and yet to the community at large it's very very important because there are obviously so many women out there for sure men and women but women out there i know that are going to be in some sort of need whether if it's not a safe house it could be legal advocacy it could be counseling other services services for their children so we feel that it's important to keep you know raising the bar and raising that level of awareness performer that she became how did you help her find her voice so that's an interesting question because this woman had her voice but she didn't have the confidence to speak in front of a group without being medicated so when she was in self medicated she went to a physician he gave her the medication that would calm her down and allow her to access her voice so it's a very small niche of where she was an empowered and it had to do with public speaking she did not connect her five year old childhood experience of being victimized by a relative with anything related to her fear of public speaking so as a coach and having a client who wanted to get beyond medication to feel self empowered the questions started to impact her thinking and reflecting on what childhood experiences because that's a question i might ask is there anything in your past that would connect with a fear of public speaking and usually people say no i don't think so were you embarrassed in high school did someone make fun of you were you ever in a compromising situation and then she kind of rolled back the years and thought oh my gosh and it was  moment for her to realize that being sexually molested with someone's hand over your mouth threatened to do that you should not speak you know those are those psychological emotional components that just came together and it wasn't traumatizing anymore for her but she hadn't made the link of oh my gosh that's why i'm so nervous in front of groups and i need to be medicated i never thought of those two as having any connection there was a baring of that yes yes actually through the relationship but over time right now when we talk about resilience we talk about persistence we talk about pushing through and i think one of you have a story i don't know if you're comfortable sharing it not to get into a whole lot of details but i am a childhood sexual assault survivor and i survived to write college so it was important for me to educate and empower other women so that they would find their daughter my oldest daughter was looking at colleges and i had realized that in raising my children in this wonderfully safe and you know little cute suburban town that i hadn't really prepared for the outside world and my my daughter at the time was looking at colleges in very urban areas and so i signed them up for some self defense classes and i googled pepper spray and popped damsel in meeting with the representative i realized that on could connect the fact that i needed to have an extra income with the fact that i am very passionate about the same mission educating and empowering women to defend ourselves wonderful so wonderful and did your daughter go off to college she went off to college she thirty year nursing student she knows how to defend herself i'm very proud to say and has not had two wonderful wonderful well you know that leads me to talk about young women and how women of our age can help younger women understand number one that there are some battles they shouldn't have to fight because we fought them or at least we thought we did number two how to have that confidence right even when you may not have it i mean even as in our age in the in the encounters that we have in our daily life we may not always bring it but because we've been in the workforce and because we've told our own firms we've started companies we know how to fake it until we make it or we know how to carry ourselves to show that we belong how can your collective work do you think help with that so confidence to me comes in lots of shades and when i think about myself and all the roles i'm in mother daughter sister business woman colleague networker et percentage of confidence of can vary so what i often tell clients around public speaking is when they're not confident is i try to find where they're most confident m they're really confident about being a dog owner they really know their pet they're really confident about managing or managing their home they're great homemaker or perhaps there is fear or golfer and there they know their top of their game their so the confidence is really high but maybe when they look in the mirror they judge themselves against the models on television or a different race or something or other a that confidence is less so i often do this process where people look at the roles and rate their confidence levels and then it can go into more detail and i ask them to borrow against where the strongest so it's kind of a shift a mentality shift it's not like you're confident or not confident you might be eighty percent confident as a mother but only sixty percent confident as a partner you know maybe as a homeowner you know spic and span perfect and you give yourself one hundred percent but as a gardener or the exterior of your home you know i should have painted the house twenty years ago  by just getting a car and dialogue around confidence and not looking at it as black and white usually you can find a space where a person feels confident and i like to the work that and weave it so that there is that self risk reflection of how i am confident sometimes you know maybe i'm confident speaking to one on one but i'm not confident in a group of more than ten right or i'm confident when i'm with women but i'm not confident with men and so the idea is to look look for where your strengths are and acknowledge where the gaps are and then like i said borrow against those trends like you said you have to maybe think it till you make it or act as if it's easier to act as if you know what confidence feels like i want it in one area right others you want to add on to that ok so with damsel in defense we offer what are called warrior workshops and in addition to talking about the products which is great it's and it's important but we also talk about different methods to defend yourself methods and not necessarily have to be a black belt where you have to go through months and months of training but that you do you little things like there's a tender spot down here that you can pinch in in an incident if graph from behind a lot of times that gives women the confidence that they know something and that knowledge gives them confidence that they can defend themselves if necessary that would have very yes and to just touch upon them both of you are saying  i totally believe in fake it till you make it if you have to there's nothing wrong with that you get out there and you walk into a room and feel like a million dollars doesn't matter i've done it many a time you do it everybody brings something to the table we all have strengths and weaknesses and sometimes it's finding that niche of where we all have some confidence or something we can do that somebody else can't we all have a special gift and i always tell women you know tap into that let's help each other tap into our own you know niche whatever it is and there's no reason why you can't stand up and be your authentic self but you know stand up in a room and you know feel like a million dollars i do that a lot sometimes i just do that and say even in my early days starting out wondering how i'm going to do this but i'm walking in and i'm going to feel like a million dollars because the message that we can get across to everybody from our heart i always say speak from your heart and i think that's most important because if everything else fails if you speak from your heart you will never lose out and i i know that from experience you will never lose that because that's authentic yes you don't have to try to be like somebody else just be yourself celine and let and speak from your heart feel good about yourself and know that there you bring something we all bring something to the table and you know when you're in a room full i think women that are there not to criticize but there to help support and lift up makes a big difference oh absolutely a difference absolutely so the me too movement which is really a hashtag that was actually ten years old but got resurfaced after i forgot the actress who came forward on harvey anyone about time ok i think culture that needs to be corrected we've got to change and again change the conversation in the culture because this is beyond  pale to me number one personally to see that this is going on or has been going on and hopefully by the consequences that have occurred more women will feel more empowered to come forward more quickly no not necessarily barriers because i understand why you tend to shy away and not bring it out right away i totally get that personally from a personal perspective but i think it's about time and i think this is what needs to happen because we have got to change our culture and it will swing to them about time so i know people and i have some first hand experience myself where you feel oppressed in some way that's very subtle in the workforce and there's really no recourse you go home to your mother and you say that dr stood so close to me i did not like what that felt like it felt sexual and your mom's  can be that must be in your mind so you know if your family doesn't embrace that possibility as if you're young it's really hard to speak up later on so i think the me too movement is bringing it to the fore the news is a great vehicle of spreading the word i think it's the beginning of shaping a new frontier around power that said i mean you know that it will happen so quickly there particularly in the entertainment industry there's that what  senior leaders who work for great companies who still say that on a sexual level but on a promotional level that there's still a glass ceiling there's still  an imbalance of power which isn't what the me too movement is focused on generally it's more of a physical nature but we have a long way to go in terms of equality definitely a movement i love that it people are saying something i think it gives many people who have experienced this the opportunity to stand up and feel strong in courage courage courageous and brave it's hard to to have the courage to stand up and say something so for for all these people to kind of rally behind i think it's really important yeah and we've talked about confidence we're now talking about courage and i'd like to unpack that a little bit and the reason is that there are some people who are always vocal have no trouble speaking up who look at what happens and say why wouldn't you say something in family situations that i can kind of understand because there's obviously power there and if you're a child or a spouse it can be difficult in a work setting there's also some understanding particularly if it's the boss or the head of the organization but theoretically there should be an impartial party that you can seek out whether it's human resources or the legal department or you know someone who's not in the direct chain of command that you can speak to and so i wonder if we can unpack this fear that people have this lack of courage why is that and how can they as we're saying they should speak up but we know that people don't so why is that shame shame there's a tremendous amount of shame for victims what color lipstick was she wearing how high was your skirt how high were heels how low was her blouse there there has to be a reason this happened in didn't happen because this man couldn't control himself what happened because of something she did so i believe  a great deal of shame that's involved you know that he would want to add to that i think that that's that's that's good to hear because i think people do struggle with that so i want to make a point that bullying might be the anything it like the reality the victim is often blamed and the process is often brutal yeah in terms of reliving that kind of  situation so remaining silent keeps yourself private and we all kind of want some integrity and privacy so where who knows where this goes when you do share i know someone who called a hotline back in the eighty's to report domestic abuse did not reveal who she was and the person that she met with through a health care provider basically asked her you must first said you must be doing something to provoke him to hit you or to whatever so she spoke up she risked and what was the result no result was blame so you know that was in the eighty's i'm hoping things are different but i know i think you would say no it's not so different yeah yeah it's sad and you know i can't that's all part of that education process but for everybody to be educated and to understand and you're right you know if you put it out there you risk your reputation potentially having you know do they believe me or not or just reliving the situation which can make it difficult and i think it also goes back because eileen you touched on it what was going on in your own life or how was it perceived in your own home your your environment the environment that you've grown up in i think will tend to indicate whether a person is woman is more willing to speak up and out or not i know many women on both ends of the spectrum who would never ever ever allow man to do anything to merciless others that you know were not like that maybe not brought up that way you know more you know quieter or not as selfish or whatever it is we're so i've heard it all i've heard it all too but i think i'm hoping that if we the more you push it out to be open to the public and have th the more that's going to cause people to have to talk about this and do something i mean and hopefully give women the impetus to say you know what maybe now's the time maybe i can do this i think that's a great way to end  that's really it's got to be about hope it does it's got to be about confidence and voice and taking the stand because it can start with one person it's right and it can cascade you just look at  the the youth who are standing up on gun control and who would have thought that they've gotten that far that fast absolutely so ladies i thank you for joining us and being part of what you do in your respective fields helping women be empowered and safe and educated so thank you again for joining us thank you thank you and thank you for tuning in to new beginnings with care