Celebrating International Women's Day 2019 with a #BalanceforBetter Mindset

Diversity empowers individuals, teams, and businesses – fostering gender diversity creates space for innovation, new perspectives, and a holistic vision that represents the world around us. Creating balance means everyone has a place at the table and everyone has a voice – a voice with equal weight to everyone else.

I believe an important step to creating gender balance is creating a safe space to have your voice heard. I’ve personally had two pivotal experiences that have exemplified this empowerment philosophy – getting my MBA at a primarily women’s university and women’s roller derby. Both create space for female-identifying individuals to grow, explore, and empower each other in our personal and professional lives. The cultivation of strength, skills, and leadership qualities enabled each of us to understand how to navigate a predominately male dominated world in a way that helps dispel and breakdown gender-based assumptions and biases.

I use the above experience (and many more) to bring the empowerment mindset to my team at pep. And it’s a value that I see across the organization – everyone I’ve worked with is invested in sharing knowledge and providing assistance in order to build each other up. On my team, we celebrate each other’s wins, develop and engage each other’s strengths, and encourage open and respectful exchanges of ideas.

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Kris Adams
Team Lead 
pep