Wiser With Age

Tag: women

  • In My (Grand) Mother’s Words: Falling in love

    In My (Grand) Mother’s Words: Falling in love


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.

    The day I unexpectedly arrived to Honduras for what was supposed to be my grandmother’s 92nd birthday bash, an intimate conversation with my grandmother occurred. We were in her living room, surrounded by people, yet she took a moment to look up at me in the middle of all the commotion, and she asked:

    “Victoria, y vos te has enamorado alguna vez?â€

    (Victoria, have you ever been in love?)

    A flood of emotions and thoughts ran through my mind. Why was she asking? Was she serious? Why now? What do I say? I did what I’ve always known is best, I was honest.

    Then I asked her, “Y usted? Alguna vez se ha enamorado?†(What about you? Have you ever been in love?)

    She replied:

    “Si. Dos veces.â€

    (Yes. Twice.)

    I followed-up by asking if one of the two times had been with my grandfather. She said, “no,“ with ZERO hesitation. She’s 92, so back in the day I’m not sure how much of a role love played in starting a family with someone.

    I have to say that in the 29 years I’ve known my grandmother, this was probably the most captivating, raw, and real moment I’ve ever had with her. I was so surprised by her curiosity to ask me such a thing, out of nowhere! I was also impressed by her candidness and honesty in replying to me. Many times we’re taught elders ask all the questions, we provide all the answers, and that’s it. This was a conversation. It was a conversation between two women where the barriers of tradition were removed.

    Maybe that’s what surprised me the most. This moment, in a way, was my grandmother acknowledging I’m a woman. Not a little girl. Not just her granddaughter. A woman who has had experiences that she wants to know about. It was her way of reaching out, and letting the only granddaughter who hasn’t grown up with her around know that she wants to know who I am. It was her way of telling me know she cares, and whoever did me wrong wasn’t worthy of me anyways.

    In true abuela fashion, she was right.

    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.Victoria Moll-Ramirez is a broadcast journalist based in New York City. She is originally from Miami, FL and had the great fortune of being raised by the sassiest, spunkiest, wisest, most hysterical Honduran woman in the world. Victoria’s mother, Bélgica, is 60-years-old, resides in Little Havana (Miami) and enjoys a good margarita accompanied by a heartrending ranchera. Victoria blogs about her mom’s funny and wise sayings on, “In My Mother’s Words.â€

  • From corporate to freelance to founding Ventureneer

    From corporate to freelance to founding Ventureneer


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    Geri Stengel (Courtesy Geri Stengel)

    After spending many years working relatively secure jobs in research, marketing and sales in the corporate world, Geri Stengel transitioned to the uncharted land of freelancing. Since 1994, she’s been working on her own – mostly providing other women entrepreneurs advice.

    The nearly 62-year-old from Queens, NY says she spends most of her time heading her own firm Ventureneer, a digital market research company which helps corporations reach small businesses. She also recently authored the book, “Forget the Glass Ceiling: Build Your Business Without One.â€

    “A lot of my work is doing reports…interviewing people for the reports, attending conferences, or events, and sometimes speaking,†says Stengel. “The last three to six months I’ve been doing a lot of speaking on women and entrepreneurship, and women investing in women.â€

    She says her favorite part about her job is analyzing and interpreting data.

    “I’m also very social, so I like networking and talking to people,†says Stengel. “I pretty much fall in love with all of my projects. Right now, I’m working on a project on crowdfunding. Women are more likely to try and raise money privately than publicly. The report will be about women who are seeking funding, and women as investors.â€

    Stengel says she didn’t plan on becoming an expert on entrepreneurship but ended up teaching four years on the subject at The New School, and presently, she’s facilitating a class offered by NYC for women who want to grow their businesses.

    “Everything was evolutionary,†says Stengel. “I thought I was going to be psychologist. I went to school to be a psychologist, but I took a year off after my BA, and when I started working in Manhattan for businesses, I really enjoyed it and changed my direction. I didn’t think it through.â€

    She says doing project management for large corporations and internet startups gave her a lot of experience writing strategic plans.

    “A lot of my work was doing business plans for businesses that were raising money,†says Stengel about her corporate world experience. “I had differences with my partners and left. I stepped back and said, ’Where do my skills fit in?’â€

    The proud business woman says her first independent project was a dollar store in Syracuse, NY, and it won a Goldman Sachs competition.

    “That was my first,†says the woman who went on to write a grand prize-winning business plan for the Yale School of Management and was honored as a 2012 and 2013 Small Business Influencer for her articles on Forbes about women entrepreneurs.

    If she had one piece of advice she would tell her younger self, what would it be?

    “I think find mentors and people to support you in whatever careers aspirations you have,†says Stengel. “I tried to do it all on my own, and I think having advisers, mentors and peer support groups help fortify you and provide direction. You need people to give you tough advice and advise you as you’re moving forward.â€

  • Business leader talks about conquering self-doubt to embrace success

    Business leader talks about conquering self-doubt to embrace success


    A woman with short hair wearing red necklace.
    (Courtesy Joyce Roché)

    Joyce Roché has climbed higher on the corporate ladder than most. For her, it was learning about opportunities she never knew existed, and learning to conquer self-doubt, that made all the difference.

    Her illustrious 25 year-career in business includes being CEO of Girls Inc. from 2000 to 2010, the first African American female vice president of Avon, as well as its first African American vice president of marketing, and the company’s first vice president of global marketing.

    Although officially retired from her CEO position, Roché, 67,  has not slowed down. The New Orleans native, presently residing in Savannah, Georgia, now spends her time as a board member of four Fortune 500 companies and traveling to speak about her recently published business memoir, “The Empress Has No Clothes: Conquering Self-Doubt to Embrace Success.â€Â She also provides a supportive online community for people to share their experiences with self-doubt, and their techniques for conquering them.

    “I thought I was actually going to be a school teacher, and I majored in math education in college and actually went all the way to getting a teaching certificate, but during senior year I learned about business school, and I decided to pursue an MBA,†says Roché.

    It had been a conversation with her boyfriend, and his friends, which opened her eyes to the world of business for the first time, she remembers.

    “I thought I should at least give it a shot,†says Roché. “Although I enjoyed working with kids, I thought, ‘Am I doing it because it’s all I know. I should at least investigate it.’ I’m very happy I made that choice. It opened up a whole new world to me, and opportunities that I never dreamed of.â€

    She says before studying for her MBA at Columbia University, she didn’t know anything about marketing, or anybody in the business world.

    “I never thought I could be the president of a company, or on a corporate board,†says Roché, adding her first “real job†was in Avon’s merchandising department. “I am hugely grateful that the opportunity presented itself, and I took a look at it.â€

    But that’s not to say all of her hard work and dedication to get to the top didn’t come with struggles – one of her biggest being self-doubt. Self-doubt had played such a prominent role in her life, she says, that she wrote a letter about it which was published in the book, “What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self†by Ellyn Spragins.

    “My letter talked about how as I was climbing the corporate ladder, there was a constant self-doubt that people were going to find out I wasn’t prepared, or smart enough, which caused me to work longer hours and not enjoy my success,†says Roché.

    She says she started getting so many e-mails and letters from people saying that I was telling their story. About five years later, she decided to write her book.

    “If I could explore how I learned to enjoy my journey, and communicate that to others, and give them techniques to get to that place faster, that was my impetus,†says Roché about the book for which she interviewed more than a dozen prominent business leaders who also struggled with self-doubt.

    After a lot of hard work, and learning to overcome her self-doubt, Roché says keeping her options open helped her succeed in a world dominated by men.

    “I didn’t have a five year plan,†she says. “I realized the world was changing way too fast. I think being able to take a risk to do different kinds of things…really led me to the growth I was able to achieve.â€

    During her time heading Girls, Inc., while visiting chapters in the U.S. and Canada, Roché also saw that the young girls in the program also needed to be able to see the possibilities in the world, and not be narrowed by expectations, just because the color of their skin.

    “They never knew that science or chemistry could be used in the beauty industry, or they never saw women leading companies,†says Roché. “To open that lens…and to encourage them to have the courage to pursue those opportunities, I think that’s the big advantage that Girls Inc. provides to our girls.â€

    And if she had to pick one piece of life advice to tell her younger self, what would it be?

    “To relax – you do deserve a place at the table. You are smart. You do have the skill set. Relax and enjoy the journey.â€