In the latest Disruptors column, Milk spoke with Karen Giannuzzi about her success disrupting the male dominated Greenwich, Connecticut town council. Hi Karen, can you start be sharing a little bit of background on your town, the council, and the state of things before you got involved in 2016. We…
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Jilly Badanes
An idea chaser and story addict, Jilly lives in Brooklyn, works for a tech startup, and can most often be found working on the next big thing.
Power
Men exert their power in more and less subtle ways. This week we were reminded of the less subtle. The conversations and research that led to the founding of Milk centered on how female power is often stifled and misunderstood. In my experience, that was often subtle. It was a…
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Like many individuals who, post election, started sharing their political views in places and ways they never had before, companies, too, started speaking out. It seems that the old rules of keeping business and politics separate no longer apply. Instead of worrying that partisan messages could ostracize customers, marketers are…
To Not Figuring It Out at Thirty
When I turned 30 a few weeks ago, one of the last of my group of friends, I debated how to mark the occasion. Naturally I had spent the months leading up to this occasion thinking about what it all meant. I don’t want to admit that I had…
I'm Taking It Personally This Election
You can't take it so personally, they say. But I am. This isn't a political post - but that would be ok if it was. Today, Milk is launching a section on the 2016 election, to be filled by women sharing their own perspective on the campaign and candidates and…
What Is The State of Women?
I joined 5,000 women in Washington, D.C. for the first ever White House Summit on the United State of Women this week. And I left the historic event inspired, and humbled, and asking the same question that I arrived with, what is the current State of Women in…
The Thing About Humility
I recently attended a panel discussion on media entrepreneurship. As many panels do, they began by asking each person to introduce themselves. The first founder, a man, explained he knew nothing about media or tech when he started his business and stumbled along the way to figure out what resonated…
Why I'm Grateful I Was Laid Off From My First Job
I’m not sure I ever sought out stability. In fact, times when I felt stable were typically when I made a change. When something felt accessible, I walked in the other direction. I moved school and country in the middle of my junior year of high school. When I…
Our Friends, Ourselves
In last weekend’s New York Times Sunday Review, a writer dug into the question of female friendship. Specifically, she asked, why do women compete with each other? “Women compete, compare, undermine and undercut one another — at least that is the prevailing notion of how we interact. It’s considered…
Where Were You At 29?
An interview with mom. I’m 29, tell me about what your life was like when you were my age. When I was 29, I was beginning my 3rd year living in Copenhagen. I had gotten married just 2 years before. This was the early 80’s in the Midwest…
What We Seek
I first began to notice it during business school. Although women remain a minority in MBA programs, the women I became surrounded by were ambitious, smart, globally minded and investing in their careers. By most measures, these are the women with the most potential to break glass ceilings and take…