Last month we launched Your Story Exchange, where women entrepreneurs answer a few simple questions about the businesses they’ve started.
We love telling stories through film. But there are so many inspiring women with a story to tell and valuable lessons that we decided we needed another forum to share stories. We also set up Your Story Exchange to find future candidates to film and blog about.
(If you’re a woman entrepreneur, take the five minute survey – not lying, it only takes five minutes – and your story will appear on our site.)
As the submissions have come in over the past few weeks, we’ve been amazed by what we’ve read. The inspiration is oozing. When I read the stories, I definitely know why people are saying women will lead the economic recovery.
Let me give you a sampling of whose stories now live on Your Story Exchange:
There’s Audra Fordin, who started Women Auto Know, to teach women the basics of auto repair in monthly classes, donating proceeds to help fix the cars of women in need. She says the auto repair industry is stereotypical male dominated field stuck in a time warp of the 1970s. But Fordin (can you believe that’s her last name?) is changing that. “I am standing tall, as the industry pioneer from the ground roots, marching to make that change and open the industry doors for all,” she wrote. Keep on rolling Audra!
Olive Lynch just started Green Waste Technologies to use black soldier fly larvae to dispose of food waste in urban areas. She read a scientific paper about using the larvae as a method to handle pig manure. She was inspired and realized it could solve the problem of food waste in urban areas (first thing that came to my mind last time I read up on black soldier fly larvae). Her company is currently developing a 15,000-square-foot plant and will process the fly larvae into high-end protein meal and biofuel. The protein meal can be used as animal feed, the biofuel can be used as an additive to heating fuel. Olive is set to be one of the nation’s first commercial enterprises to tread these waters. Who knows maybe ‘black soldier fly larvae’ will be a term rolling off our tongues in the coming years (say it three times fast, it’s not easy)?
Julie Tweedale and Elaine Howard started Freedom Personal Safety, a non-profit that offers advice and physical techniques to help children and women stay safe. Many of the women they work with have experienced violence. After attending their course one woman, who hadn’t been out in the evening for years, told them: “You have changed my life and helped me understand that what happened to me was not my fault.” Thank you Julie and Elaine for helping women stay safe!
We’re going to keep blogging and sharing the stories of the women we find on Your Story Exchange. Thank you to all for keeping us inspired!
Visit Your Story Exchange to see more stories and add you own.