Greetings to all you fabulous women at NYWSE. My name is Karma Martell, and I am president of KarmaCom Inc www.karmacom.com, an interactive-focused "good karma marketing" agency I started in 1997. It is a privilege and pleasure to have been invited to post on your blog. I look forward to becoming a contributing member of both the blog and the group itself. Please feel free to ping me if I can be of assistance to you in any way.
FastCompany.com (FC) has given me the honor of serving as Group Coordinator and Forum Leader for their Social Responsibility section. They are still working out some of the usability kinks, but I invite you all to join the site and the forum. I would like to post a Social Responsibility topic on FC of particular interest to NYWSE, and then invite you all to post there. I hope that it can serve to give the group some added PR and help boost your visibility, while at the same time raising awareness of issues to the international FC readership.
One topic that interests me is women’s role as leaders in CSR initiatives. Do you think women are the key players, even if they are sometimes not given a highly visible role? Or are they too often relegated to the "fall guy" press secretary position? How have women entrepreneurs shaped the social responsibility landscape in the new millennium?
Let me know if you think this is a good direction for a Fast Company discussion -- or maybe you have a better idea.
Cheers,
Karma
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2 comments:
Hi Karma,
As a member of the San Francisco YWSE and a panelist for next week's SF YWSE discussion on Eco-Entrepreneurs, I think you raise an interesting issue. I've had a sustainability book club going for the past 5 years. We've read over 40 titles on environmental and social issues, and the vast majority were written by men. I have wondered why this is and what it means. The stars of the sustainability movement who draw huge crowds and pull down large speaking fees are mostly men. Why is this? Are men better at self-promotion? Are women too busy doing the actual work?
I believe that we need to employ feminine qualities to create a truly sustainable future. Collaboration, deep listening and nurturing are not exclusively feminine qualities but they are the kinds of things we need to keep in mind to create human scale solutions that take into account the needs of future generations.
I'm still looking for the right words to describe these inchoate feelings I have on this subject but basically I want to do what I can to help elevate more women to serve as authoritative voices on sustainable solutions.
Best, Justine Burt
My sustainability consulting firm website explains my background -
www.justineburt.com
Justine,
Thanks much for your very insightful comments.
Mother Earth is Gaia, the embodiment of the feminine or yang qualities of nurturing, bringing forth and receiving. Indeed, when we are in harmony with these qualities, male or female, we create a platform for sustainability -- not just of the environment, but of cultures, communities and relationships.
I am with you 1000% in the goal of helping elevate more women to positions of spokespersons and sages on sustainability. Perhaps that is why the movement(s) have not been as successful as they could/should be -- they are missing the feminine grounding.
I am sure there are others, but the women that come to mind that had the most exposure in their time are Adelle Davis and after her, Frances Moore Lappe, who wrote practically about sustainability as it applies to the foods we grow, manufacture, buy and then feed to ourselves and our families, and how that consumption affects our bodies, our families and our planet. Davis and Lappe preached best practices in sustainability long before it was a popular notion.
I would like to take this topic to the Fast Company Forum. I will let everyone know when it is posted. I will ask you to duplicate your posts there, and to join the FC forums, which is necessary to post.
Let's keep this going!
Best,
Karma
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