Janine Popick, CEO VerticalResponse

Janine Popick didn’t get the memo.  The one that says women don’t start up successful tech companies.  Not that it would have mattered!

by Deborah Burstyn
SF BAWJ Feature Writer
(This article is available in the SF BAWJ magazine.)

Popick, the 42 year-old entrepreneur and CEO would still have shattered that silicon ceiling. Her company VerticalResponse helps small businesses and non-profits stand tall with affordable ways to create, send and track professional-looking email newsletters, direct mail postcards and online surveys. 

In less than a decade since she launched VerticalResponse in San Francisco, Popick has grown the company to over 75,000 customers, $18.6 million in sales and 90 employees – plus she offers 10,000 free emails per year for non-profits.   And she blogs: for Inc. Magazine and of course, for VerticalResponse.

VerticalResponse Growth and Success Soars ahead with…
Customers, Revenue and Awards!

Popick and VerticalResponse have racked up numerous awards and accolades acknowledging the growth and success of the company.  In 2009, VerticalResponse was Ranked #244 on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500and #52 on the San Francisco Business Times List of  “Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in the Bay Area”. 

The VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Business was also recognized by the Web Marketing Association with the 2009 Award for Blog Standard of Excellence.  Most recently Popick was named the 2010 San Francisco SBA Small Business Person of the Year!

A Conversation with Janine Popick…the Past, Present and Future!

The SF BAWJ sat down with Popick to talk about her amazing journey, and the twists and turns that led her to where she is today!

On Early Exposure:  My dad was a tech guy at IBM. He was a lone worker bee for 35 years. He developed some cool stuff, and had a few patents.  IBM had family days and we’d all get to go in and look at main frames. I loved it.

On Work Ethic:  I was not one of those kids who went backpacking around Europe. The day after I graduated from college, I went to work at WCBS-TV in New York.  Radio and TV were my passions.

The VerticalResponse Team

On Changing Gears:   At a certain point I knew that was as far as I could go in TV. So I jumped ship and started doing ad sales for a newspaper in Brooklyn. I was going door to door. I realized it wasn’t for me when I got mugged. So I got a job in direct marketing.

On Heading West:  I had a bad relationship with a boy in New York. I came out here with a friend on a trip and decided someday I’d be back. A short time later I got a great job in direct marketing for a small ad agency on the peninsula. 

On Love and Marriage:  People who say you’re never going to meet a guy in San Francisco are wrong. I met my husband four weeks after moving here. The attraction was instant. We’ve been together for 15 years. We still always manage to tag along on each other’s business trips. We are a rare breed that really likes to hang out together.

On Inspiration:  My husband and I once found ourselves not working at the same time. So we moved to Paris. We talked about how everyone was giving out their email addresses. We’d both worked in big companies. How were small companies handling this?  They were using Outlook. There had to be a better way.

On a Typical Day:  I get up 6:30 a.m., do a half hour of email, check Tweet Deck, get on a treadmill for an hour and switch between VH1 and The Today Show. I do my sit-ups, some weights and get to work.  There I focus on what’s going on in the market, our customers and our competitors.

Between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., I walk home and grab a glass of wine with my husband to wind down.  He has an agency that has a lot of wineries and in our spare time he has a food and wine blog called VinDivine.  We have a lot fun.  One of us cooks while the other works. Then we go to the couch with our computers and watch TV. We loved Flight of the Conchords, Madmen and The Office.

On Reading:  Right now my favorite books are ReWork by Jason Fried and David Hansson and The Referral Engine by John Jantsch.

Reviewing the VerticalResponse postcard product.

On Success: The more smart people I can have around me that know things I don’t know the better.  That’s a big reason behind my company being successful.

That’s our strength as women. We understand our deficiencies. We accept that we are not going be perfect in every aspect. Women are great at leaning on other people.

On What Comes Next:  I am going to continue growing VerticalResponse. We have a great company that I am happy to come to every day.  Anything next for me is going to be in non-profit.  During the past two years I’ve set up formal company volunteering events, where we helped cleaned up the beach, read to second graders, rebuilt a playground and helped clean up the zoo. That’s a great day for me!

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by Deborah Burstyn-Feature Writer, SF Bay Area Women’s Journal

Ron Benza in his "Mad Men" Days.

In 1993 Benza, the married father of two sons now in college, moved his family to Marin when he took over McCann Erickson’s San Francisco office.  Today he’s a founding partner of the print production firm Benza Gruggen Buckley.  Clients include those you’ve heard of like Netflix, AT&T, Best Buy, WalMart, and Target and one maybe you haven’t heard of – The Family Violence Prevention Fund.

Ron recently talked with the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Journal about the “meeting that changed his life” and sparked his enduring passion and commitment to end violence against women and children.

The Family Violence Prevention Fund

The Family Violence Prevention Fund  has become a force in Benza’s life and led him to co-found, along with Dr. Buz Kanter, Founding Fathers, a group of thousands of prominent men dedicated to ending violence against women and children, under the auspices of the Family Violence Prevention Fund.  Benza is also a long standing volunteer for the Family Violence Prevention Fund and serves on the FVPF’s Leadership Committee.

On Exposure:  

I had no personal experience with this issue.  In 1997 Blue Shield of California was one of our clients at McCann-Erickson.  Through Blue Shield I met an incredible person:  Esta Soler, the founder of the Family Violence Prevention Fund. 

Esta’s my Oprah. That meeting with her changed my life.  She helped me see that preventing domestic violence until then had been only women helping women – at shelters, rape crisis centers and so on.

Men were either part of the problem or just bystanders.  Though I was not part of the problem,  I did not want to be a bystander either. I wanted to be part of the solution.

On Reach:

Ron Benza (r) with Sen. Barbara Boxer at a meeting in advance of passage of the Violence Against Women Act.

The domestic violence procedures that the police and judiciary use today were developed by the Family Violence Prevention Fund.  The FVPF was instrumental in the passage of the Violence Against Women Act. They have not only instructed judges throughout the land in correct procedures in violence cases, but the Chairman of the Board of the FVPF is the Honorable Ronald Adrine, a judge himself.

We connect with 15,000 to 20,000 organizations all over the world and produce about a million pieces of print material.   We’ve got 100,000 pieces alone going to a Planned Parenthood in the Mt. Shasta area as one example.

Founding Fathers’ program Coaching Boys to Men is even spreading around the world, through out-reach via the UN and other coaching programs. 

On the Economy’s Impact on Domestic Violence:

Unemployment, alcoholism and stress are all triggers. They go together like a witches’ brew; things that are borderline get worse.

On a Highlight for 2010:

Nancy Pelosi and Nicole Kidman participated in the ground breaking ceremony for the New Family Violence Prevention Center.

I just went on a hardhat tour of our new building… or new old building. It is a 1910 red brick building in the Presidio, next to the Disney Museum.  There’s not a lot you can change on the exterior but the inside will be amazing.  It will be home to our new offices and much more-an interactive meeting space, healing center and exhibits.

The Family Violence Prevention Center is going to be a major global conference and education center. It the end it won’t be a place as much as a concept, like the UN is more than a building on the East River. And it is on time and on budget!

On Parenting Boys:

I don’t think boys respond all that well to talking.  But your kids are watching you like a hawk and learning from you all the time – how you treat the waiter in a restaurant, how you react when someone cuts you off in traffic.  It is important to show by example.

On Inspiration:

“You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better you did better.”

That’s a quote from Maya Angelou.  I think she captured the spirit of hope itself. To me it says we don’t have to be saddled with violence as a human condition.
To learn more about The Family Violence Prevention Fund, please visit their website.  And you can find additional information about the Founding Father’s Coaching Boys to Men Program here.

If you enjoyed this article and want to share it with a friend or the world:) …it’s easy. Click on the Share/Save button and you can e-mail, Tweet or Bookmark it!

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Dr. Sandi Altman

She’s known around Contra Costa County as the Menopause Maven.  Now Dr. Sondra Altman, who for years has focused her gynecology practice on the health issues of older women, has a new title.

by Deborah Burstyn-Staff Writer, SF Bay Area Women’s Journal

She has been appointed to be the Medical Director of the newly opened John Muir Women’s Center for Continence and Pelvic Health in Walnut Creek!

Medical Center is Unique to the Bay Area

Presenting a mix of treatment options, including biofeedback and physical therapy, the Center is the first of its kind in the area.  

Dr. Altman, 57,  will oversee a dream team that includes urologists, colorectal surgeons, gynecologists  and nurse practitioners to offer women individualized testing and analysis.

A Conversation with “Dr. Sandi”

“Dr. Sandi” as she is fondly known to her patients recently sat down with the SF Bay Area Women’s Journal to share her thoughts and unique brand of humor regarding her new role in uro-gynocolgy, her life and calling of the past 30 years.

On Women’s Incontinence – Childbirth is not kind to the pelvic floor. Incontinence typically starts in the childbearing years then accelerates through menopause and the Medicare years.  Of the 13 million Americans with urinary incontinence, 85% are women.

Women think they’re stuck wearing Poise pads. They’re not. It’s fixable.

On Influences - I was studying to be a preschool teacher at Tufts.  Sesame Street was new and exciting. My roommate was pre-med. Whoa. I didn’t know women could be doctors.  It was Boston in the early 70s. The first “Our Bodies, Ourselves” had just been published.

A doctor was arrested at Boston University for presenting a lecture on birth control to co-eds.  The idea that women could receive health information and take control of their bodies was radical.  I had found my calling.

On Geography – At Boston University Medical School, I had to get up an hour earlier just to dig out my car after a snowstorm.  I arranged to do my internship and residency at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland and never went back.

On Life/Work Choices – When I had two kids in diapers at home, I gave up obstetrics. My former husband also was a doctor and worked long hours.  I was having to leave the house before the sitter got there because I had to go deliver babies.

Doing only gynecology was going to be short-term until my kids were older but as my patients aged, a funny thing happened.

I had to learn about menopausal issues and hormones on my own. Menopause as a field of interest did not exist. I had found a new calling.

On Hormone Replacement Therapy – All the data point to risk of cancer increasing after five years of hormone replacement therapy.   Two to three years  is usually what is helpful for women when they are going through menopause and there is no increased risk associated with that.

So you don’t have to choose between being crazy now or getting cancer later.  The publicity around this has done a great disservice to women.

On a Typical Day – Last Thursday I removed 17 fibroids from a patient’s uterus. That’s like the equivalent of three babies’ heads.  She was a lot thinner afterwards. I also do DNCs and hysterectomies.  There’s paperwork and seeing patients in my office.

I also practice what I preach and exercise every day;  a spinning  class or pilates.  I eat lunch at my desk with People magazine, my guilty pleasure.

On Patients - Most of my patients are over 40. But I also get some of the kids I delivered. They are all grown up now and in law school.

I love what I do. I have the nicest patients. I am so lucky.

On Being a Doctor – In spite of all the changes in medicine it always comes down to the doctor and the patient. That is where the passion and the joy come in.

At the end of the day that’s what you’ve got  – that you made a difference in someone’s life.

On Taking on New Responsibilities – Periodically you need to reset and refresh. I am excited about  the new field of  uro-gynecology and learning more about it.  This is my new calling.

For the many smiles that you have brought from delivering babies to making us laugh at the experience of menopause and now incontinence… (does it ever end)…we  say thank-you Dr. Sandi!

If you enjoyed this article and want to share it with a friend or the world:) …it’s easy. Click on the Share/Save button and you can e-mail, Tweet or Bookmark it!

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by Deborah Burstyn
Staff Writer, SF Bay Area Women’s Journal

Paul Ash, Exec. Director San Francisco Food Bank

The food is delivered to over 200 food pantry sites around San Francisco to serve those living at or near the poverty line.

Ash, 55, helped develop an innovative program, Farm to Family, which partners with over 100 different growers and packers to funnel fresh and nutritious produce to those that rely on the Food Bank.  This year over 20 million pounds was distributed and 60% of the food that was fresh produce. 

The San Francisco Food Bank distributes more pounds per person in poverty than all other food banks in the nation! 

Ash spoke with the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Journal about his life and the job he’s held for 20 years feeding the city’s hungriest residents.

On Life Exposure – Back in Oklahoma, both sets of my grandparents had farms. They were mostly subsistence farms with a couple of cash crops, alfalfa and cotton. They worked hard. Yet through no fault of their own – weather, insects – if the crops failed, things could get bad.  My grandparents got old before their time.

When I see people in line at our food pantries, I see my grandparents’ faces in their faces.

On a Typical Day – Breakfast might be followed by a visit to St. Anthony’s dining room where I interact with the clients that depend on the food provided by the Food Bank and then lunch with a CEO of a major corporation who is interested in donating.  I get to see first-hand what a range of success and tragedy we have in this country. 

There are many people who are so bright and working so hard.  Yet because of bad luck, a few bad choices or mental illness, supporting themselves is oftentimes difficult.

I try to get out to visit one of our pantries several times a week.

On Hunger – We live in the richest agricultural state in one of the richest countries in the world. We grow enough food in this country to feed everyone. And still have plenty left to export and make profits.

Yet only 50% of people who are eligible for food stamps receive them. We make it difficult for them. We have this fear of giving people something they are not entitled to.   

We prevent those who are entitled from accessing food stamps.

On Volunteering – Sundays are reserved as family days at the San Francisco Food Bank. We don’t operate the power equipment like the fork lift on Sundays which makes it a safer day for kids to be here.

We have families that come once a month to volunteer together. They make it a cornerstone for teaching values to their kids. The Food Bank is a fun and safe environment for children to learn about the importance of supporting others in need in their community.

Volunteering at the Food Bank is different than serving food in a soup kitchen.  Both tasks are challenging. Many of our projects are hands on work. For example, we buy beans in 2,000 pound bags and our volunteers repackage them into one pound bags. We’re open seven days a week and some evenings for people to volunteer.

On Crisis – We opened several new food distribution sites last summer to support the increase of people turning to the food bank. We’re seeing a lot of new folks coming to the pantries. We encourage people to come sooner rather than later. 

It is especially important for those in need with children. If a child misses meals it can impact their health and their learning ability.

We’ve seen a 20 percent increase in those requesting food from this time last year.

On Budget – Our budget is 80 percent donations, which requires a lot of fundraising.

On Decompressing – I like to get outdoors and be in nature. I enjoy bike riding. I like to ski with my children. And I like camping. Last summer we did a fantastic camping trip to the Grand Canyon.

On Reading – My favorite book is Men to Match My Mountains by Irving Stone. It is about the opening of the American West. Right now I am reading Down the Great Unknown about the discovery of the Grand Canyon.

Thanks Paul for taking the time to talk with the SF BAWJ and for your leadership in helping to end hunger in the San Francisco Bay Area!

To learn more about the San Francisco Food Bank, please visit their website.

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Alison Levine

An interview with Alison Levine… the first woman to serve as Team Captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition!  She is a demure dynamo powered by sheer determination who has reached the summit of both the business world and the physical world’s highest mountains!

by Deborah Burstyn,
SF BAWJ Staff Writer

Listening to Alison Levine is magic. The sparkle in her eyes and the energy in her voice inspire us to feel that we too can scale new heights! She helps everyone she comes into contact with – whether big league corporate executives or third world village women – attain their goals and connect with their dreams.

Levine, a former Wall Street investment banker and finance director for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful campaign for governor, now heads two businesses of her own.  She is the founder and president of DareDevil Strategies, a consulting business specializing in organizational effectiveness, leadership development, and team dynamics.

She is also the founder of the Climb High Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women in third world countries by training them to be trekking guides in their local mountains. No mean feat as it entails empowering them to overcome the traditional stigma against competing with their men folk.

Levine climbed her first mountain at 32, in between starting graduate school and recovering from surgery for a life-threatening congenital heart condition. Although her call to the wild came relatively late, it came on strong.

In the spring of 2002, she was invited to serve as the team captain of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition.  Although she incessantly travels the world and regularly appears on shows like Oprah and NBC Today, Levine continues to call San Francisco home, making her one of us – a Bay Area Woman.

What prompted you to start climbing mountains?

After years of working in marketing, I was stymied because I couldn’t understand financial statements. At 32, after I had my second and final heart surgery, I decided to go to graduate school. I got accepted to Duke’s MBA program so I quit my job and gave myself a month to travel.

Several girlfriends were supposed to go with me to Mt. Kilimanjaro. But at the last minute they decided they’d rather go to Club Med.  I grew up in Arizona where everyone has a pool so sitting by a pool didn’t seem like a vacation.

I headed to Mt. Kilimanjaro alone. I was too naïve to be afraid. It was great. Every day on the mountain was a new adventure with new challenges. I was hooked. Luckily, I had a lot of frequent flier miles.

What inspired you to create Daredevil Strategies?

After serving as team captain for the first American Women’s Everest Expedition, I realized that many of the strategies employed in the business world are the same strategies used when climbing the worlds highest and most challenging peaks.

Foresight, focus, and flawless execution are equally important in the jet stream as in corporate America. And a good sense of humor is always essential when dealing with an ever-changing landscape!”

What advice do you have for women today?

If you don’t like what you’re doing every day, change it. We spend the majority of our waking hours in our “day jobs” – whether we are working outside the home or in the home. If you are not totally fired up about what you are doing, you need to make a change

We can all recreate ourselves as many times as we want. It’s fun. I am 43 years old and I finally found my niche in the business world. It did not come quickly nor did it come without pain, financial stress, self-doubt, and tears. But I had great friends offering encouragement all along the way.

One of the most important things you can have is a great group of girlfriends. Surround yourself with bright, caring, ambitious women, and if you do you will have the world’s most reliable safety net.

Photo of Alison Levine by Kathi O’Leary, SF BAWJ Staff Photographer!
If you enjoyed this article and want to share it with a friend or the world:) …it’s easy. Click on the Share/Save button and you can e-mail, Tweet or Bookmark it!

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By Deborah Burstyn
SF BAWJ Staff Writer

Sandra Phillips

Who knew this was the first fashion photo shoot to use live action instead of static posed studio shots? 

Or, that photographer Martin Munkacsi created the concept now standard fashion magazine fare?

Sandra Phillips, of course!  

As curator of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she made sure that the traveling exhibit of Munkacsi’s work made a lengthy stop here last summer. Room after room in the museum entranced viewers with the early 20^th century photography master’s celebrity, fashion and photojournalism works.

Not content only to procure important exhibits for the SFMOMA – no easy feat in the highly competitive art world – Phillips also receives high acclaim among her peers for creating important exhibits herself.

No less a lofty publication than the New Yorker devoted several pages recently to praise “Revelations,” a retrospective of iconic photographer Diane Arbus curated by Phillips.

More than just a collection of the portraits we’ve all come to know so well, Phillips along with co-curator Elisabeth Sussman, also procured the photographer’s cameras, personal correspondence and family snapshots. The show offered the public the first real glimpse of the woman behind the famous photos as well as an opportunity to see the photos themselves in a biographical context.

“I Always Liked Musuems”

As public as her work is, Sandra Phillips is a very private person. Although her work is well known in the art world she herself flies very low under the radar. To even find her one must jostle through a warren of cubicles tucked away in the depths of the museum.  She sits behind her desk, a vision of pared down chic in a crisp white shirt and black skirt. Books and prints surround her.

“I always liked museums,” Phillips says with a modest shrug.

Growing Up in Manhattan

A girlhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with a father who was an architect with Robert Moses, the guy credited for designing the modern urban landscape, helped point her toward the artistic side of city life. Fresh from Manhattan’s exclusive Brearley School, Phillips headed to bohemian Bard College to learn to become a painter.

Phillips soon realized that she was better suited to becoming an art historian than an artist. After getting her master’s degree at Bryn Mawr, she married an artist and had a son. But soon she was back in school.

“We didn’t have any money and I realized that you couldn’t do anything with a masters’,” she recalls. So, Phillips decided to get a Ph.D. through the low-cost New York City community college system.

“I had to put my son in daycare and commute two and a half hours each way by train to get to school. It took me ten years to get my degree.”

Once she had it, she quickly got her first job as the curator for Vassar College’s art museum. “It was a wonderful way to learn how to be a curator, because I had to do everything, except hang the pictures on the walls.  But it quickly became just too much to do.”

The Opportunity:  Curator of Photography SFMOMA

Phillips and her husband had spent a year teaching art at Mills College. Phillips taught a course on photography and her grasp of the subject did not escape notice. When the photography curator of the SFMOMA was about to retire, he recommended her for his job – an unusually high position for a woman even in 1987. 

Phillips’ husband was uncomfortable at her prestige in the art world outshining his – “He decided he didn’t want to be married to a curator,” Phillips says. With her son returning east for school, Phillips found herself facing the challenges of her work at SFMOMA on her own. This included re-energizing the museum’s photography department when the SFMOMA opened its new building in 1995.

Instead of crumbling, Phillips was motivated to succeed.

“I was essentially alone so I thought, Well, I better really do something now. I also felt a sense of responsibility to the field here. I knew it was going to be a struggle but I knew I wanted to have exhibits and publications that were original for the Museum. From almost the time I started I was doing a major show every year and a half with a big publication.”

Phillips faces a daunting task of trying to please both the eclectic arts community as well as the public looking for accessible fare. She fuses the disparate art audiences by exhibiting photography, old and new, that illustrates the real world but in a way that stimulates further thought.

Her current interests include an approach to the way land in the West has been exploited and developed.  The opposite of the way Ansel Adams saw the American Western landscape, as well as, photography associated with voyeurism and surveillance.

She explains, “There is a long tradition of taking photos of people who did not know they were being photographed; the candid camera idea has a long and important history, one that has some uncomfortable ramifications in our present society.”

San Francisco Offers Diversity

Looking back, Phillips has no regrets about leaving New York, an epi-center of the art world.

“Manhattan has gotten homogenized and less interesting,” she observes. “Plus it is so competitive with everyone chasing after the same money. Here, in San Francisco, there is more diversity.  It has a vibrant arts community, but is small enough for me to do what I want. I have a garden, friends, and I get to do a lot traveling.”

As much as Phillips enjoys her work, she firmly believes that there will come a time for her to step aside to make room for a new generation. She cites the example of Walter Pach.  A minor artist, Pach had the good fortune to speak French and lived in Paris in the early 1900s, and helped  introduce the French Post- Impressionists and early Modern artists to America.

“He knew Matisse, he knew all the cubist painters. He understood that generation and brought the work of those people here and defended it. But then when different things happened, like surrealism, he didn’t get it. He hated it.  He lost his voice.”

She gazes at the photos around her office and her voice takes on a firm note. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Photo of Sandra Phillips by Kathi O’Leary, SF BAWJ Staff Photographer!

If you enjoyed this article and want to share it with a friend or the world:) …it’s easy. Click on the Share/Save button and you can e-mail, Tweet or Bookmark it!

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by Deborah Burstyn
SF BAWJ Staff Writer

Farahana Huq

Her aunt’s desperation is what Farhana Huq recalls. Her mother’s youngest sister’s arranged marriage had ended in divorce, leaving the mother of three adrift in a new country with no means of support. Huq, a teen-ager, watched in horror as her once-proud aunt veered from the charity of relatives to welfare.

Then something wonderful happened. Her aunt began working in a friend’s beauty salon and soon opened a salon of her own.

It was a lesson that Farhana Huq never forgot and prompted this quiet daughter of Asian immigrants to override her parents’ wishes. Instead of using her Economics and   Philosophy degrees from Tufts University to launch herself into a lucrative Wall Street career, Huq instead headed west to found C.E.O. Women…Creating Economic Opportunities for Women.

Filling a Need to Help Immigrant and Refugee Women

Inspired by the diversity in the Bay Area, Huq created the organization to help low-income immigrant and refugee women.  Her goal…to help them support themselves in their new country by capitalizing on the American dream: starting their own businesses.

In the brief time since Huq launched the non-profit in 2002, several hundred women have completed C.E.O. Women’s unique 16-week entrepreneurship training program.  The program is a combination crash course in English communications and small business ownership. And with their new video based Grand Café curriculum, they hope to reach 1000 women per year! 

First Steps to C.E.O. Women

After college, Huq volunteered with AmeriCorps/VISTA and chose a position in San Rafael.  She was working in a program that became the basis for C.E.O. Women. But the program ended.

Farhana congratulates Beatriz Mena, recipient of a Venture Fund grant award.

Huq began to contact women in high-level corporate positions all over the Bay area seeking funding. Once in frustration she confided to one of them that she wanted to give up and just get a job.

The woman, Lata Krishnan, the founder of a semi-conductor business, said, “You would be doing the world a great injustice if you got a job doing something else.  Here, I will be your first investor,” Huq recalls. And she gave me $1,000 and helped me write a business plan.

In spite of her preference for staying low profile, the success of C.E.O. Women has made Huq an internationally-recognized champion for women and their economic independence.

In addition to many awards, Huq now receives invitations to speak and participate in workshops around the world on issues involving women, work and sustainability. But Huq acknowledges that it was not long ago that she was struggling to get C.E.O. Women off the ground.

Staying Focused on Her Passion…Launching C.E.O. Women!

“It took me six months just to get a meeting with the head of adult education in Oakland. I just kept calling until they were sick of me and had to see me to get rid of me,” she recalls. “People who know me tell me that I am very strategic and focused.”

“A lot of people are fearful of doing new things,” Huq says, “But you can’t be. Look at C.E.O. Women. I started this by working out of my bedroom in a tiny apartment with no health insurance, no salary for three years and only $1000 in funding.”

“Now here we are,” she pauses to gesture around her Oakland office. “We are helping so many women and pioneering a network of new women-owned small businesses.”

Photo of Farhan Huq by Kathi O’Leary, SF BAWJ Staff Photographer!

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By Deborah Burstyn
BAWJ Staff Writer

Julie Rems-Smario Exec. Dir. Deaf Hope

Lavender-colored life-size silhouettes made of wood line the halls of DeafHope’s Oakland office like statues.  Each one displays a photograph and hand-written epitaph for a deaf woman murdered by her partner, in some cases hearing and in some cases not.

These tragic monuments serve as a constant reminder of DeafHope’s mission: to end domestic violence and sexual assault against Deaf women and children through empowerment, education and services.

DeafHope was founded in 2003 by eight women, including its current Executive Director Julie Rems-Smario. The SF Bay Area Women’s Journal visited Rems-Smario at DeafHope’s office in the Alameda County Family Justice Center to learn more about her and the organization. 

Rems-Smario graciously typed her responses to our questions because we regretfully do not know sign language.

Do deaf women have different needs than other women in abusive situations?

Deaf women who come from Deaf families have been in communication since birth with their families in sign language.  They are generally the best self-advocates. 

Unfortunately many deaf women from hearing families did not receive adequate communication, starting with a long period of grieving on their parents’ part. Here at DeafHope we make the agency Deaf-centered with all the staff signing. 

Abuse survivors are often surprised to find out that I, as the executive director, am Deaf.  That itself is very empowering. At DeafHope, abuse survivors can focus on domestic and sexual violence issues without worrying about communication barriers.

How does deafness factor into abuse?

Just as in the hearing population, abuse is about power and control. But Deaf women in abusive situations face additional challenges.

One example is when a Deaf survivor calls 911 for help. Often the police will talk with the hearing batterer instead of getting an interpreter for the Deaf woman to tell her story.  They will close the case based on the hearing batterer’s story who often will say there isn’t a problem. 

How do women in need of services find out about DeafHope?  How many women and children has DeafHope helped?

We continue to rely on community support for DeafHope’s future success.  As for reaching out to Deaf women about DeafHope services, we found that our most powerful pubic relations are word of mouth.  Or rather, word of hands.  

Since the inception of DeafHope in 2003, we have provided services to over 450 Deaf women and children.

What geographical area do you cover?

We provide direct services to ten Bay Area counties including Alameda County.   However we give technical assistance and support through videophone and email all over California and the nation.

What kind of services do you offer?

We have a 24 hour email hotline system.  When we are contacted we arrange for an instant message appointment, videophone session, or TTY call, whichever the survivor prefers.  Most of the time, the preference is to meet in person. 

What about the need for housing and jobs?

I am so glad you asked that!  There is only one Deaf shelter in the United States. 

We are in the beginning phase of launching our capital campaign for a DeafHope center including a shelter and transitional homes.  It is a 10 million dollar project which will take about seven years to accomplish. It will be the first one ever in California and second in the nation.  

I am very excited about this project and invite the community business women, and everyone, to join DeafHope to make this incredible dream come true from many abused Deaf women.

Julie Rems-Smario is a 2007 CNN Hero, honored for her work as Executive Director and co-founder of DeafHope.  Based in Oakland CA, DeafHope is a non-profit organization dedicated to ending domestic and and sexual violence against Deaf women and children.  To learn more about their programs and how you can help, please visit DeafHope’s website.

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Dr. Nancy Milliken

Imagine a future in which health care providers work in teams and share information with each other — and you — via the internet.

Imagine a brand new state of the art hospital in San Francisco devoted to providing women a lifetime of reproductive health,where a woman can have a baby in a birthing center, receive the latest in breast cancer care or uterine fibroid treatment…all in a woman-centered environment.

The Future – UCSF Women’s Specialty Hospital

That future is closer than you think thanks to the vision of lifelong women’s healthcare advocate and expert Dr. Nancy Milliken. Dr. Milliken, who for decades has pioneered efforts to change the medical system from within, helped create the UCSF National Center for Excellence in Women’s Health in 1996. Now a decade later she is a force behind the planned new UCSF Women’s Specialty Hospital at Mission Bay. The Women’s Hospital is part of a new $1.5 billion UCSF medical complex scheduled to break ground in 2011.

Following is Part One of our interview with Dr. Milliken regarding women’s healthcare:

BAWJ:  What is one of the biggest changes you have seen in women’s healthcare?

Dr. Milliken: The biggest change is the recognition that by excluding women from clinical research trials we might be providing ineffective or unsafe care to women.

Women were excluded as subjects because we are more difficult and thus more costly to study, due for example, to daily hormone fluctuations. Historically, the solution was to study only men and then assume the findings applied to women. That reasoning was scientifically flawed. We need to study women to know what works in women.

This began to change in the 1990s; Congresswomen in office at that time really helped bring about change. Another driving force was Bernadine Healy, the first female head of NIH. Studies are no longer funded unless women are represented in numbers large enough to be valid.

Another major change in women’s lives is that we are living longer.

Just think, at the beginning of the 20^th century the average lifespan for women was 48 years, by the end it was 85. This means women are living a full third of their lives past menopause and we have known very little about health in those added years.

Knowing how women are different from men is essential to understanding prevention strategies, screening and diagnostic testing as well as medical and surgical treatments. This is essential if those added years are going to be long and healthful.

 Once we have the new knowledge we must put it into action.  There are two great routes to accomplish this. One is to make sure that the curricula in our health professional schools are up to date so we train our doctors, nurses and pharmacists to be able to take care of the unique needs of both women and men.

 Secondly we need to put this new info into the hands of women. This is a most effective strategy because women are extraordinarily thoughtful and savvy consumers of health care.

 BAWJ: As we saw with the movement for home births instead of hospital births during the 1970s?

Dr. Milliken:  Exactly. When women were dissatisfied with the delivery of care and lack of options, they voted with their feet. Home births replaced hospital births and hospitals paid attention! As a result there is no hospital now that doesn’t have a birth center.

No one should underestimate the power of informed women.

Women are the major health care decision makers in this country. They make 70 to 90 percent of the decisions for their health, their parents’ health, their in-laws’ health and their children’s health. By truly respecting women and giving them information they need to make those decisions, we can have a major positive impact on communities!

 This is part one of a two part series of our interview with Dr. Milliken.  To learn more about Dr. Milliken’s thoughts on women’s health care, read part two here.

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By Michele Benza, San Francisco Image Consultant

Michele Benza

How many times have you seen someone who is not conventionally attractive but yet is perceived as beautiful because he or she radiates a sense of well-being and an inner knowing of their self-worth and purpose in the world?

They are completely at ease with themselves and the world.

Make Time to Take Good Care of Yourself!

It is vitally important that we take as good care of ourselves within as we do with our outside appearance.  It is of course much easier to enhance our beauty externally. Developing aspects of ourselves within that make us feel comfortable in our skin and accept our perceived physical flaws…is more challenging.

Many of us have internal gremlins that are hell bent on eroding our confidence and self-esteem.  We can counter those critical gremlins by learning to accept ourselves as we are–large hips and all!  Of course it is important that we try to modify negative behavior patterns and take action to improve our physical well-being in any way we can.  But always be realistic. 

Some of us simply don’t have a Julia Roberts smile.  But a smile is a smile is a smile and can lift your spirits and those of others around you.

10 Quick Tips to Improve Your inner Beauty
There are many simple things you can do to improve your inner well-being.  There are myriads of books and articles with great advice on how to achieve this but; here are some of my quick and easy pointers:

1.  Take time out to truly relax whether it is just being quiet listening to music or taking a stroll alone or with someone you love.

2.  Avoid negative thinking and people!

3.  Breathe! Learn some simple breathing techniques that are calming and centering.

4.  Turn the lights low or light candles when you eat, take a long bath or shower.

5.  Find ways to create harmony in your mind and in your life through a mind-body practice.

6.  Choose a physical activity that resonates with your body whether it is Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, hip-hop, pole, swing or ballroom dancing, rollerblading or simply walking. Make time for        whatever it is regularly.  Once you develop the habit, you’ll find your body demands that you keep it!

8. Be grateful each day for whatever it is that is good in your life whether it be health, loving family and friends, a roof over your head, a comfy bed, a delicious meal, a beautiful sunny day.

9.  Meditate.  If sitting still for any length of time is challenging, try an activity like Tai Chi that incorporates meditation with movement.

10.  Be optimistic against all odds.

11.  Live in the moment.

Remember we all have the capacity to be beautiful, no matter our physical appearance.

 Michele Benza is the founder of “Michele Benza Image Consulting and Posture” a program that focuses on enhancing one’s personal and professional image. She is certified in image consulting from European Institutions and her niche is European style and elegance.  Michele  is a member of the Association of Image Consultants International (AICI) and is the only American member of the Association Francaise pour L’image Professionnelle et Personnelle (AFIPP)! 

Michele Benza is San Francisco’s best kept secret!  To learn more, please visit her website at MicheleBenza.

Want to e-mail, Tweet or Bookmark this article? It’s easy…just click the Share/Save button!

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