Thank you all for listening to the first season of the A is for Morenike Podcast. You can follow via Twitter, Instagram and TikTok!
See you soon for Season 2!
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
Our final episode is all about the Power Women. Joined by the Founderland Management Team, the network is led by Stephanie von Behr, Deborah Choi and Alina Bassi. "Boss Women" and "Girl Boss" are just some the words you can hear about leading women in the workplace. In this episode we take the time to discuss what this means for us and the practicalities of being a women in business. As a #BossWoman, myself I’ve found it super important to find others alike who understand the importance of self-care, drive, negotiation, entrepreneurship and empowerment. Running a network alongside a business can be quite tough. How can we disrupt our industries? What lessons can we learn from Founderland? How can women in leadership positions continue pioneering and advocating for each other?
Today, we are discussing the complexities of running a network, creating a hustle and work streams that works for you and how the Founderland Co-Founders have found sustaining their businesses in the height of a pandemic and an upcoming economic crisis.
Stephanie von Behr is Managing Director and Co-Founder at Founderland. She is focused on operations, accelerator programs, comms, and the digital platform. She has been working with startups for over a decade, as a 3x founder, mentor, and brand consultant. She is a natural connector of people, a catalyst of ideas, and a champion of women. Born in New York, Stephanie earned a BA from NYU and a MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. She is an intersectional feminist, committed to creating a more equitable future for the next generation.
Deborah Choi is a Managing Director at Founderland, focused on community growth and ecosystem partnerships. Prior to Founderland, Deborah founded four ventures, raised VC funding, and joined the BusinessWeek ‘Top 25 under 25’ with her first startup and most recently Business Insider's top 25 Zukunftsmacherinnen (Futuremaker) list for 2022.
Deborah has 15+ years of experience growing consumer brands and has advised 100+ VC-backed startups on international growth. Born in Nigeria and raised in the US, Deborah earned a BA from the University of Chicago and resides in Berlin.
Alina Bassi is a Chemical Engineer turned Impact Entrepreneur, with a passion for sustainability. After 7 years in the biofuels and waste recycling space, she co-founded Kleiderly, a textile recycling startup that has developed an innovative method to recycle textiles into a durable plastic alternative. She is a venture scout and the co-founder of a non-profit that supports women of colour to raise investment, Founderland. She was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2020, and has been featured in Vogue, Wired, and Germany’s Shark Tank.
Looking for a network to join? Become a Founderland member.
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram/Twitter: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home. Chloe Spiby Loh shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
This episode brings together mothers engaged with public space and technology. Breastfeeding in Public Spaces is part of a project Alisha is working on within her company, Migrant's Bureau. Questioning how we can become more inclusive to new mothers within our public spaces, challenging stigmas and protecting women's safety.
Natalie is a Yoga teacher and Fine Artist, with an interest in wellness and data advocacy. Her last project with Foundervine 54 startup involved using data and research surveys to explore a solution to Ghana's waste management problem. She’s currently working on designing a wellness app and writing her first book about motherhood.
A day with Founder Natalie Brown
Angelene comes from an unorthodox architectural background and has experienced various professional ventures reflecting different explorations and investigations into space and how it functions. As a consultant she strives to see patterns where most see chaos, Assisting with clients with evidenced based data and recommendations, that help inform their briefs for projects. Angelene recently finished a Masters in Space Syntax at UCL The Bartlett and is a mum of two.
Racial disparities in construction
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home. Yasmin Metz-Johnson shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
We discuss all things Bodies, Health and our In-Between Worlds Part 2. The journey we undertake as individuals is linked in how we carve spaces collectively threading the needle to weave our own stories and our land.
Jan-Ming Lee is a uk artist of Chinese descent working with dance, movement and sound. Most recently she has been facilitating, devising as well as performing for projects that relate to building collective spaces for us to tell our stories in all our complexities. Araceli Camargo is a cognitive neuroscientist and science communicator. She was the lab director at The Centric Lab (which is in partnership with UCL) to explore how people interact and are impacted by the physical world around them. Araceli's science communication focuses on the Future of Work, Neurodiversity, and Women's Health.
A passage in the Huangdi Neijing (ancient book of Chinese medicine, as well as a major book of Daoist theory and lifestyle) reads: ‘When anger abounds and does not end, then it will harm the mind.’ Just as in the case of tools or machines, there are ways in which we can use our bodies that overtax or harm them, and thus cause injury and illness (including mental illness), according to ancient Chinese scholars. This is an astute insight into the nature of illness.
― Psyche Magazine’s article, Chinese philosophy has long known that mental health is communal.
The theme of this season is Home. Amina Chouairi shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
This episode surrounds we take inspiration from Clarissa Pinkola Estés' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Joined by Valentina Antollini and Sereena Abbassi we look into how our womanhood can be challenged, perceived and embodied through our identities and career paths. On this episode, we have Valentina and Sereena. Valentina is an artist, designer, and mentor for women. She graduated in architecture at Central St. Martins, worked as a software engineer and is now working full-time as a mentor and consultant for women leaders, creators, and entrepreneurs. Sereena Abbassi is committed to creating organisational transformation that is grounded in deep seat of belief that all our liberation are tied to each other. Her approach is both creative and strategic and done with lots of heart. Serena is an equity and inclusion practitioner, belonging researcher, holistic life coach, public speaker and writer, and was formerly the worldwide head of culture and inclusion.
"When a woman asked for wealth in exchange of her work, she's breaking a cycle, one cycle of generational disempowerment of the feminine in her lineage." - Valentina Antollini
The theme of this season is Home. Jan-Ming Lee shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
We discuss all things bodies, health and our in-between Worlds. The journey we undertake as individuals is linked in how we carve spaces collectively threading the needle to weave our own stories and our land.
I’m excited to introduce on the episode today, Noelene Nabulivou, the Executive Director of DIVA for Equality, Convenor, Women Defend Commons Network, Pacific Feminist Activist. Noelene is a feminist community organiser, analyst, educator and activist working for socio-economic, ecological and climate justice and universal human rights in urban informal settlements, rural and maritime Fiji, the Pacific and globally for over 35 years. Guided by autonomous feminist movements Noelene works with communities.
“Pacific society will not change until there is a large grassroots movement pushing power structures to change. This is what we are strongly and consistently building and supporting through our collective, then hubs in urban poor, rural and remote communities, and with wider civil society groups.”
A special thank you to Thousand Currents for support on this episode!
You can follow Diva4equality via Twitter: @diva4equality and @pacfemcop
Website: divafiji.org
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home. Tuliza shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
This episode is Part 3 on Decolonialism featuring preservation + Blackness within Institutions with the incredible Benjamina Efua Dadzie. Benjamina is a Ghanaian-Italian researcher, with interest in West African cultures, especially Akan and Yoruba. In her work she explores agency, representation and self-determination.
You can listen to Benjamina on African Object Lessons Podcast.
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home. I share what Home means to me. Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
Website + Quarterly newsletter
Welcome back to the A is for Morenike Podcast! We took a lil' break...
In 2016, the #FeesMustFall movement addressed the inequities within institutions. This included the failure for the South Africans born and bred in the country to address the need for more diverse staff especially when needing Black faculty members aiming to address the necessity towards decoloniality and African Urbanism. These are just a handful of voices from the students I came across...
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home and Pippa shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
This episode features Kuukuwa Manful + Tuliza Sindi and Miliswa Ndziba from room19isaFactory.
Kuukuwa Manful is a trained architect and researcher who creates, studies and documents architecture in Africa. She is a visiting post-doctoral scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at the University of Stanford, and a post-doctoral researcher on the African State Architecture Project at SOAS, University of London.
Through her Accra Archive project, she has digitised a collection of endangered historical architectural material pertaining to architecture, construction, and urban regulation in Ghana. She also curates adansisɛm - an architecture collective that documents Ghanaian architecture theory, research and practice, and co-founded and runs sociarchi - a social architectural enterprise that advocates for, and provides architectural services to people who ordinarily cannot afford architects.
room19isaFactory. was founded in 2022 by Tshwanelo Kubayi, Tuki Mbalo, Thandeka Mnguni, Miliswa Ndziba, and their lecturer-turned-colleague, Tuliza Sindi - founder of Unit 19 at the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA). room19isaFactory. is a cross-disciplinary architecture collective that approaches existing spatial philosophies as metaphorical ground conditions that render linear constructions of time (or the Western chronopolitical imagination) tautological. Through culture-making, their practice speculates about liberating those grounds from their chronopolitical captivity.
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
The theme of this season is Home. Valentina shares what Home means to her.
Each Home edition will feature the voices of women. You can also contribute your own by sending through an entry of what home means to you by filling in the form on www.alishamorenike.co
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
Grief, Loss and Overcoming Fear with Natalie Lue
Relationship expert, author, speaker and podcaster, Natalie Lue has been featured in The New York Times and Women's Health, with 15 years experience helping individuals to manage their self-esteem and relationships in professional and personal spaces.
Natalie also founded Baggage Reclaim in 2005. In this episode we take a deep into vulnerability, pain and grief.
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
Website + Quarterly newsletter
Dropping my first seed, so a warm welcome.
A is For Morenike is something really special for me, welcome to the first season. My name is Alisha and I'm interested in Wellness, Green Building and Innovation. I hope this podcast opens doors, opportunities, elevates new levels for you and feels like a blessing. I'm inspired by each woman you hear from, I hope you enjoy too!
Music by Is Seven A Gang
Instagram: @aformorenike
Website + Quarterly newsletter
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