Episode 81: Lis Best
Join Lori and her guest, Lis Best, as they discuss building a community business that empowers women to embrace their authentic selves and make a lasting impact on the world. Lis is the founder and CEO of Girls Club Collective. She thinks it's time for a new kind of leadership where women lead the way, and she's excited about it!
Here are the things to expect in this episode:
How Girls Club Collective assists women in advancing their careers.
The assistance available to women in community businesses can be instrumental in their professional growth.
Feminine leadership.
The impact that women can make on the world.
And much more!
Girls Club Collective: https://girlsclubcollective.co/
Girls Club Collective Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/girls_club_collective/
Lis Best’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabethbest/
Connect with Lori Kranczer!
Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/
Episode Transcript
You're listening to the positive impact philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. philanthropies a personal journey and through the stories we will share here. We hope that it sparks something in you and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist. Together we're going to explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted every Wednesday. So today, I'm excited to introduce Liz best. She's the founder and CEO of girls club collective. Welcome, Liz.
Thank you, Laurie. It's so exciting. To be here.
I'm so excited to have you. So I am really excited to hear about what you do and I think our listeners will also so why don't you share some about what you do and what the girls club Collective is?
Totally um, I'm so excited to talk about it. So I have as you said, I'm the founder and CEO of The Girls Club collective, which we just officially started earlier this year in 2023. So still relatively new. Although I feel like I've been more and less formally doing this work for a few years now. The girls club Collective is the intentionally intimate personal and professional development community for women who identify as change agents is a space where women I as I defined them are women who are changing the world women who are making an impact in some capacity together to build authentic relationships with other change agents come to find out how someone like actually got that thing done and not just the Polish talking points version of how they got that thing done. And again, really like a place where relationships are central to everything we do so yeah, it's been really fun building a community business reorienting my own business after three years to be a community business. And it's just like been the it's really truly the girls club Collective is my favorite place to hang out on the internet and it's been so fun to be creating and extending that over the past few months. Yeah,
I think it's fantastic. I've checked out your work. How did you get involved in doing this? Like what sparked that interest in creating this collective of this community?
Yeah, definitely. So I have been working in the impact space, more or less formally since 2011. And something that I noticed really early in my corporate career was that I kept seeing all these amazing, brilliant, awesome women land their dream jobs, and then totally burned themselves out. And it happened to me too. After six years my first in house rule I was like so burned out that I had to just like walk away from my from my job and I also have the benefit and my first six years in corporate of getting access to a lot of different like what I would now name although these aren't exactly their names at the time, like mastermind style, collaborative like groups and initiatives of other leaders who are trying to figure out things like how to be more effective leaders how to show up as leaders and how to address like major impact challenges like human rights and better ESG reporting. And they weren't game changers for me like having a safe space to connect with people who I considered my peers, people who are maybe a little further ahead of me people who are maybe like at different points in their journey. So it's really opened my eyes to the impact of having more brains than one on some of these huge challenges that we're facing as a society. And after I left that job, I took like a six week very quick around the world trip and took some time to recover from my burnout. I landed in a management consulting firm initially as their editor in chief and then had the opportunity to transition over to the consulting side where I actually got to run and facilitate one of those groups that was focused on the future of reporting. And what I found was that people kind of like justify their trips with the PowerPoint slides if you will, but all day everyone was just like wanting to get to happy hours so that we could drink wine and have real conversations about our lives and about the work. And that was really when like, the seed for me was planted is like what if we had a space like this where it were all people who are like doing some version of this work? But the agenda is just like one real relationships and to really figuring out how to show up as the leader is that we want to be subject matter like as part of that, but not the primary focus, like just really focusing on ourselves our growth, and what if, like the whole thing could feel like happy hour, instead of feeling like you got to get through the meetings to get to the happy hour and so a couple years later, had left a role working as Director of Social Impact, which is a whole other story for another time. And I decided to start my coaching and consulting business and honestly from the very beginning, I was like, I want to create this space. I really want to create space for women to come together and have those conversations and it took me it's probably about a year and a half of like doing one on one were really listening to what people wanted iterating and experimenting before I had the confidence to launch the first cohort of the girls club mastermind, which is a group of women working across the impact space. It was a place to really talk about some of these real challenges and grow together. And it was incredible. It truly is one of those moments when I think back to our first retreat of like having that feeling of like oh my god, this is the work that I meant to be doing. And, you know, we after that had a couple more cohorts and then I was finding myself spending so much time introducing amazing people to amazing people. And I sort of had the idea and a couple of people came to the idea like what is like this was the thing like what would it look like to have this be part of your business like a place for all these awesome humans doing awesome work to connect because so often, it can feel so lonely when you're in it and you're like working so hard to like, especially like you're working in house at a fortune 500 company and you're trying to turn a massive ship. It can feel like the people around you aren't really on your team. I know when you're working as a consultant to it can be really lonely. If you launch your business. It can be really lonely. So yeah, basically like all of these things sort of converged to like earlier this year. I mean, I've been working on it for probably close to a year now. But to really like launch and see what could happen if we built a formal community for all of these amazing change agents that are in and now well beyond my worlds. You
know, so interesting because it's I know I want to go further back then your professional career. So we're gonna hit that in just a second. But you're you have a background, professional background in ESG and social impact. I know you said that's a story for another time, but I'm so curious if you can dig into that a little bit because what you're doing now is an extension of those of the people that you're working with. I am so interested in how can you see the transition and the work that you did in house how that now, you know, is incorporate into the work you're doing in the collective?
It's totally Well, I mean, I feel so lucky. I really got to have some incredible bucket list experiences like really early in my 20s when I was working in house, I got to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, I got to lobby climate negotiations like I was just, I mean, it was just pinch me for so so so many reasons. And you know, I think in my work again, both in house and as a consultant what I found is that so often we think that the reason a company like is or isn't doing the right thing is like the business case may be for doing the right thing like doesn't make sense like do consumers want this do employees want this? Do investors want this? But what I found is that actually, a lot of times the reason that organizations are or aren't doing the right thing is how effective the people who are at the helm of these programs are at really like leading change it like so often. I just I feel like I just saw time and time again that like so much of this came down to like individual personalities, both of the people who were leading the work and then the people that they were trying successfully or unsuccessfully to convince to get on board with the work and a lot of the time while I was like having my corporate career. I also have always been like a seeker and like someone who's very curious about like, spirituality and the unknown and the unseen. And I did my yoga teacher training back in gosh, probably like, I think 2013 So 10 years ago now. And that was really sort of like kicked off like a whole other side of my own personal journey of just being really curious about rose and what it looks like to really honestly surrender a little bit. I think so often we like think we're in control. Seven especially as like, founders and CEOs, we like to believe we're in control but but I do think that like, again about 10 years ago, like I really kicked off my own journey of like looking at like surrender and looking at like things like feminine leadership and what it looked like to leave from a place of intuition and vulnerability and all these things that were like for so long felt so counter to what I was doing during the day when I was like super in my masculine energy and appreciating that like, these things are not necessarily like gender specific and it's like a spectrum and not binary. But I was so often in this like hustle, execute plan, do mode. And then what I was finding is that like, when I was able to actually connect with my intuition, and that's when other people collectively problem solved like that was where like things were feeling really good things are really flowing and so yeah, I feel like a lot of like, what I bring to the table both as like the founder of the collective and also as coaches like I love both like I really love both. I know what it takes I know how hard it is. I have like been in the trenches, so to speak. I hate that metaphor. Like I know how hard it is to influence change. And, like candidly to often convince like a group of old white men to like do the right thing. Like I've had to do that. It's really hard. I'm not gonna pretend it's not really hard. It's hard and it sucks. And I also feel like I've been doing all this other like inner and spiritual work that I also bring to the table because I think that like, we like our careers are just one dimension of our life. And I think a lot of like, our a lot of what's coming up in our careers in our work is often stuff that comes up in other areas of our lives. So I really wanted to bring together both sort of like the magic spirituality and like Holistic Life view to like how we can approach some of these like business and organizational challenges
is so amazing. So I see Rob a lot of different points of I have so many questions asked you I want to get to first inspiration to getting into this. And what you connected with initially when you decide to work and the social impact and so were their personal values like what was it? Or can you think about the first time you felt like you were giving back and that made that that connection to do that?
Yeah, I think that there were two, two big moments. So when honestly I just said very briefly like when I was in college, I really did not want to take a science class and one of the options which is satisfy the credit was to take a class on climate change at UC Santa Barbara and I was like, okay, cool. And honestly, like, day one of this class, I was like, wait, what, like, How is this not the thing that everyone is focused on? Like I you know, I didn't know. And then I knew that some of the science and I just kind of from that moment on it was like, How is this not what we're all focused on. And then a few years later, my first quarter of graduate school, I'd taken a brief break in between undergrad and grad to do journalism where I actually got to, like, do some writing on like the climate negotiations and like other climate related things. I was in my first quarter, Hannah Jones from Nike, who was really like a pioneer in this space, came and spoke and she was like talking about like, her job was at the time and corporate social responsibility and like what her day to day looks like in trying to convince people to get on board with this, trying to, like tell the story of what they were doing in their supply chain to like, protect worker rights, trying to make meaningful progress and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Like as she was describing, like, all of these different things. Like my whole brain was just like, lady I was like, Oh my god. This is what I wanted to do. Like this sounds so interesting. No, two days are the same. Like it felt like it just really spoke to both like my personality and the kind of work that I want to do, but also my values and the sense of like, I want to be a part of the solution. And it was like, so clear to me how broken so many things were and I am a believer that there's a lot of potential for impact from the inside, as well as a system
for someone that wants to get involved with this that hasn't had the opportunity to take when the classes that you just mentioned or or have that type of learning experience. Any suggestions on how they can start exploring it?
Great question. So I think if you're feeling I mean, there's like so many different aspects to this, right? There's the climate angle, there's like the people human rights social angle. What I would say is like, if something piques your interest, whether it's like water or privacy or I mean, again, there's so many like sub topics within this. That Thankfully, there's like so much free education out there. So I definitely think that I would say like learn once you can about the things that are interesting to you and I would also really say like you can make a difference wherever you are. So whether it's like volunteering or if you're like inside an organization, like find the people who are in charge of working on this stuff and ask if they need help. They're almost always under resourced. And so, and I do think like there's often a perception especially in like the sustainability impact world that like you're not doing that as your job if it's not in your job title, but I think that is so not true. Like, whatever your role is, like whatever you are doing and like your day to day. We need more like champions of this work across organizations. And often you can make an even bigger impact, I think in a lot of ways by being the person inside your team inside your department who's going to help advance these like bigger picture goals than you can by having that as part of your official
title. Yeah, absolutely. Everyone is a part I've I've been in organizations that me I'm in philanthropy, but it was they would have organization wise or business wise opportunities for people to give back and suggest ways and create programming internally so that we could all do our part even if it wasn't part of our job description, and it's a way for someone to connect their values with what they're doing outside of the actual work that they're doing. I'd love to hear some really good impact stories. Do you have anything to share about either one of your collective members what they've done or something that you worked on that shows the impact that someone is making
you Yeah, well I mean it's incredible like some of just some of like the wins that some of them members the way the collective in the mastermind have had, you know, since like being part of those experiences are you know, people have removed like 1000s of pounds of plastic from the waste stream like through their day jobs, people have like lobbied within their organizations to get a net zero greenhouse gas emissions goals. I could go on. There's a lot of examples and those are more on the environmental side. But, you know, the women I work with are just like leading all kinds of programs and organizations that are doing such cool stuff to birth, the new and to take a new approach in perspective to how we do this work. I think some of the impacts that like I'm most proud of that have come out of these spaces are like people hiring each other for projects and new jobs, people opening the door for Speaker ships at Fortune 500 organizations to people that they've met, like through the class of people. It's really like, amazing to see I'm such a believer in shine theory, which is like the idea that like when I shine, you shine, we all shine and like how can we support each other and lift each other up and I think some of the coolest examples of like wins and impact are like examples of times where people have built relationships and really thoughtful and intentionally and then like thought of other people like as like how can I amplify the work that she is doing? How can I create an opportunity for someone around me and those are some of my favorite stories of impact were like, other than like creating this space like I had nothing to do with it, but it's so cool to see the many ways that people are championing each other and helping each other. reach new people get new jobs, land new projects and like have new opportunities. As a result of like really intentionally investing in themselves and also showing up authentically and vulnerably in these spaces. Yeah,
and you know, it's in my right that it's mostly women in the group.
Yeah, yeah. So it is it's, it's for women and we have like a pretty in depth definition of like, who counts as a woman like if you consider yourself a woman we consider you a woman like period and it is intended for people who identify as women and
women tend to like to give collaborative also, just like giving circles are on the rise for women and it sounds to me like this collective is very unique. And I haven't heard anything else like this. For those that are in the social impacts phase, to work together to learn together and to form these, this community to be able to help lift each other. So I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's anything else like they're out there. So I think it's incredible opportunity for people that are in this space to join the collective. When are you open like rolling admissions or how do you how does one join?
Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much, and I'm not aware of anyone who's doing anything quite like this. We do admissions. We take applications all the time, but we admit new, like cohorts, about one supporters, and we'll probably do one more before the end of the year. You'll stick
Alright, so I get to the point of time that I would love to ask you because as the cashback impact and vision for this the social sector, what do you consider your legacy today?
I love this question so much. I mean, honestly, I think the number one thing that I would love my legacy to be is that like, I worked to get more women and under recognized leaders into positions of power. I really believe that we need to, like shift our understanding and appreciation of power. We need to shift what power looks like and I really believe that like what the world and like the planet need right now is a new era of like leadership from that feminine energy place. And so yeah, I would really love to like look back on my legacy, whether that's like my volunteer work as a coach. With the women's impact Alliance or our pledge 1% commitment where we like give money to support women's reproductive health and reproductive rights. And then all the work that I'm doing in my day job as leading the girls club collective and working as an executive coach that like it was all in service of ushering in this new era of feminine leadership.
I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so where can people find out more about you and the collective?
Yeah, thank you for asking. So our website is Girls Club, collective dot C O. And there's all sorts of information there about who we are and what we do. You can find me on LinkedIn, Lis Best. And you can find girls co collective on LinkedIn as well. And we have an Instagram which is girls underscore club underscore collective.
Right. Okay, so we're gonna have everything in the show notes so people can just like connect with Liz and check out the collective I definitely recommend it. So thank you so much for joining us, Liz. It's it. I know. They're short interviews, but we get so much out of it to share your experience and and hopefully our listeners will be able to create more impact in their work. So thank you for joining us again. And everyone. Thanks for listening. We hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. Until next time.
Thank you.