NYLP: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod. The award-winning podcast highlighting new start-ups, businesses, and openings in the New York City area. I’m Hal Coopersmith, and in this episode we’re speaking to Alli Young, founder of The Forem. Alli wants to get women further in their careers, and has developed an ecosystem to do so. Here she is explaining why The Forem is different.
Alli: The place where we really sit and why we’re different from other companies that do this is that we are an accelerator. What we care about, and our sole objective is to accelerate women’s careers. We want them to go further faster, and we’re going to give them the tools and the resources and the support in order to get there.
NYLP: We have a wonderful podcast talking about how Alli decided to start The Forem and what it does. But before we start, I wanted to thank Samsung Technologies. The official equipment provider of the New York Launch Pod. We use Samsung microphones, booms, and headphones here at the New York Launch Pod, and they keep us sounding great just like this. So, thank you Samsung. Now, let’s go to the interview. Stepping onto the Launch Pod we have Alli Young, the founder of The Forem. Welcome Alli.
Alli: Thank you so much for having me Hal.
NYLP: It’s The Forem. What is it exactly?
Alli: It is The Forem, and we named the company after my daughter Emerson. The objective of The Forem is to get women further faster in their careers, and we think of ourselves as an accelerator for women. A big part of that is making sure that all the women coming up after us are able to rise and rise faster, and reach higher levels of leadership, including my little Emerson one day.
NYLP: Getting women further faster. It’s a wonderful mission. How are you going to accelerate women’s careers?
Alli: We accelerate women’s careers by connecting women to coaches and experts, PhD’s in economics and executives. We really provide hands on support and advice through workshops and one-to-one training. Women can come to us directly for workshops and one-to-one coaching through our site, but a lot of our business is also through corporate engagements, executive coaching, and workshops through organizations.
NYLP: How did you get into this?
Alli: I’m new to this. I’m a new entrepreneur. I have a 20 year career in the technology space, 11 years at Google, and I got into it because I wanted to align my time with my passion. I’m really passionate about helping women rise within their organizations, and really reach the goals that they want and that they’re capable of, and reach their full potential. I see women all around me who are often times stuck in middle management, or they’re rising through an organization slower than the men around them. I think that there are certainly institutional challenges that prohibit women from rising as fast as they can, but there are also skills that women can learn that could help move them along a little bit faster. And so what we do is we really focus on building up those skills and I am in this because I care about it. I care about women, I care about equality, and ultimately I want to see a more equitable world. I believe that we’ll get there by having equality in the workplace and in government, and policy and whatnot.
NYLP: In your corporate career, what were some of the skills that you saw that women needed to improve upon?
Alli: Something that I talk about very often is that the skills that get women into middle management are not the skills that are going to get them out. The skills that get women into middle management they’re very detail-oriented, they’re heads down workers, and they’re excellent at delivering. So, they’re extremely reliable, extraordinarily hands on, detail-oriented, and collaborative. However, for women to really break out of middle management, they need to have other skills that they need to draw on that ensures other people around them really see the great work and the value that they’re providing to an organization and so I really frame it as five core skills.
So, to negotiation. For women also in terms of closing the wage gap. That’s a big one. But it’s not just about negotiating a salary. Women are negotiating contracts, they’re negotiation their role, they’re negotiating promotions. So, having that skill is incredibly important for them. Building out your network, 85% of all opportunities come from your network. If you’re so busy working and you’re not fostering a strong responsive network, then you’re not going to be able to capitalize on opportunities that are out there. Building a personal brand and really being mindful of what your brand is.
There’s also financial fluency. For a lot of women … Financial fluency by the way as it relates to business acumen. Opportunities for executive roles are only going to go to people they’re able to understand the economics of the business. If women are not able to express that, even if they understand it, but if they don’t have the nomenclature for it, then a lot of times it becomes a gating factor for them to get into that next role.
And then the fifth one is having really strong leadership in management roles or responsibilities, or skills I should say. From a leadership perspective that is such a big category. The best leaders out there are ones who are really self-aware. They have very high EI, and they really do tend to have the types of skills that women, typically speaking, it’s a lot of their strength. Ultimately, really great leaders are lifetime learners. If you want to be a great leader you can’t just lead and sort of stop. You have to continuously hone that craft, and really focus on it. That’s a big skill that we work with women on.
NYLP: All the skills that you mentioned they’re wonderful. How come women haven’t been focusing on this in your opinion?
Alli: It’s such a good question. Here’s the thing, women do have unique challenges when it comes to work, and it really becomes amplified when they are a parent. Often enough women are the primary parent at home, and so they may need to leave the office in order to relieve the nanny. By the way, that does not mean that they’re not working when they get home, or that they don’t log on after because they certainly do. But women become highly efficient working machines. And because of that they don’t always have the bandwidth and the time to foster some of these other skills, and they know that they’re important. Telling a woman that having a personal brand or building out and fostering your network is not new, but there are ways in which to think about it that are new.
When I tell women that they need to focus on these five skills, I’m not saying that they should add on to them after their work. Really what I’m saying is it’s a re-prioritization. And when you think about it that way, it then opens up new opportunities. And so I advise women that they should really scale back some of their deliverables by 20%, and then re-allocate that time and that effort into some of these skills. I don’t think that you should build all of them out at once either. If you really think ahead and plan ahead …. A really great example for building your network and fostering your network.
One of the things that I look to do is twice a month I like to have breakfast with a new person, or somebody that’s in my network who I really haven’t seen in a while and I want to catch up with them. It’s a really great time to have one-on- one with someone to give advice, to get advice, and to let somebody know that you’re thinking about them, and you want to be a part of their circle. And often enough, later on when you need that person they are there for you. And so for working mothers that is something often enough that is doable for them, but you just have to plan it out and know that twice a month at [8:30] or [8:00] AM you’ll be at breakfast with somebody. I think when you really think about it that way and you’re intentional about some of these things and a little bit methodical, then the stress of it goes away.
NYLP: What is the target of The Forem? Is it for women who are having children and are in that phase of their career, because some of the skills that you mentioned like negotiation and networking are probably applicable throughout all of women’s careers. And certainly, there’s a strong emphasis at the beginning of their careers I imagine?
Alli: I breakdown our target into two different targets, or our women into two different targets. That’s how I really focus on them, and that’s how we like to customize our offering to them. Younger women who are just starting out it is great for them to learn certain frameworks and skillsets. The negotiating one is incredibly important for them as they’re younger, and of course that becomes a compounding asset for them over the course of their entire career. Their benefits for their entire lifetime when they start earning more earlier.
I don’t think that a woman who is just starting out needs to learn that financial fluency and acumen at the onset of her career. It becomes more important for her as she progresses. The other target that we have are women in middle management, and really what we see is that’s really where women get stuck. If you look at any company there are few women in leadership positions, and there’s a lot of women that are stuck in middle management. That is where we come in and we start teaching these skills to women in middle management to get them out, and to get them to have more opportunity and leadership roles.
NYLP: Let’s talk about The Forem a little bit more. You have these two targets. What do you do with your clients?
Alli: We do one-to-one coaching with clients, and we do it at times that are really important for women. A great example of a place where we focus is on-boarding. Women who are taking on a new leadership role at a new company, the first three months are incredibly important for her. If you want to know if she’s going to be in that role 12 months from now, you need to know how she’s doing within the first month. If she wants to accelerate her career moving forward, again she needs to nail that first three months. That’s a place where we really focus.
The other thing that we do is work with corporations, and there are multiple ways in which we work with corporations. Corporations are interesting, because with them we’re not only working with women. When we talk about changing the institutions in which women work we need to work with men as well. If we only worked with women then we’re putting too much of the onus on them to build out these skills, but there might not be new opportunities for them because of a challenge work environment that they may be in. We are working with executive teams in order to assess their organization, to understand is there equal upward mobility for men and women within their organization? Often times what you see is that there are areas or levels where women start getting stuck and identifying where are women getting stuck, and then understanding why.
And once we understand that then we can start skill building with men and women, and then their management team as well to start unlocking opportunities. One of the things that we do is unconscious bias training, and that’s a place where we really go deep and there’s a lot of demand as well. What we certainly believe is that unconscious bias training is incredibly important for organizations, but you can’t just have one training and it’s solved. It’s a complex issue and it’s unconscious, right? We don’t know, we don’t understand, and we’re not aware of the biases that we all carry around with us.
And so it’s something that really needs to be worked on over time in an ongoing fashion. Typically, our unconscious bias training is a two or three hour training, and then we work with staff every single month a group of cohorts, let’s say a group of managers or department heads. We work with them every month and really get hands on to understand what are their biases, and then how can they start solving them within their own organization. Then we create work streams with them to focus on how can they improve hiring, or how can they improve their promotion path of people on their team. When you really start eliminating those biases then all of a sudden it opens up new opportunities for women who also now have these skill-sets like a vast and responsive network where they could tap into and start negotiating for new opportunities or promotions.
NYLP: It is certainly a wonderful benefit for a company, but some people may not be able to see that. How are you convincing these companies that they need to do this? That they have an unconscious bias?
Alli: I’m glad that you asked that, because right now I don’t think that people who aren’t convinced I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince them. And so I’m not working on that right now. What we do is we work with companies who do care, and they do want to make a difference. That makes all the difference in the world. Ultimately, the people that really need to care are the executives. If the executive doesn’t care and if the CEO doesn’t care then it’s really hard to make a material impact difference within an organization.
That’s where you get the companies where people feel within them that their executive team is just checking a box. And they maybe have an unconscious bias training that’s delivered to them digitally that nobody pays attention to because it’s on a video, and they’re on their computer, and they’re on their phone doing something else and randomly answering questions. Those companies I’m not going to work with them until they’re ready, because we need them to be ready for us to really make an impact, and for it to be worth our time as well.
NYLP: How are the companies that do care finding you?
Alli: They are finding us. So much of this is word of mouth. It has been this amazing process, and ultimately the thing that we’re really struggling with is keeping up with the demand.
NYLP: Keeping up with demand?
Alli: It is. It is really hard to keep up with demand. We’re growing as fast as we can, we’re hiring as fast as we can. We have a large roster of coaches and experts right now, and we’re just plugging them into various institutions. What’s interesting, as well, is there are multiple companies, of course, that want to really invest in women, but also the way in which they want to invest it keeps evolving over time and growing. And so once you start this process it’s a really wonderful one, because people within the company more of them get involved, and then they ideate on different ways in which they could support different members of their staff and team. And so it tends to spiral in a great way where it expands the relationship, and it deepens that relationship as well.
NYLP: So once you’re in one of these companies working with them, are the women executives coming to you for additional coaching? How are you getting more participants in The Forem.
Alli: Yes. A lot of times when we do workshops people raise their hand and say, “We too would like to have coaching.” What’s interesting is that younger women aren’t even aware that coaching is a thing. 64% of women that we’ve surveyed have never even heard of coaching, and those are women who are under 35. The executive women, depending on the size of your organization and really where they sit within the organization, they may have that available to them. And if not, they’re really pushing for their companies to invest in their development. We’re seeing a huge change there where companies are investing in their women.
NYLP: I’m surprised that you said that women under 35 have not heard about coaching, because it seems to me that there are more and more resources out there reaching for this market. How are you differentiating yourself, and what else is out there?
Alli: First of all, it really does surprise me that stat as well. I agree with you. A big part of our job now that we know that is to increase awareness of coaching, so that younger people in particular know that this is something that’s available to them. And that there’s different forms of coaching, workshops or one-to-one. But, the place where we really sit and why we’re different from other companies that do this is that we are an accelerator. What we care about and our sole objective is to accelerate women’s careers. We want them to go further faster, and we’re going to give them the tools and the resources and the support in order to get there.
NYLP: What do you want The Forem to become?
Alli: Well, I always joke that actually I would like to put us out of business one day, because we’re so successful that we’ve actually reached 50%/50% equality or maybe more than that. Who knows what that ratio can be one day. Ultimately, what we believe is that by bringing women into leadership and into government and driving policy, and funding new organizations that we’re going to change the world, and we’re going to change the world for the better. What I want The Forem to become and our goal for The Forem is to be part of the engine and part of the solution that gets women there, so that we can change the world.
NYLP: This is going to be a tough question. Part of your business is coaching, and you’re an entrepreneur yourself. What have been some of the challenges that you’ve had to overcome in launching your own business?
Alli: Oh, I love that question, because I think about the challenges a lot. Being a new entrepreneur it is hard. Being an entrepreneur is hard. First of all, I’m pursuing my dream and so even though this is hard and even though I would like to have endless budgets, and even though I would like to be in 50 places at once, and even though I would like to have a team of thousands that are helping to change the world, I am living the dream of supporting other women, and creating this multiplier effect where they could then help change the world.
As a new entrepreneur what’s really challenging, coming from me, is coming from the corporate world where I had resources and I had these budgets, and there were processes for doing things, and there was an entire billing department that I never had to work with because all of that was done on the back end. And so we’re in the process of building out a lot of those things and bringing in those resources, but for a new company it’s still a long way to become a Google where they do have those types of resources.
NYLP: And free snacks.
Alli: Maybe that should be the goal is free snacks and lunch, and endless hint water. New goal.
NYLP: That will mean that you’re the Google?
Alli: Yes.
NYLP: We talk a lot about New York on this podcast, and doing business in New York. I can’t imagine that there’s a better place for your business than starting in New York. There’s no city in the US with more women and probably more diversity of women. Can you talk a little bit more about what starting up in New York has meant to you and your business?
Alli: First of all, I love starting a business in New York. I am a born and bred New Yorker, so a New Yorker through and through. I have a deep love for this city. What is really amazing about New York for us is that there are so many great industries here. Even though there is diversity, there’s still not enough women at the top. If we want to change the world we need more women in leadership, and we need more women in CEO level positions and C-level positions, as well as on boards. And so we work with clients across multiple industries.
The industries that we’re able to focus on because we’re in New York, and because we have this really robust ecosystem is finance and tech. There are entrepreneurs here. A huge group of rise of new women entrepreneurs. There’s media, there’s advertising agencies, and music. There are so many different types of engagements that we can have, and different types of women that we can support. That for us is really exciting.
NYLP: Have you seen any differences between any of the industries or are all these industries encountering a lot of the same problems?
Alli: Every industry has this problem. They have different flavors of it, and some have more entrenched challenges than others. I would also say that there’s some industries that are trying harder to change, and so they may know that there are challenges. They don’t always know how to solve them. Actually, they don’t know how to solve them, but they really do want to make a difference. There are others that are just checking the box in some way, shape or form. That’s kind of the way it is, but we want to work with all of those different industries. We’re launching in L.A., so we’re working on that now.
What’s interesting about L.A. is, of course, it’s very focused on entertainment, although there are a lot of other sub-industries. Within satellite offices they don’t have the types of learning and development budgets or support and resources for career development that you would have at the main office within headquarters. In L.A., that’s something that we’re seeing, so there is a high demand for us to come out to L.A. We’re going to do it, and we’re figuring out what that plan is so that we can provide workshops and coaching in person there, and really start working with organizations in a much bigger way. They have different challenges in Los Angeles. One of the big challenges too is just a lack of resources, because they’re part of the satellite offices.
NYLP: What about in New York, are there more difficult industries? What’s an example of one or two, or three?
Alli: I think I’m actually not going to answer that. I don’t want to judge on….
NYLP: You don’t want to call out an industry?
Alli: I really don’t want to call out an industry. We want to work with all industries, and I want to provide the right solutions to all industries.
NYLP: That is a very political answer, and I certainly appreciate that. It is a wonderful note to end this podcast on. How do people find out more about you and The Forem?
Alli: Yes. They should come to our website, so The Forem. It’s spelled F-O-R-E-M.co
NYLP: .co?
Alli: .co. And on our website we have workshops that you could sign up for. We are launching digital websites. Coaching is done anywhere, so we could come into any company anywhere. We can work with coaching through video chats and the phone. I mean, that is a very real way and an effective way of coaching people. The other thing is we would like for people to follow us on Instagram or the Gram as they say at The Forem.co. F-O-R-E-M.co.
NYLP: That’s what the kids are calling it I think.
Alli: Yeah. Exactly. That’s what the kids are calling it.
NYLP: Maybe the Emerson. Alli Young, you have a wonderful mission. We certainly hope that you accomplish it. Thank you for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod, and sharing your time with us.
Alli: Thank you so much Hal for having me.
NYLP: And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media at NY Launch Pod, or visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode including this one. And if you are a super fan, please leave a review on iTunes and Apple podcast. It is greatly appreciated, and does help people discover the show.
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