Why We Started By Her - Book/Podcast Club

By: Katie Upton / January 27, 2020

Hi everyone! I’m Katie, and I’m leading the new By Her initiative for Aspire to Her. As many of you know, By Her is a book/podcast club focused on consuming and discussing content created by inspiring women. We aim to highlight the voices, stories, and careers of women we aspire to. I’m very excited to join the team and launch this initiative as I’m the biggest bibliophile / podcast addict you’ll ever meet! While I wasn’t a huge reader in college, I got back into reading for fun when I started working in the city to kill time on my hour-long subway commute. Over time, reading and listening to podcasts on the subway and elsewhere has become a way to carve out time for myself and feel inspired by the content.

There are three reasons why I, along with Aspire to Her, wanted to launch this initiative:

1) Community

Aspire to Her is first and foremost a community of ambitious women in their early careers, and we want to make sure we’re fostering that community in a variety of ways. We love having members meet at our partnered company events, but we also want to create different environments in which to connect. While we strive to make all our events intimate, By Her meetings will provide a more informal setting among peers where members can discuss their reactions, thoughts, opinions, etc. freely on the month’s content. Let’s be honest, while some great connections are formed when you get dressed up for networking events, equal amounts of community and connection result from getting together for some power girl talk in yoga pants on a Sunday afternoon.

2) Inspiration & Elevation

You’ve probably heard the expression, “You can’t be what you can’t see,” meaning it’s so important to have someone to aspire to as you look to grow your career. We at Aspire to Her obviously subscribe to this idea wholeheartedly as it’s our name! However, “seeing” can mean more than just physically being around the women you see in your workplace or at networking events. We can also hear about a cool female founder’s story on our commute to work or read about how one woman tackles a male-dominated workplace as we unwind before bed. I know nothing makes me feel more inspired to enter a male-dominated work environment in the morning than listening to Sallie Krawcheck’s Own It audiobook on repeat! There are so many channels through which to “see” the women we aspire to, and Aspire to Her wants to help you unlock them all!

3) Dialogue

In addition to providing you a variety of channels to “see” the women you aspire to, we want to help draw out thoughts, conclusions, etc. from this content. Through gathering for By Her meetings, we can share ideas and further enrich each other’s takeaways from these books and podcasts. We hope that you’ll love the conversation so much that you’ll want to share with others! For example, maybe you loved another member’s thoughts on what made a female founder successful, so you tell your roommate when you get home, or you call your mom and tell her on your walk to the subway. These conversations help spread inspiration even further and amplify female voices in both our personal and professional lives.

We are pumped for our next meeting in February (our January discussion wrap up is coming soon!) and to continually tailor the content, meetings, etc. to be what you want! Please help us shape By Her by:

Voting on our polls at the beginning of each month to select a theme
Reading / listening to the month’s content
Joining us for monthly By Her meetings
Continuing discussion with your friends, colleagues, family, etc. to further enrich the dialogue
Submitting feedback either in person or by messaging us at @aspiretoher