Growing a community one town hall at a time 💰Claire Wasserman, Ladies Get Paid - a podcast by Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, People & Company, Kai Elmer Sotto, Maggie Zhang, Mia Quagliarello
from 2021-02-22T12:00
“The email that I would receive after every single town hall was, ‘I thought I was the only one.’” - Claire Wasserman
By 2016, Claire Wasserman was fed up with men not taking her seriously in the workplace. For years, she’d internalized this marginalization as somehow her fault or her problem to struggle through alone. It was time for that to change.
With a friend, Claire brought together 100 women in a town-hall style event to talk about money and power in the workplace. Out of those conversations, Claire saw the potential for something much bigger.
After that first town hall, she created a Slack group which grew to 6,000 women in the first year. Half a year later, that Slack group had more than 20,000 members from all 50 states. Claire quit her job, incorporated a business, and hit the road hosting town halls around the country.
Today, Ladies Get Paid has helped more than 75,000 women believe in and advocate for their worth, including a young Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Town hall discussions, conferences, workshops, webinars and more took place across the country before the pandemic, and those sessions have transformed into webinars and more since COVID arrived.
How did Claire get such a massive community and business off the ground? Tune in for the full story.
Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:
- Can’t fake the funk. Why this work matters to Claire.
- Origin story. In 2016, Claire hosted a town hall in NYC offering an intimate and vulnerable space to talk about money.
- Town halls. Claire’s tour across America and learning the dynamics of different cities.
- Moderation. Creating community guidelines and an ecosystem where there is no need for moderation.
- Writing the “Ladies Get Paid” book. Centering the book around stories of real women.
- Lawsuit. How Ladies Get Paid was sued and lobbied elected officials to change laws.
👋🏻Say hi to Claire and learn more about Ladies Get Paid.
This podcast was created by the team at People & Company.
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We published GET TOGETHER📙, a handbook on community-building.
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