Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ Wife, Pledges $50 Million To Rethink Schools

Laurene Powell Jobs, Founder and Chair, Emerson Collective, and widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, speaks at the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., on Monday, April 29, 2013. The Global Conference convenes chief executive officers, senior government officials and leading figures in the global capital markets to explore solutions to today's most pressing challenges in business, health, government and education. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

The system of public high schools in America really hasn’t undergone any kind of serious transformation in 100 years. Steve Jobs reinvented the personal computer, the animation studio, and the music player. Now his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, wants to rethink high school. On Monday, she unveiled XQ: The Super School Project, a $50 million campaign to conceive of and create the next American high school — or a “Super School.” The project launches with an open call for submissions closing on November 15, from which the project will choose winning proposals to fund. The challenge is deliberately open-ended, providing few specifics on what would constitute a “Super School.” Contestant teams are asked to submit comprehensive plans for teachers, administration and evaluation. The XQ site points out that education is in need of disruption, stating that: “In the last hundred years, America has gone from a Model T to a Tesla,” but public schools have stagnated. XQ’s chief creative officer Russlynn Ali, the former assistant secretary of civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, told the Washington Post that change is long overdue. The system of public high schools in America really hasn’t undergone any kind of serious transformation in […]

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Yang Lan: MAKERS Celebrates 20 Women of the 1995 UN Conference on Women

Yang Lan

  To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1995 UN Conference on Women in Beijing, MAKERS is featuring 20 incredible women who participated in the largest ever international gathering of women. Yang Lan, a television journalist and entrepreneur, is the co-founder and chairperson of the Sun Media Group, a Hong Kong-based multimedia company. Yang created the first current-event program in China, and has been a successful media personality in China since her days as a university student. Often compared to Oprah Winfrey, Yang has built a substantial media empire that includes the television shows “Yang Lan One on One and Her Village,” as well as an online magazine and website that attracts nearly 200 million Chinese women a month. In 1995, Yang was a graduate student studying at Columbia University in New York when she returned to Beijing over the summer to act as a master of ceremony for the Welcoming Ceremony of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women. Be sure to watch the trailer for the upcoming documentary, “Once and For All” and join the conversation with the hashtag #OnceAndForAll. Source: MAKERS Team  

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If You Love Women Of Green, Share The Love!

Women Of Green Advocates

Hello, oh powerful woman who wants to make a difference in the world! As you may know, our motto at Women Of Green is: Turn Up the Volume. And that’s what we’re doing! Sharing stories of amazing women who are game changers in their world — and inspiring other women to do the same. But we need your help! We are looking for 200 Women Of Green Advocates to share our inspirational stories and posts daily on their social media channels. That will help us immensely to touch so many more women and inspire them to be the change in their world. Can you help us turn up the volume by sharing Women Of Green with your friends? Will you be one of our beloved Advocates that will help us create permanent positive change on the planet through the power of the feminine? To say thank you, In exchange for your ongoing efforts, I will offer our Advocates a free Life or Business coaching session ($250 value) on any topic or situation that is arising for you now in your life. If that sounds like something you would like to explore, please contact me here: carolyn (at) mindovermarkets (dot) com […]

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Green is Not Just for Green Business Anymore

Green Is For Every Business

Oh Marketing Whiz Who is Always Hungry to Learn More! Back in 2013, The Santa Fe Reporter interviewed me and at the very end I was asked: “any final wisdom?” My last words were, “My hope is that someday we don’t even have to use the word ‘green’—it’s just the way it is.” It’s been 12 years now that my company, Mind Over Markets, has been dedicated to helping green and socially-focused companies, organizations, and entrepreneurs take their products and services to the next level. It’s what we believe in, what we are passionate about. When we put that stake in the ground, we never looked back (even though back then “green” was used with caution in marketing because of its tree-hugger status and political connotations). Well, those days are gone. This week, the Shelton Group released a study on the effectiveness of eco buzzwords like “green,” “eco-friendly,” “sustainable,” “recyclable,” “renewable,” “low carbon footprint,” and more. The results happily report that green has gone from “niche appeal” to “baseline expectation.” For instance, 65% of the 2,000 plus respondents said that “green was considered desirable.” And it really doesn’t matter what side of the fence you are on because 67% of them were Democrats and 62% […]

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Oh Quantum One!

Quantumizing Business

Because the quantum field, which is 99% energy, is where it all happens – your life, your health, your family, your work, your business, you name it. It all exists there and when you get that, you get IT – whatever that IT is you are going for.

I am exploring this in my business and personal life with gusto, and will be sharing it with you here over the next bunch of months — how YOU can create the business or project YOU WANT by learning and working with the quantum field. That’s what I call “Quantumizing Your Business”. Sound fun?

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Naja’s ‘Radically Different Underwear’ Offers Women Underwear For Hope

Cataline Girald, Naja and Underwear For Hope Founder

“When you educate a woman, everything changes.” With her platinum credentials as a former New York lawyer, Stanford School of Business MBA (class of 2006) and successful entrepreneur Catalina Girald doesn’t seem like a 21st century revolutionary. But her latest and second e-commerce company Naja finds the Colombian-born, San Francisco-based Girald championing women in ways that are ground-breaking and impactful, not to mention inspiring. Launched in December 2013, Naja manufactures and sells beautiful, distinctive lingerie — in their own parlance, “radically different lingerie” —  at comparatively reasonable rates. Its average bra price, for instance is $45 U.S., while lacy briefs are $14. A product pitch on the site under the heading “Meticulously Crafted. Fairly Priced” explains things thusly. “Naja products are characterized by unexpected attention to detail — the kind of detailing found only in luxury brands. From our memory foam cups, to our interior bra prints, to our ultrasonic sealed bra straps — we take pride in our artistry. But we don’t believe you should have to pay $80+ for a high quality bra.” The thrills don’t stop there. Naja (pronounced “nigh-ya”) lingerie is modeled on its site by women who look like women modeling lingerie for potential female […]

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Angel Investor: Only Funding Startups That Have Female Founders

women founders startup

One angel investor wants an investment portfolio full of women. Jonathan Sposato, a Seattle-based entrepreneur and the CEO of photo editing software PicMonkey, made a bold announcement last week at the Seattle Angel Conference that he’d only fund companies with one or more female founders. Women often have a more difficult time securing funding—numbers from CrunchBase show that companies with female founders only make up about 19% of seed and angel investments, and that number dwindles down as companies progress to each funding stage. But the good news is the number of female founders are on the upswing. According to that CrunchBase data, the percentage of startups with at least one female founder rose from 9.5% in 2009 to 18% in 2014. “Female entrepreneurs do have a harder time getting traction—whether that’s raising money, getting their concepts across, or even recruiting,” Sposato said in an interview with Mashable. “You can’t just take those issues and not do something about it. If you feel passionate about something, you have to be the catalyst.” Sposato says part of the problem comes from investors’ tendency to pattern match, or support startups that resemble other successful companies they funded that got off the ground. […]

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VC Firms To Obama: We Will Fund More Startups Led By Women, Minorities

Woman moving elephant

The most prominent venture capital firms in the tech industry have committed to promoting diversity in the VC space and funding more startups led by women and minorities. President Obama will make the news public during the inaugural White House Demo Day 2015.

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Atomic Moms, Radium Girls, and Hiroshima Maidens: Part 4

Setsuko Enya, Hiroshima survivors

As survivors of Hiroshima start to age, they keep their stories alive through passing them down to younger generations. Nearly 70 years after the Aug. 6, 1945 bombing, even the youngest atomic bomb survivors are elderly. Many aging atomic bomb survivors are leaving their legacy with their families, community and any outsiders willing to listen, with hope that their stories will prevent future use of nuclear weapons.

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10 Ways to Be An Agent of Change

Women Agents Of Change

As a 3% blogger, I’m constantly amazed and inspired by all the women and men who not only believe in our vision, but also jump right in to further the cause — writing for our blog, speaking at our events, and sponsoring our conferences. Many of these luminaries have shared their wisdom and insights with us over the years. Here are a few of their tips for creating the change we want to see in ourselves and in the world.

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