BIPOC women winning at life is very much the vibe this week and I am here for it! No doubt you are too 😊
In addition to an epic news round up and a special shoutout, I’m super excited for you to sink your teeth into this week’s Trailblazing Woman interview. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sim from Girls That Invest. She’s making investing accessible for you, me and women and minorities everywhere. Amazing!
And on that note, let's get glowing
-Shilpa
P.S. Here’s the best advice for women that we all needed to hear 👏🏾 No, it’s not that advice from Kim K.
BIPOC Woman News Round Up!
You’ll be in awe of this week’s news round up.
- Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don’t think so 👩🏽🔬 WONDERPETS, the all women engineering team from the Philippines won the UNESCO Sustainable Engineering Hackathon. They devised a way to reduce plastic pollution and produce clean water.
- Speaking of saving the world, Ms Marvel is coming to a TV screen near you! 🦸🏾♀️ The series will follow Kamala Khan, the first Muslim superhero to headline a Marvel comic and series.
- Mandira’s Kitchen is the place to be 🧑🏾🍳 She learned how to cook a few years ago. Now, Mandira Sarkar is creating employment opportunities for women with her Indian meal delivery service.
- Another one for the foodies: meet the Chips Connoisseur 🍟 Friend of Glowreel, Vicky Tan, is testing out all the chips. Her mission? Find the best packet of chips in the world!
- Easy, breezy, beautiful covergirl 🙋🏽♀️ Ashley Callingbull is the first Indigenous woman to pose for a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. She’s a member of Enoch Cree Nation in Canada.
- A Yellow Dress, A Bouquet 2022 📸 Atong Atem’s series of five self-portrait photographs has “decidedly African, postcolonial aesthetic style" and is set to take the art world by storm.
✨ SPECIAL SHOUTOUT ✨
We're incredibly excited to be a community partner for the Australian South Asian Centre’s ‘Brown Women Comedy Night’ 🎤
Laugh your heart out to an exceptional lineup of Indian, Pakistani & South Asian female comedians. Shows will be running on the 1st and 2nd of April 6pm-7pm AEDT at QVWC and we’re offering a 10% discount to our community using the code 'Members22'.
If you’re in Melbourne, Australia don’t miss this glorious, gut-busting show featuring four stand-up women comedians who will focus on highlighting the funny side of being different. Limited tickets available so get in quick and buy your ticket here.
Glowreel Reco
You Need To Watch: Turning Red
A must see animated, coming-of-age fantasy film! Out on Disney+, Turning Red follows Meilin "Mei" Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian student who transforms into a giant red panda when she gets into a state of strong emotion.
This is the kind of film we all needed growing up - one that is transparent about the journey of puberty, periods, female friendships and mother-daughter relationships. Weekend viewing sorted!
Make Your Money Work For You! In Conversation With Sim From Girls That Invest
Image: supplied
Simran (Sim) Kaur is the founder of Girls That Invest, aka, one of the biggest podcasts in the world and a space for women that are interested in investing. Seriously, if you haven’t tuned into Girls That Invest, you’re missing out on a wealth of information and excellent banter!
Sim and her co-host, Sonya, are two women of colour who are empowering women while also changing the face and voice of investing - because investing isn’t just for the finance bros.
We recently caught up with Sim to hear more about how Girls That Invest got started, what Sim and Sonya hope to achieve with their business and how you can break through barriers and blaze your own trail. Let’s get to it!
How did you come up with the idea for the Girls That Invest podcast? Do you have a background in finance, or is it an area that you were always interested in?
I’ve always had this strong desire to be financially independent. I studied optometry at university which is so different to what I do now! Coming to the end of my degree I started to realize that I’d be making a lot more money than I’d ever made as a student. I knew I needed to know how to manage my money and I started learning about investing and personal finance. I started doing research and taking courses and it made me realize how easy it actually was to get into investing. That’s kind of where the idea for Girls That Investsparked!
What do you and Sonya hope to achieve with the podcast and your courses?
The mission that we've always had, and what we always talk about, is first and foremost we want the podcast to be accessible. We don’t want the idea of investing to seem like such a foreign concept - in the way that we grew up seeing it. We grew up seeing movies like Wolf of Wall Street where all you would see was men looking stressed with all these numbers and graphs.
We’re really intentional with the words we use. When Sonya and I started, I said to her, we’re going to start off by referring to ourselves as millennial investors. If you invest and if you have a portfolio - even if it's a dollar - you're an investor. We need to change the narrative of who gets that title, and we need to make it accessible and show that anyone can do it!
What’s been the highlight of starting Girls That Invest? What challenges have you had to overcome in building Girls That Invest?
The Highlight
I would say the highlight would be having a Vogue photo shoot and an article! I left my job in November 2021, and I never thought something like this could happen. I remember when I was leaving my very supportive manager was like “one day we're gonna see you on Vogue.” I laughed it off at the time but then a few months later it actually happened… With social media it's so crazy how much things can change. If you have an idea, with a hint of luck (and a bit of privilege involved), you can really take that idea and have it blow up so quickly! Your idea can fall into the hands of people that are so influential and they push your message forward, and it ends up with you having all these great crazy deals and partnerships. It blows my mind and I still can't believe that has happened.
The Challenge
The biggest challenge for me was a mental one. We started out as a social media account. A guy who used to be a friend of mine asked me if the page was mine - we had like ten followers at the time! I told him I’d just started the page to break down investing concepts. And he said to me, “who are you to do that?” I explained to him that all we’re doing is sharing facts, for example, explaining what a stock is. He was very direct, and he told me that I didn't have the expertise or the credibility to do this - not that he was in the finance space either. I was either smart enough or dumb enough to ignore him and it worked out! A year and a half on, I now get to write investing columns and I have an investing book coming out. If I had let one person's opinion define me, none of this would have happened.
The other hurdle I faced involved a mindset shift. I referred to Girls That Investas my Instagram account for a long time. The moment I started referring to it as my business and recognising that I was building a community, I started showing up differently. It was a small shift, but it changed everything.
Can you share your top tips on how to break through barriers and/or imposter syndrome to blaze your own trail?
The key takeaway: Have a strong belief in yourself and surround yourself with a good, supportive group of people.
I think it comes down to having a strong belief in yourself and in your abilities. If you’re telling yourself little negative things every day, like “I'm not smart enough” or “I will do this when I am more accomplished”, you're kind of chipping away at your confidence. You're chipping away at your ability to just give things a go.
I’ve met people who are much further ahead in life than me and every single one of them still has doubts. There are people who have multi-million-dollar businesses and they still have imposter syndrome. So, if you're waiting for that to go away, it probably never will. What I've had to learn or what I've been lucky enough to learn is just to have this unwavering belief in myself that I can achieve anything I set my mind to.
I’m lucky to have parents who always told me that whatever I want to do or achieve, that I can do it! I was also really privileged to go to a great public school. It was all females at my school so when I would sit in classes, whether it was physics or calculus - things that might seem daunting, I was always surrounded by a room full of girls. I never felt like this is a man's thing or this is hard for me. I always felt like this is just normal and anyone can do it if they set their mind to it.
Tune into the Girls That Invest podcast here, and follow their Instagram here.
One Lioness To Another
“Don’t try to fit in. Stand out. Stand strong.”
-Diandra Forrest
