WOMEN AND MONEY: OUR FIRST TOWN HALL
By Claire Wasserman
"I’m a woman and I make a lot of money." One of the women in the room declared this loud and proud and the hundred or so women around her cheered. As an accomplished illustrator, and Working Not Working member, she should be proud. But sadly, she is in the minority. With women still making 78 cents to the dollar (64 and 56 cents if you're Black or Latina, respectively), this is a statistic that has long been troubling to us. Given that we are a network of the world's best creatives and companies, we are uniquely positioned to contribute to positive change in the industry. And that begins with conversation: raw, unfiltered, and honest.
At the urging of WNW Member Leta Sobierajski, we organized a town hall forum to enable more women to participate. Clearly we hit a nerve: within minutes of posting on Instagram, our event was sold out with a long waitlist to boot. On May 5th, over 100 women, mostly creatives and a few recruiters, packed into a beautiful Bowery loft (found courtesy of our friends at Splacer.) To help guide the conversation, we asked a few women along with Leta to share their stories first: Lotta Nieminen, Agatha Kulaga of Ovenly, Michelle Higa Fox, Dayna Evans of New York Magazine, Rachael Yaeger, Perrin Drumm of AIGA, and Amy Woodside of OKREAL. We kicked off the evening with a toast (with Cinco de Mayo margaritas, of course!) to each other and to the courage it takes to speak up about a subject that can be so uncomfortable.
We were blown away by the generosity with which everyone offered their experiences. Frustrations were voiced but so was advice; from freelance pricing to salary negotiating, how to fundraise to being the only woman in a meeting. Tips and encouragement were passed as freely as the microphone. Any concern about the town hall being too open of a forum was put to rest as each woman encouraged the next to share. Because a diversity of industries were present, there was one consensus: we must host this again.
In the meantime, we've continued the conversation in private Slack group (email us for an invitation.) You can also download our money playlist on Spotify and tag yourself in the Facebook album.
Thank you to everyone who attended and to our partners at Splacer, Vita Coco, Yes Way Rose, and Taquitoria for helping make this happen. And thank you to Dayna Evans for perfectly capturing the evening in her New York Magazine article, Here's What Happens When Women Talk About Money.
We were proud to welcome the following women to the town hall:
Aelfie
Kinda Akash
Erin Allweiss
Karina de Alwis
Briana Auel
Carly Ayres
Lindsey Balbierz
Heather Beck
Erika Bernetich
Bianca Bramham
Kelsey Bryden
Karyn Campbell
Lauren Cannon
Courtney Cho
Noemie Le Coz
Guillermina Cruz
Stephanie Davila
Cristina Dennstedt
Perrin Drumm
Tonya Douraghy
Lyanne Dubon
Ellen Van Dusen
Dayna Evans
Lily Feinberg
Michelle Higa Fox
Ding Ding Hu
Yinfan Huang
Marissa Grey
Meredith Jenks
Jacquelyn de Jesu
Sasha Jotwani
Molly Keene
Ana Kim
Danielle Kroll
Agatha Kulaga
Nichole Kwok
Anne Lee
Mercy Lomelin
Gabriella Mangino
Jennifer Martonic
Brittany McAllister
Jennifer Monzon
Darcy Moore
Jen Mussari
Leigh Nelson
Lotta Nieminen
Anna Niess
Kaori Ogawa
Deanna Paquette
Lisa Pastor
Isabel Urbina Pena
Kim Phillips
Kiana Pirouz
Clemence Poles
Sara Radin
Jasmine Rao
Lindsey Reay
Julia Rothman
Ksenya Samarskaya
Elana Schlenker
Cari Sekendur
Sangita Shah
Michelle Shekari
Aleks Shineleva
Leta Sobierajski
Heewon Sohn
Preeti Sondhi
Jordan Sondler
Haley Stark
Tida Tep
Courtney Tight
Michelle Traub
Emma Tuccillo
Jennifer Vance
Erin Wahed
Claire Wasserman
Sarah White
Rachel Willey
Kristen Wise
Anna Wolf
Amy Woodside
Rachael Yaeger
Laura Zax