Inflection Point With Lauren Schiller

Why should biology decide when--or how--you'll have a baby? And what do advances in medical science mean for the feminist movement? As journalist Rachael Lehmann-Haupt investigated new reproductive technologies, she was faced with her own, personal 'ticking biological clock.' She tells us how she came to her own decision about having a child, and shares the pros and cons of having a baby on your own. Her book is “In Her Own Sweet Time”. Love hearing from the women I talk with on Inflection Point? Support the program at inflectionpointradio.org/contribute. Thanks!

What can women refugees teach us about how to rise up? Christina Psarra, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian aid organization, bears witness to their sacrifice and resourcefulness, giving everything she has to help them. Along the way, she's discovered that refugees are not victims--they are survivors and it's her job to help them survive.

If there was ever a time when we need to consistently keep our souls replenished for the fight against injustice, it would be now. Hear how Women’s March artistic director, Paola Mendoza and strategic advisor and national organizer Sarah Sophie Flicker use the power of art and culture in activism, and what they learned in documenting The Women’s March for the newly released book, "Together We Rise." As national organizers for The Women’s March and leaders of The Resistance Revival Chorus, these artist activists see their purpose as connecting fellow members of The Resistance to the moments of joy and transcendence that come with being a part of history in the making.

As more and more women graduate from college and even surpass their male peers in levels of education, men are finding other means for achieving career success. Nancy Niemi, Director of Faculty Teaching Initiatives at Yale questions the conventional wisdom that college is a path to gender equality. Women now need more degrees than ever just to compete because in spite of all this education, institutional sexism is still prevalent. Her book is called, “Degrees of Difference.” Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free with no obligation at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. Tired of the patriarchy? This will perk you up! Become an Inflection Point monthly Patron (er, Matron!) today! Thank you!

When Bonny Simi was 14 years old, she made a list of life goals--to be a pilot, go to college, be a TV broadcaster, be an Olympic athlete and to build a log cabin. Today, she's achieved 4 of the 5 of them and she founded JetBlue Ventures to massively improve the travel experience. She may be the 'most interesting woman in the world.' And I wanted to know how she did it. Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free with no obligation at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. Tired of the patriarchy? This will perk you up! Become an Inflection Point monthly Patron (er, Matron!) today! Thank you!

From her childhood as a self-confessed gaming nerd to her career as an engineering-inspired artist (or is it art-inspired engineer?), Suz Somersall has made a life of her own design. She's now the founder of KiraKira, a learning program that makes girls feel confident and excited about creating new products using 3D printing, design-thinking and STEAM concepts. We’ll hear how while living as on a remote Japanese island with her husband fighting halfway across the world, Suz redefined her role from military wife to entrepreneur. This week on "Inflection Point," Suz shares how, despite a career full of pivots, one's life can ultimately lead in the same direction all along. Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free with no obligation at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. Tired of the patriarchy? This will perk you up! Become

Cristi Hegranes wanted to be a foreign correspondent since the time she was six years old. Within days of achieving her dream job, after all the traditional training, she realized she was the wrong person for the job. The right person? The women who actually live in the countries usually covered by outsiders. So she decided to train women journalists and give them a platform to tell the stories of their own communities. As she says, "To change the story, you have to change the storyteller." Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free with no obligation at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point patron today. Thank you!

This fall, I was invited to moderate a panel for a conference put on by Women In Product, a non-profit formed to create a strong community of women builders and leaders in the tech industry. My panel included four female founders of technology companies: Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategy, Heather Fernandez of Solv, Selina Tobaccowala of Evite and Gixo and Aarthi Ramamurthy of Lumoid. You’ll hear what surprised each of them about starting a company, the pros and cons of running a company while female, from leadership style to sexual harassment and gender bias--and ultimately as business-people what it takes to scale. Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point Patron (Matron

More women than ever are raising their hands to run for office. But what does it actually take to to win? And what will be different when they do? Kate Black, now at the FCC, recorded with me in August when she was Chief of Staff for EMILY's List, an organization that helps pro-choice, Democratic women run for office. And she has her own story of awakening to the fact that we need more women in office.

In part 2 we hear the personal story that started it all for sexual consent and internet abuse lawyer, Carrie Goldberg. And it begins with the usual, "I met him on the internet..." Carrie shares how she fights back against perpetrators of revenge porn and other sexual misconduct, as well as how victims may actually come out the other side with more power. Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—spend less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time changing the world. Get your first 30 days free at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point patron today. Thank you!

With the Harvey Weinstein tsunami of sexual misconduct allegations, it has everyone asking, will this be the moment when everything changes? And if it is, what will it take to balance the power between harassers and their victims? And what about the enablers--Is this all one big conspiracy? I talk with sexual harassment and internet privacy lawyer Carrie Goldberg to find out. Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks—less time dealing with invoices and expenses, and more time to change the world. Get your first 30 days free at freshbooks.com/inflection and enter “Inflection Point” in the how did you hear about us section. And—Women’s voices have never been more vital. Your monthly support will make them be heard. Become an Inflection Point patron.

Jennifer Brea was an avid traveler, a Harvard PhD student and a Princeton grad. She was engaged to be married to the man she loved. Then one day she couldn't get out of bed with an illness that went undiagnosed for over a year. Until finally she started to meet other people--mostly women--who had the same problem: a misunderstood illness, generically described as "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" or what used to be called "hysteria." To take control of her life--and to be taken seriously, she started to film herself, others like her and the few experts there are. Her film is called "Unrest." Inflection Point is brought to you by FreshBooks’ new cloud accounting software that makes it easy to invoice, track expenses and get paid online. Try it free for 30 days.

Whitney Bell got tired of receiving unwanted sexually explicit photos from men, and decided to do something about it: She gathered 200 of these images and put them on display in an art gallery show entitled "I Didn't Ask For This. A Lifetime of Dick Pics." This is “Part 1” of our convo. Be sure to listen to Part 2 for more about her feminist activism.

Part 2 of our conversation…To hear about Whitney Bell’s gallery show “I Didn’t Ask For This: A Lifetime of Dick Pics” please check out “Part 1.” In this episode, we move onto the response Whitney got from an article she wrote about abortion for Teen Vogue; why she posed for Playboy and how she handles the backlash from her feminist activism.

Most of us don’t know what to say when we are grieving or how to reach out when the people we love go through something awful. Dr. Kelsey Crowe’s own experiences with grief helped her realize that so many people suffer alone because the people around them don’t know what to do or say. So Kelsey actually shifted her career focus to understand what grieving people want, and what they don’t. She surveyed 900 people about their experiences with grief, founded Help Each Other Out to provide empathy bootcamps, and wrote a book about what she learned. The title of her book sums it up: There is No Good Card for this: What to say and do when life is scary, awful and unfair to people you love.* Lauren talks with Kelsey about what she learned and how we can all help each other out. Thank you to our sponsor: Rent The Runway - Unlock an endless wardrobe. Get 25% off your first month when you enter the code INFLECTION at checkout. Visit them here: RentTheRunway.com/Unlimited. Thank you to our Patrons! Get rewarded when

Ashton Applewhite is on a mission as old as humanity itself -- to change our attitudes about age and ageing. Her book is "This Chair Rocks. A Manifesto Against Ageism," and her Ted Talk received a standing ovation. She's onto something. This week on Inflection Point, she talks with Lauren about how she plans to end what she calls "the last acceptable prejudice."

When she was young, Jeannette Walls wanted nothing more than to escape her crazy, chaotic family. She grew up in poverty, in a crumbling home, where her parents couldn’t always put food on the table. They moved from place to place and school to school. After putting her past behind her to become a successful journalist and author, Walls finally revisited her upbringing in her memoir, “The Glass Castle.” Now it’s been adapted into a film, and this was my chance to talk with her about how she rose out of a seemingly impossible situation.

When Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, MO in August, 2014 and the protests began, Sabaah Folayan felt the media’s coverage was overly focused on the looting, rioting and property damage, and not nearly enough on the stories of the people who rose up. So she dropped everything and went to Ferguson to see for herself what was happening on the ground and to talk with the people who live there. The result is her documentary film Whose Streets? She shares what it was like to be there and how she made her film in such extraordinary circumstances. Whose Streets comes out August 11th, 2017.

“The biggest trick is how do we teach women at any stage to keep knowing what they want and asking for that,” says Leanne Meyer, Program Director of the Carnegie Mellon Leadership and Negotiation Academy for Women. Meyer’s work focuses on two main components that inhibit women’s progress in the workplace: the environments at work and school, and the habits of women themselves. Meyer educates women on the stereotypes and biases holding them back; teaches them to network; how to seek out and make use of the support of sponsors and mentors; and how to understand their environments and not sell themselves short in negotiation. Thank you to our sponsor: Rent The Runway - Unlock an endless wardrobe. Get 25% off your first month when you enter the code INFLECTION at checkout. Visit them here: RentTheRunway.com/Unlimited. Thank you to our Patrons! Get rewarded when you become a monthly supporter at Patreon.com/InflectionPoint

What if the root of all the world’s problems is the imbalance of masculinity and femininity in our leadership? Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers has spent over twenty years investigating the power of femininity to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. We discuss how she discovered that leading with the feminine can help anyone–male or female–find their purpose and their passion. Thank you to our sponsor: Rent The Runway - Unlock an endless wardrobe. Get 25% off your first month when you enter the code INFLECTION at checkout. Visit them here: RentTheRunway.com/Unlimited. Thank you to our Patrons! Get rewarded when you become a monthly supporter at Patreon.com/InflectionPoint