Episode 169: The App Bringing Girls Together Worldwide | Naama Barnea-Goraly | Founder of Girltelligence
Growing up can be challenging, especially for tweens and teens who feel alone or unsure where to turn for advice. Naama Barnea-Goraly, a doctor, child and adolescent psychology expert, brain researcher, and founder of the app Girltelligence, is working to change that. Girltelligence is a free platform where girls can connect, share advice, and build a supportive sisterhood. We explore why this kind of community is more important than ever, how to make online spaces safer for young people, and what it takes to create your own app from scratch. Whether you’re raising girls, mentoring the next generation, or just passionate about safe digital spaces, this episode offers insight, inspiration, and practical takeaways.
“We don’t need more powerful men. We need more compassionate men. We need more men and boys supporting women & girls.”
-
Medical Doctor by training
Built her own start-up Girltelligence
Advisory board of teen & college age girls
-
Follow along using the Transcript
Chapters
00:00 Creating safe spaces for girls online
01:25 Naama’s journey from medicine to tech entrepreneurship
03:10 The challenges of growing up without a support system
05:00 How Girltelligence connects girls worldwide
07:15 Building an advisory board of teens and college students
09:40 The role of community in preventing bullying
11:15 Making social media safer for young users
13:05 Turning an idea into a functioning app
15:30 How to fund and scale a mission-driven tech startup
17:00 Lessons from working with Girl Scouts and Neutrogena
19:15 Why girls need more compassionate male allies
21:00 Balancing a medical career and entrepreneurship
23:10 Advice for parents raising confident, connected girls
25:00 How to encourage girls to share their wisdom
27:00 The power of peer-to-peer mentorship in adolescence
We have committees that they lead. So we have the Girl Talk Committee for the Girl Talk section. We have a girl wisdom section where they create all kinds of information that they want to share with other girls. The Girl Talk committee and the content creation committee. We have a marketing committee.
We have, a leadership team,
that's Naama Barnea Goraly, and this is The Powerful Ladies podcast.
Hey guys, I'm Kara Duffy, a business coach and entrepreneur on a mission to help you live your most extraordinary life by showing you that anything is possible. People who have mastered freedom, ease, and success, who are living their best and most ridiculous lives, and who are changing the world are often people you've never heard of until now.
Growing up is hard. It's especially hard as a tween and teen and even harder. When you don't have anyone to talk to or get advice from, or you're simply lacking a great community. Today's guest, NAMA Barney Go is the founder of Girl Intelligence, a free app for girls where they can ask their questions, connect with each other, and give each other advice.
It's an app-based sisterhood where girls support each other. In this episode, we discuss why having a sisterhood matters even more today. How to avoid bullying and making apps safer for young girls. And how to even create your own app in the first place. Enjoy.
Welcome to The Powerful Ladies podcast. Hi. Thanks for having me. Of course. Let's jump right in and tell everyone, listening who you are, where you are, and what you're up to in the world.
Yeah, so my name is Naama Barnea Goraly. I am an MD so I'm a medical doctor by training. And I've had an interesting career. So I started out as a medical doctor doing clinical work.
And then I, we moved, so I'm originally from Israel and we moved to the United States. I was actually just after internship, so I started starting my clinical training. So I had to find he something to do here. 'cause we moved here for my husband's work. We just got married. Congratulations. Not now.
This was many years ago at the time we just got married when we moved here. So I was looking for something to do and I wanted to continue actually my clinical training, but that was. Get it, doing clinical training as a foreign medical graduate in the us. I don't know if this is very difficult.
It, you have to jump through a lot of hoops and it takes at least a year to do the testing and get all the certifications and everything like that. But I found a job as a brain researcher at Stanford, which. Was very lucky 'cause it's also very hard to do. But I was hired and I got a grant and I started working and I absolutely loved it.
So I did that plus my clinical training in the middle for a while. And I think, we'll, we're probably gonna talk more about that in a little bit. But basically most of my career I did child and adolescent psychiatry, which is my passion and like something I'm really interested in. Psychology, psychiatry, all those things.
Were always. Things that were very fascinating to me and brain research, which was my main focus. And then I decided to leave academia after 15 years and build my own startup. So my startup is called Intelligence, and the idea is to provide a platform for teen girls and young women. They can actually be themselves and get all the support that they need from other, from peers or from other girls in a safe space.
Because, the online, the world is difficult and especially for girls, it's hard and there's so many things they don't know. Growing up, I felt this myself and I see it all around me. In my patients and people I know. We need a place where we can know that nobody's gonna judge us and we can talk about.
They also, we women at any age, honestly, but my app is for younger women. But they can talk about anything and they can be anonymous. They can be not anonymous. They can make connections that way. And we keep it super safe because we have very sophisticated AI in the background and moderators it's just 13 to 15. It's super, super safe for them because it's only moderated, like everything goes through a human eyes. So we know there's nothing there that would be harmful for them or inappropriate for that age. But everyone has very sophisticated AI that keeps the conversation safe and supportive.
So it's basically a place it's called intelligence. Like I said, it's a place for them to get support and talk about anything and, let their hair down and not worry about how they look or how they're perceived. Yeah. So that's what we've built. And what's your tagline? My tagline is, you have more sisters than you think.
That's struck with me, right? Because that's part of what Powerful Ladies is about. Sharing your story so that. More people and women know that there are more women like them. More humans like them. Yep. Yep. Why does that tagline matter for your business and for you?
So first of all, I have to give credit where credit is due.
So I have an amazing advisory board of teenage girls and young women. High schoolers and college students. And Lauren, who is just this amazing, she just has a amazing marketing mind. She's a college student and she came up with that, so not don't take credit for it. And the idea was that.
It's a sisterhood. Like you can go there and you will always be supported. Nobody ever, nobody's gonna judge you because we built it that way. Like of course people judge you and can judge you in the world. But people on our platform, first of all, it's self-selecting because people who don't, girls who don't wanna support other girls, which just won't be there.
If you wanna judge, you could do judge other people anywhere else. So it's self-selecting and we don't really have to moderate that much, but, but we built it that way. So it's it's having a, it's having a sisterhood on your phone and it's and it's a little, I loved that when she came up with that.
I was like, that is amazing because it's intriguing oh, I have sisters, I have more sisters than I think It's like really? It's it's intriguing. And so I like that aspect of it and it's just very true to the platform. So
what was it that made you want to create this app for this age group?
I think there's lots of what we know people need help. We know that there are challenges that all different people of different ages faced today. What was it about this group and girls in particular that you wanted to help?
Yeah, you are right. I think we need every age needs a platform like this, honestly.
But there's so many reasons. One of them is that, first of all, I'm a child and adolescent psychiatrist by training, so I'm really interested in helping young people. And I think that is where it starts. If you build a good foundation, if you get good information and good support when you're younger, then you're set up for success for the rest of your life.
So it's really important to make, to intervene at that age. That age is very. Difficult and turbulent and can be scarring if you don't get the right support at the right time. Also, we know just in terms of public health, situation is that we know that depression and anxiety and general mental health issues are just increasing exponentially, not exponentially, but increasing significantly in this age range.
Especially I, we started this before the pandemic, but we actually launched just before the pandemic, which was fortunate because it was needed, but, it was, it has been getting really bad for the past decade. And during the pandemic it just doubled in, in 18 months. There, so there's a public health need to help young women.
And also it's just something that I really wish I had growing up. Of course, when I was growing up, there were no apps, but or cell phones. But, but it's one of those things that I was like I wish I had that, I wish I had a place where I could just talk to other awesome girls about anything.
Did you grow up with sisters? I did not. So I have a brother. I have an older brother and I have three boys of my own, so no I'm like the only woman in the house.
Yeah. So you've been craving sisterhood for a long time?
Yes. I love my sons. They're amazing. And also, I have my own, I created my own sisterhood.
That's what you, even if you have sisters. Find your friends. But I've had, I've been fortunate to have really good friends my entire life. Really close female friendships that have been, a lifeline. That's like super, super important in my life. Yeah I want everyone to have that,
but yeah, I think
it's super important.
What do you want the girls who are a part of girl intelligence to know, if they can only know one thing what message do you want them to? Walk away with By using the app. Using, oh, okay.
Yeah. You started with like what do you want them to know? So many things, but about the app.
We can answer both questions.
What do you want them to do universally and what do you want them to leave with after? When they age out? The app? Yeah. How do you want them to be left?
Yeah. You don't, we don't have a cutoff age out, so we do have some older women there, but it's clearly designed for, mid to late twenties.
Like I want them to get that experience that they are always supportive, that they can just go and just talk about anything, like they have a question. I want them to, so you, when you practice something, you also take it into your life and then you're also more likely to try to find. That kind of a community.
Oh, so you, you said to bring tea and I did. So now I can use it. So to know that is so a lot for a lot of women and also for, I think for everyone in. In their lives, you friendships change and you also, I think everyone has experience with women trying to compete and women backstabbing each other.
And men too. It's, it's no different. But, and sometimes you can lose I've heard this a lot from, also from girls using the app that they thought they could never find other women who will support them. It's always cattiness and competition. Competition. And there's a lot of reasons for that.
I have a talk, a whole talk about why women compete with each other, but practicing something different, a different experience because if you know it exists, you'll find it in the real world as well. It's all about. Finding those. Sometimes it's really hard. Sometimes it takes years to find, your people, but to know that it is possible and to know how to communicate that way and just practice it because that's something I want to come out. After using the app.
There's a lot of women who are considering starting an app for their business. And it can feel really overwhelming because they don't know developers or don't even know where to start.
Yeah. How was your journey of creating an app and what actions did you take to make it actually possible?
Yes, so I am fortunate in that building an app is really hard. However, it's getting much, much easier with time. There are more and more platforms that can help you build an app for much cheaper than it used to be a few years ago even.
But I started this app, this company with my husband, he's a developer, yeah, so he developed the but. We are very scrappy. 'cause we at first we were like, first we were like completely bootstrapped. So basically did everything on our own. So I designed the app. I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination.
But, I done all the design software. I took a few I took a few, I didn't take courses, I took a few YouTube videos. You can study so much on your own if you're just willing to. Willing to fail, willing to do some really crappy things because oh my God, like I actually saved my first design.
It was so terrible. It was so French. It's so bad. It's so bad. It's still not great. So if you open the app right now, these are the final days of this design. We actually got, we got we got funded by a grant from Neutrogena, a couple, a few months ago. Congratulations. And that money. Thank you.
That was so awesome. Thank you, Neutrogena. They so basically we used the money to some of the money to design, to redesign the app. So it is gonna be so beautiful, like we're actually implementing right now, like we are putting the design on the app right now. It's fine right now. It has gone through many iterations, but right now it's still my design.
The designers are just doing, they made it so beautiful. So basically in terms of development, I had a, I have a developer and he's he's been building software for many years. So he is very experienced. He knows what he's doing. He is can build stuff pretty quickly.
Very quickly actually in terms of, 'cause if you take developers a lot of times it takes a while and then, you have to scrap some things and right away we never had to do that. So I've been fortunate that way. But everything else we've just made, do, we just found, templates and just made it happen. But there are a lot of tools online now that makes even his development much easier, like things you can use that are open source, so things that you can use to build an app for much, much quicker and much cheaper.
Yeah. And from a strategic perspective, are you like working on partnerships with like in my head I'm like, oh, this would be cool to partner with Girl Scouts as an organization or, how are you going after finding your dream customers and getting them to be in the app?
Yeah. So we have been talking to Girl Scouts, so big. So what, what we've always known, but big organizations are tough to work with because it's tough for them to move. It's they are doing things. They were very interested though. They were very supportive. They really liked it.
I think we need to, maybe after we have this new design, I'm gonna approach them again. They were like, let's keep talking. We really like this, where you're going with this. But I'm, we are networking and reaching out all the time. Sometimes we get support, sometimes we get shout outs and users and just constant networking.
I think it's really I live in the Bay Area and. Before the pandemic. So before the pandemic, we didn't even have an app, but I've already, but I've got myself connected. It's really easy to connect with women organizations or with founders, organizations join groups, join Facebook groups.
So before the pandemic, it was really nice because I could actually go places and meet people and just, even build friendships and that was really nice. And then once you have those connections, then when you need something, you can ask for it and you can make things happen. Since the pandemic, it's harder.
It's like waking up again now a little bit. Hopefully. Hopefully we are done soon. But there are also all kinds of online forms, social media. We reach out a lot on dms. People reach out to us on dms Hey, we wanna collaborate share our content. We'll share your content. Let's just meet and chat because we're doing similar things.
So I just really love this ecosystem, like people on the startup world so far has have been just incredible, like super supportive super collaborative. You just have to put yourself out there.
Yeah. Yeah. You said a key phrase that I think really pivots what people normally think of networking.
You said, I'm just going out and making new friends. And I think it's easy to get intimidated when people say go network, go find people. And you're like, Ugh. But really it's and maybe this is my personality, but I think it's so fun to go network because it's like, who do I want to be friends with?
Who exactly is gonna have the key that I need? Even if we're not friends, who has the key, who are they gonna pass me to that is that new partner? Because in general, people who are entrepreneurs. For more, I think, than others. But in general, people wanna help if they have a skill or a resource.
Yeah. Or they know someone, people enjoy being able to pass that on to you and help make connections. I love that you're doing all the things right, working your list, your network. You have to do all the things. You do. You do.
Yeah. I think like one of the most inter I think if you approach it as and I see both things in networking events.
Like I've never had a problem with networking events because I feel like. I'm just here to meet people and and talk to people. It's not about getting things. Yeah. It's not about getting partnerships. So it's, it ha it usually does happen. It usually does. Yeah. But it won't happen every time.
So if you go there with the approach that if I don't get anything out of that meeting, it'll be a waste of time. Then you're not gonna have fun. And it's not gonna be, and people are gonna also notice, 'cause if you're a little bit like it's not about getting stuff, it's also about helping other people.
Like, whenever I can help, I just love helping. It's it's fun. If I can, that's great. Yeah. So basically we're all here for, we're all here really for human interaction to meet other people and make those connections. And if we can help each other, we will. But it's not like this, like high pressure.
Goal, you have your goals, you have to get some targets. Like I never think of it that way, and then it makes it so much easier.
Yeah. With an app like yours where your goal is to help connect and provide community to young women how, like how did you go about deciding should this be paid, should this not?
Like how did you figure out the profitability model for it? Because so often women create businesses that are heart-centered, like this one. Yeah. And whenever we're heart-centered, we're like, we can't charge. And I'm always the coach being like, charge more. Yeah. Or find the place to charge. Like where does it make sense?
So I'm really curious. Like how you grappled with that conversation with yourself and where you're focusing so it can be accessible and profitable at the same time.
So we're still on that journey. I think so. You can't charge for something like that, especially not for young people.
Also, I don't think you can ever charge for a community like that. Also, we want it to be accessible for everyone. And we definitely have girls on the app who can't, who wouldn't ever be able to afford Yep. To pay anything. And also girls don't have their own money a lot of times. So we are we're funded by grants and people who wanna support us so far.
We do have a project in the works that will be our revenue generating model, but I can't talk about it yet. But the community itself and the support is always gonna be free. And that's that's our mission. Like we do want all the girls to have it. And I think, yeah, I think it's a tough thing to, especially with something like that has like a strong social mission.
It's tough to balance those two things. 'cause obviously you wanna be, have a business and make money. You also wanna do good in the world, so you have to. I think I really like what resonates with me usually is providing, and I'm sure that's what you also providing a lot of value and then charging for some of it, like you're basically charging for okay, maybe that's my philosophy less than your worth.
Like it's I don't know what Canva is popping into my mind. Canva, the designs like, oh my God, the value they provide. It's insane. I use it for everything and. The girls all use the free platform. The free platform is amazing. The free platform, you can do so much. You never need to pay.
Then you fall in love with them. They had a lot of competition starting out Yeah. Of starting out, but at some point they had a lot of competition. I'm not following that field very closely, but I know that I've seen a lot of competition and I think they're prevailing because they're providing way more value than they charge.
But I am happy to pay the yearly fee. Very happy to have their pro account, and I'm happy to support them, but I feel like I'm getting so much more value than I'm paying for. Yeah. So I feel like that's the model I want. Yeah. You have, you, you approach, you appeal to a very broad audience and just some of them will pay for your extra features.
Yeah. Your target audience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When you go back to 8-year-old, you. Would she have imagined that this is what your life looks like, that you're living in the us, that you have an app? Granted, you and I both were growing up when there was no such thing as an app.
But what was she imagining that you'd be in technology and helping girls?
Never. No, not at all. I, so when I was eight, actually, I wanted to be an author. Like I was writing short stories. I wrote a book I thought I'd be an author. Yeah the world was very different back then.
So I never, it's hard to think back, 8-year-old is it's younger than my kids. It's like a very long time ago, but. No, this is, I never thought I'd live here. Not at all. Yeah, that was not at all, this is not at all the plan and then technology is not something I could, so I think when I was like, when I was little, probably younger than eight my dad, he's a physicist and talked to me about computers and he actually took me when I was really little, he took me to his he worked at a university.
It took me to see a computer, 'cause nobody had a computer at home. So it took me to see this, this machine, and I was like, but what do you use it for? Yeah. Like how would we ever use it? Yeah no, I could not imagine where we are today.
When you look at the journey that you've had, who have been powerful women or powerful humans that have guided you along your path and who have inspired you along the way.
Yeah,
In my work there were in, in academia, there were very few women actually above me. That's always the case, right? In male dominated fields. But I've had a few, women who are like, 10, 15 years older that were just really helpful and amazing advice and support and like.
I think that is just something every woman should have and every woman should provide. Now I'm the mentor to younger women, but I feel like we just have to, as women, especially since we are disadvantaged in many ways we just have to have that. So there are a couple at Stanford that helped me out.
And I could just talk too, get support and and help with kind of the big picture. 'cause a lot of times especially when you have young children and a full-time job, you're drowning. There's no other way. You're drowning and you can't like, raise your head and see what's ahead.
Even you're like dealing with a day-to-day life. I had, three kids under four. Wow. So my twins were, when my twins were born, my oldest was three years, three three years and nine months old. So yeah, it was busy. And like having someone like with a bigger perspective to show you, say, Hey, how about you go this way?
Or How about, this is what you've done. You should apply to this, you should do, these are opportunities that are out there that you're not even aware of, but you'll be perfect for, things like that,
And then just a general how lucky. How lucky to have people to encourage you to look up and look around.
Yes, exactly. Otherwise, we, that's where we get stuck in that drowning hamster wheel cycle. Exactly. And years go by and you're like, what happened? And so it's I'm always so grateful for someone who sticks their hand and is hold on, come out of there. Yep.
Exactly. That's so important.
So I try to do that now, think of, my, the girls that I work with and support them and help them, like one of the goals of the advisory board. We have 25 young women there is to help their path and their career and their like, when they apply to college, what will they say?
And when they apply to grad school, what will they say? Things like that. So
yeah, I think it's most businesses do not have an advisory board made up of young women. How cool was it to make that part of your business model and. How much fun do you have in those advisory meetings? Oh,
so much fun.
These girls, we just we just advertised and they applied and they're amazing. They're just amazing. Each and every one of them they love this work, but we also I also get to know them and we are like we meet once a month as a team. We have a Slack group where we chat and talk about everything.
And some of them I've been working with for two years now. So like we really, I really got to know them and some of them I met in person, if they're in the area like we have, we meet the pandemic made it harder, so most of them I have never met with, but and then they have, we have committees that they.
So we have the Girl Talk Committee for the Girl talk section. We have a, for the chat, for the conversations, the topics. We have a girl wisdom section where they create all kinds of information that they want to share with other girls. So it's like a visual, more like an instagramy visual thing, but about information to empower other girls or just information that they think girls should know. So we have the Girl Talk Committee and the content creation committee. We have a marketing committee. We have, a leadership team and they meet amongst themselves. So I give them as much in I don't like to micromanage.
I have been micromanaged in my work previously and I hated it. So I don't, I give them guidance as much as they need, but they have a lot of autonomy, which is something I would love to have at their age. Yeah, so they have leadership positions and they do just amazing work.
Help us with every step. I could not do this without them. Because I'm not a target audience building an app that isn't, so I know a lot about young people and their, their brains and how they work. But I'll never be a Gen Z girl everything goes through them.
If they don't like something, even if I love it, I'm not gonna do it 'cause they don't like it. And if they like things, even if I'm like, eh. We, and unless I hate it, if I hate it, I have a veto power if I absolutely hate it. But actually that actually never happened, so That's okay. That's never happened.
Yeah. But they're really the decision makers. Like they help us with everything, including the design of the app, everything went through them, the colors, the fonts, the design, like what everything went through them.
You mentioned before, having those moderators. How do you choose what is okay for them to be talking about or asking about and what do you, where do you draw the line?
Yeah. Because I'm sure, looking at what's happening with the bill in Florida right now that's being labeled as the, don't say gay bill. That bill has a lot of other things in it about what's appropriate at different ages to discuss and talk about and have in school without parental approval.
Yep. And that's one piece of that bill of how are you choosing where that barometer is and how much are the girls involved in setting that as well?
Yeah, so that is an excellent question. We don't censor anything and we don't tell them what to talk about. It's a platform for them. So our only rule is that we don't want young girls to be exposed to things that are not age appropriate for them.
And that's why we have human moderators for every, all the girls under 15. So any content that is disturbing or sexual, like highly sexual age appropriate sexual. Sure. They should talk about those things. But, some of the older girls have very, deep topics that heavy topics that they talk about things that happen or things that, they wanna advise about that a certain year old shouldn't read. So yeah. So that's one of our guidelines. And then just anything that is not supportive, but we don't censor any opinion, like we don't set the tone. We don't, I don't have to agree with anything that is said there.
As long as they're respectful to each other, as long that they don't. You're gonna go to a burn in hell or you're stupid, or like you just, but they they like, that almost never happens. The AI actually picks up on those things. So all those anything that's unsupportive or anything that's.
Disturbing like it. We've had, some probably men trying to, post things on the platform. Yeah. The AI always detects that. We do have a flagging system and we do go through most things and a hundred percent of the things for the younger girls, but but yeah. So some men have tried to post all kinds of things.
They never made it to the feed. But yeah, we don't censor, we don't set the tone. We don't decide what they're talking about or not. It is their platform. But they do get, when they post, that's another thing we have, when they post, they can decide which age it's for. So we've actually had a 13-year-old who was sexually abused and she wanted advice about that.
What ha She couldn't even. Process it probably, yeah, process it or make sense of it. But she did know that she doesn't want girls her age to see it. Interesting. Because it's not content that the girls, it did happen to her unfortunately, unfortunately for any age. But she wanted the advice of the older girls.
So she wrote the topic and she said, Hey, this happened. What do I do? Who do I tell? How do I tell? Do I tell, yeah. But she chose, like with the age ranges that you could choose, she chose, I think she chose 18 and f actually. So she wanted the advice of the older girls about the situation.
She didn't want to, she didn't want girls her age to see it. Now, if we saw it, if she didn't do that, then we would do that for her. We would only post it to the older girls. But she actually had the insight to do it herself. But it was the only place that she said in the conversation.
But she has no other place to talk about this. Yeah. But she has no other place to go. She didn't wanna tell her parents, she didn't wanna tell her teachers, or she just didn't know what to do. And this was this one place that she could talk about it. And nobody knows who she is. Nobody could,
yeah. How, when members sign up, like what's the process to know that they are like the right age? They are who they say they are. Like, is there, how do you keep creeps out and how do you know girls are in the right age buckets?
Yes. So there's actually no way to know that. Other apps have tried. There's and I always download them and try to. To trick the system because it's just for fun. You can't really do that and still be usable. Yeah. Like you can do that. Sure. You can ask them for an ID or you can do face recognition. That's like very fraught because of face recognitions is terrible with non-Caucasian, for instance.
Yeah. Or with non-binary people. Like we're open for anyone who identifies as a woman. And the face recognition software might not get that. So it's impossible to really know the actual age and the gender without being way too intrusive and unusable. So we don't do that. But what we do is we monitor on the content level.
Yeah. So we make sure the content is safe. Yeah. But there, so potentially there could be people there that are just. Reading and not interacting and we will never know. Yeah. But that's okay because, you can be anonymous if you want to. The girls know this is the internet and these things can happen, but the content itself is always, is safe and supportive.
That's our approach.
Yeah. I just think, my mind keeps expanding on how many different organizations, even schools that should be encouraging. Girls to use this. Yes. Which of course make leads me to, has anyone asked you to make one for voice?
Yes. Yes. Yes. I get that all the time.
Especially since I have three boys and they're like, why didn't you build something for boys? But I'm a girl, I'm a grown up girl. And I think boys need something different actually. I think the needs of boys are different. And also I think a safe space for girls is super important to know that you're surrounded by people who understand you.
Most of the bullying that happens online for girls is from men. Boys and men. So if you eliminate that, you already Yeah. It's 76%.
That really research surprises me. Yeah. Going back to what you said earlier about that talk you have about women being in competition with each other. It really surprises me that the majority of bullying girls' faces from boys and men online. Yeah. That's horrible. Yeah. I almost feel like it's worse than girl on girl bullying because it's I don't. There's no relatability in that. Bullying like I, I don't know why it bothers me more. It shouldn't, but there's something about it that's maybe just.
Fulfilling the patriarchy? I'm not sure.
Yeah. But I do agree that the only thing that I agree with the, whenever you build something, there will be comments and there will be criticism, and that's okay. Yes. That's fine. Like we, and we chose to support girls this way.
But I absolutely agree that men need boys and men need support too. And also boys and men need to. Learn how to support women and how to find the patriarchy. So that is some of what we're doing next. It's not gonna be limited to girls, but girl intelligence is always gonna be for self-identifying girls.
Yeah. And I think that's important that it exists. I guess that all the time.
All the time. Yes. Same. I don't think you can have a product or service that is gender specific without being asked the question. And it's often a topic on this podcast of why powerful ladies, not powerful humans?
And I've had powerful men on here. I've had powerful couples on here. Yeah. 'Cause I think it's important to hear all the different stories and if it works for this, I'm building stories for the powerful ladies community. So if it works for that community, then it makes sense. And at the same time, I keep thinking like who?
Hey, anyone out there who wants to make the powerful gentleman's conversation because we need it. Yeah. But
we don't need more, like powerful men is not as is not something we need. We don't need, we need compassionate men. We need it's also I love that. I love that reframe. It goes to yeah. It goes to how do you define powerful, but if you say powerful, man, it's scary. It sounds scary to me. If you say it's powerful woman, I'm like, oh, cool. It's yesterday was at the time of recording was International Women's Day, and I keep thinking, if you have a day, then it's a problem.
If you have a month, if you have a day, then you are disadvantaged. There's no international men's day like, 'cause we don't need that. Nobody needs that. But I don't feel like we will ever not need an international women's day. Definitely not in my lifetime because even if we do reach equality, which we are like 200 years away, so not my lifetime, but but even if say by some miracle we reach equality in 10 years.
We would always wanna remember the thousands of years where we didn't have equality. Yeah. So I don't think we'll ever but in the future, I would love to not need to have a women's history month or women's
date. Yeah.
At
some point. Yeah. There's a great post yesterday from Glennon Doyle of talking to her daughter Tish and her daughter's what do you mean we get one day, don't we get at least half the days? Yes. And yes. So she was like, played. Yes, you are correct. Yes. And
I think it's, oh, go ahead. Oh when my son was eight when my oldest was eight, he came up to me one day and he's like like with emotion, and he was like, mom, are you a feminist?
And I'm like. Okay, we've been talking about this since the day we were born, but okay. Okay. This is a revelation for you right now. Okay, alright. I'll go with that. And I'm like yeah, of course. And he's so you think boys are girls are better than boys? And I was like, no. Again, no, that's not what it means.
Feminism is that women are equal to men. And I can see the little wheels in his head turning and he's then why is there a word for it?
Yeah, and I'm like, the what? What the craziest thing is. Yeah. Another guest on this podcast has shared almost the identical story. Of her son.
Yeah. And he's wait, why do we have, why did what? Like he could not fathom that it needed to exist in consciousness as a thing. Exactly. Exactly.
And that gives me hope for the new generation that they can't even understand why that's a thing. Like why are we even thinking about inequality when it's clear that we are equal?
So that definitely gives me hope for the next generation.
Yeah. I regularly think that if we had a panel of five year olds making many decisions that we need on this planet we would be in better shape. Just because there's, I use the age eights usually it's eight to 10.
There's something magical at that age where there's still magic. And we also are functioning in modern society at the same time. Yeah, like we haven't crossed over, we haven't lost the magic yet. That tends to start going downhill after that, unfortunately. After that. Yeah. And so I think it's a really interesting time.
And of course I'd love to expand that and keep that, I still want the magic in my life, so I'm like, let's keep it coming. But there's something that always makes me hopeful, talking to young people in general, and kids. And just women have historically, been considered not intelligent enough to contribute somewhere, or that wasn't their place.
Yeah. I think we, we do the same thing with kids in our society on a regular basis. And there's so much more opportunity to there's so wise because everything is still simple. Yeah. And they haven't taken on all the nonsense that you get as an adult. Yeah. And even, psychologically they haven't experienced all like a whole, decades and decades of trauma either.
Yeah. So it's inspiring to me to think about okay, where do I need. A young people's advisory board in my life, and maybe I just need one for my life path in general, not even for a business. I'm gonna start, I'm like, Hey guys, all, what should I do? Buy this house or not? I think I need to just tap into source like that.
I agree. Yeah. Great.
When you think of the words powerful and ladies, what do they mean to you when they're separate? And does their definition shift or change when powerful ladies is put together? That's a great question.
So I think so powerful. I guess it depends on the context.
And I, like we said, it can be a good thing or a bad thing. Yeah. So having power, having a place in the world, having agency, having a voice. The power to do things powerful, can also be destructive and, a terrible thing. But I think as a, like what I thought about when you first emailed me about, powerful ladies, is that like our power is in.
Having confidence knowing that we are equal and then supporting others. It's not about being a queen, there's it's not about being better than other women or other people. It's not about controlling other like power, like the dark side of power is destructive and controlling others.
I think to be a powerful woman is to know your worth. Know that you have something to contribute. Know that you can speak up. I know that you can do things, know that you can create things but then also have the power to be kind to others and support others. I think that's the real power.
We ask everyone on the podcast where they put themselves on the powerful 80 scale. If zero is average everyday human and 10 is the most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself on that scale today and on average? Oh.
Like I would put myself above a bridge because I've always been pretty, like I've been silenced many times for sure, and I've been told many times that I'm too aggressive or that I'm too opinionated or. But ever since a young age and that, that's probably why I was told those things.
But but since a young age, I like realized that I have I have a voice and that I have opinions and that I will express them. And that I can. One of the things like, it's not this podcast, but other podcasts ask what's your tagline? Something. And I think my tagline in many cases was, why the hell not?
Because so many times I've been told, oh, you really shouldn't be doing this or you really shouldn't be. Or like, how are you gonna be a doctor? And a mother. And believe it or not, I was actually asked this in my medical school interview. Nobody will ask this these days, but they actually, like the panel in the medical school interview asked me, how would you, how are you gonna juggle motherhood and the career in medicine?
And I, and if I, if this happened to me today, I would say, do you ask the men this? Because they don't, you know that they don't. But back then it didn't even seem weird. It didn't even seem out of place. I was like, oh, I can answer that. I can do that. But yeah. But I think I've always, I think I have more than average confidence.
And I think that's probably why I did the things I've done. Because there's a backlash in every step. Be even being in medical school, like you get backlash from the patients. Like I've had patients say I don't want you, I want a real doctor. How do you handle that when that happens so many times?
Oh my God. You say, I am a real doctor and I had this attending who is I dunno, five, six years older than me. She was like already an attending position and she's she always used to help be like, women supporting women. She used to help me in these situations when I was an intern, she was like, she's one of the best doctors we have.
You this is your doctor, you be grateful, she's amazing. Things like that. So that really helps when you have someone else. But so at the time, and this was what I hear from a lot of young women, oh, this doesn't affect me. I'm fine. I don't care. When people say those things, they're not fine.
Yeah, it took me years to realize that these, this is added energy that you have to put in, that men don't have to ever deal with. Like every time I would start, like a lot of times when I would start like a new rotation in med school, I would walk in the first day and people would be like. Oh, and I'm like wearing my white coat.
Sometimes, like when I was a doctor already, I had the doctor on, the tag on my coat. They would not pay attention and they would say, oh, we are waiting for you. All the, the trays there with the food the patients are hungry. We are waiting for you to give out the food.
And I'm like, I'm the new med student. Or we have all these chores for you. And they're like, nev People never, almost, never assume that I'm the med student. They always. Assumed I am the, the person or person who's gonna give out the food or person who's, so it's like having to explain, having people always doubt that you are in the right place, takes energy.
It grates on you, it affects you. And we shouldn't ignore it.
So well there, there's been so much that. Our generations had normalized. Yeah. Like for me, I didn't like the aha moment I had in how not equal things were, was a tweet a guy actually post put out and, 'cause I knew that there were issues, I knew there wasn't equality.
I'd experienced it, I had felt it, I dealt with it. But the p but the part that pushed me over the edge was seeing his tweet that said how. My sister gets ready for a date versus how I get ready for a date. It's she, is trying to like, make sure the person's not crazy. She's telling her friend, she has her phone with her, she's texting when she gets it.
She texts her when she comes home, she's getting a ride. She has a backup plan, like listing all the things to go on a first date. And he goes, I shower and show up. Yep. And I'm like, that's the issue. Yep. That is not okay. Exactly. Again, there's many examples of what, of that imbalance, but that's the one, because it's one thing to deal with.
Nonviolent discrimination is another to deal with the violent side of it. And yes it's so unfortunate how even if the statistics I, every mother taught us, just every mother of a black son in America. There's different rules that we have to go through society with and Yeah.
Yeah. It was just like, okay, that's the rule. I never thought who doesn't have to follow this rule until that tweet? So yeah. It's it's easy to just normalize how things are operating and like you said, who pulls you out to, to look up and be like, wait, this, we don't need to drown. We don't need to be on the hamster wheel.
This is not a normal that we agreed to.
Exactly.
Yeah.
This is not normal and
we should
do everything we can to change it.
I can't let you off the hook 'cause you didn't pick a number and the listeners will be upset. Oh, if I let someone sneak away.
Oh, a number. A number.
Okay. What's the scale again?
Zero to 10. Zero to 10.
Oh gosh, could, right now, I feel like maybe an eight, but there are days that I'm like very low, much lower than that. So there are days that I'm like, I like what am I doing? What I, I don't know what I'm doing. Definitely lots of days like that for sure.
And in every step, like in every step in med school, in academia, throughout like
motherhood. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I think that where we put ourselves on the scale changes hour by hour.
The powerful is community is a large and powerful community. So this year I've been asking guests, what requests would you like to make at the community?
What do you need? How can we help you? What's a missing key we can help you find?
You can share your intelligence with all the young women in your lives. Join the community. Just be there to get support, to provide support the girls who provide support. Also love just love being there and being a, being able to have access to the girls who wanna talk about things. Even if you don't need anything right now, you can give. And that's also really helpful. It makes you feel powerful. You can follow us on Instagram intelligence. We are super fun. To follow and we are actually gonna open up recruitment for the advisory board.
We have very little turnover. Some girls are graduating, some girls just have other activities. We have very little turnover, but we will open. A few spots for every march we open around March. We haven't opened it yet and it's already but yeah, so if you know anyone who that's so it's usually 1415 and at 2 25 anyone who wants to be involved in our advisory board you'll have my contact information at the podcast.
You can also DM us on Instagram and we will be posting about that
soon. Awesome. And if there is someone who is called to support you, sponsor you, partner with you, they can follow the same path.
Absolutely. So if you have, if you know of any grants or funding mechanisms that fit with our mission, we'd love to hear from you.
Yeah. And also if you have an organization that's involved with girls that we can partner with that we can support you, you can support us. Spread the word. Any collaborations. We're always super collaborative and we're always happy to hear to, to meet people who share our mission.
Awesome. It has been such a pleasure to talk with you today.
I'm really excited about your creating. I'm glad there's a space for young girls both to contribute and to ask their questions and be supported. It's just an honor to know that you're out there and doing this work and making a difference. Thank you. Thank you. I feel the same. Thanks for having me.
All to connect with NAMA and Girl Intelligence are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. They're critical for podcast visibility and helping us connect with more listeners who love this episode. Please come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies, and you can also follow me there as well at Kara Duffy.
And of course, you wanna connect me directly. Please visit kara duffy.com. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode and a new amazing guest. Until then. I hope you're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
Related Episodes
Episode 295: How Comedy Helped Me Find My Voice On and Off Stage |Morgan Lorraine Gallo | Comedian, Podcast host My Body, My Jokes!
Episode 209: From Hating Running To Leading a Movement | Kelly Roberts, Founder of Badass Lady Gang
What You Don’t Know About Birth Control & The Fight for Women’s Rights | Dr. Sophia Yen | CEO & Co-Founder, Pandia Health
Instagram: girltelligence
Twitter: girltelligence
Website: girltelligence.com
LinkedIn: girltelligence
Email: naama@girltelligence.com
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
