WEBVTT

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Hi.

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My name is Alicia Winokur.

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I had a really similar
experience to Dani.

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I worked at a really, really
small marketing company.

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And, when I say
"really, really small,"

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I mean really, really small.

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I was the fifth employee.

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That was our entire office.

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[LAUGHTER]

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At Carlton PR & Marketing,
a lot of what I did

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was things like
writing press releases

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and doing social media for
companies that were just

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getting on their feet.

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Bobbie Carlton, the founder
of the company, her main focus

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was helping startups
become bigger.

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And most of them will
become the next Facebook

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or the next Instagram.

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And a lot of them are
doing really cool things.

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And that is kind of why
I wanted to work there.

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But the way I got
there was a little more

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interesting than just
wanting to help startups.

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I'm a journalism and
English major/minor.

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And my advisor,
Catherine Manegold,

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told me that a lot of people
who start out in journalism

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end up going to
public relations.

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And so here I am,
thinking, well,

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I don't want to spend
$100,000 getting a journalism

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grad school degree
and then not using it.

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But I also don't want to
do the same thing for PR

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and realize I hate it.

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So I cast a very wide
net of applications

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out into the world.

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And I never heard
back from any of them.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Not a single one.

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But I may have been
reaching a little high.

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But my dad has worked in
marketing for many, many years

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and happened to know this
woman, Bobbie Carlton.

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And he said, why don't you
go in, interview with her?

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And, voila, she hired me.

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So, a lot like Dani,
I was lucky enough

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to have someone in my life
to set me up with this.

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But, boy, did that net I
cast really fall through.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So, most of what I did,
aside from the press releases

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and Twitter stuff,
was this website

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called Innovation Women.

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You can see Bobbie
Carlton, there, at the top.

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Bobbie started this website
in response to the fact

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that, whenever she would go to
panels, it would be all men.

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And this was happening a lot,
especially in the STEM field.

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And she would ask the people
who were running the panels,

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like, why are there no
women on your panels?

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And they would say, oh, we had
one, but she couldn't come.

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Or, oh, we just couldn't find
anyone who was qualified.

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And I think we all know
that's totally false.

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There are scores
of qualified women

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who could have
been on that panel,

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but they just didn't
bother to look for them.

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So Innovation Women
is a speaker's bureau

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for entrepreneurial
and technical women.

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And all the women on
here-- well, most of them,

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not all of them--

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have some sort of link to
either being a small-business

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owner or a big-business owner,
or they work in STEM field,

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or they have something
to contribute to a panel

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so that it's not a boys' club.

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And most of my work for
this was helping the people

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on this website
promote themselves,

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so that they would be
hired for these panels.

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A lot of what I did was, someone
would sign up for the website

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and say, I don't have time
to make my own profile.

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Like, I'm busy.

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I've got a lot to do.

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And I would say,
that's totally fine.

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Send me your link, and
send me your website.

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I will make a profile for
you, and we'll call it a day.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And what I found was
that a lot of these women

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had a lot more to
them than met the eye.

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And it wasn't just that
they worked in business

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and they could only
talk about business.

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They had also started their
own company and it had failed.

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But they learned from that,
and they could talk about that.

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Or they had worked in a bunch
of different industries,

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and they would be able to
do a lot more than just

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talk about business
or just talk about PR.

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And what I really
loved about this

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was that it was putting
back into the world, like,

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women, basically, where they
weren't previously, before.

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And actually this
website has done a lot.

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Within the first week,
people were getting

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asked to speak on panels.

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And, to me, that's amazing.

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And I feel like I
really helped with that,

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like this was
something that I did

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and I made something
amazing happen.

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A lot of what I did for this
website also was outreach.

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What we wanted was to expand
beyond Boston, because it was

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a Boston-based company
and a lot of the people

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Bobbie knew were
in the Boston area.

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When I started,
most of our people

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were from Boston and the area.

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By the time I finished,
we had reached out

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to Seattle and
DC, New York City,

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and we were even thinking about
reaching out to Australia--

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which was pretty cool.

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And what that entailed was a
lot of goggling, in all honesty.

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I would look up "women's
groups in New York City,"

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"business women's groups
in New York City."

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And you pull names from that,
and you email them and say,

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we have this amazing
website that we

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want you to be a part
of, because we all

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know that is an issue,
when it comes to panels.

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And we want you
to be a solution.

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We want you to help
us solve the problem.

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And, overwhelmingly,
people would say, yes,

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we want to do that.

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This is something we're
really interested in.

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I'm not sure how many
people are on the website

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now, because it's been
approximately three months

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since I worked for them.

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But the growth was--

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I think when I started there
were around maybe 50 profiles

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on the website.

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By the time I left,
there were over 100.

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So I felt really
good about myself.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I helped double the amount
of people on this website.

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And I think, a lot like
Dani, I didn't really

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have experience in marking
or public relations,

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before I went in.

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And it was a really
rare experience for me.

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It's a very different kind of
writing, especially different

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from journalism.

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Because in journalism
you want to tell

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the truth, no matter what.

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But in marketing--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--you're trying
to sell a product!

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You're trying to sell somebody!

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I know-- you all laughed
at the journalism thing,

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but you do want to tell the
truth-- or at least I do.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But it was very weird for me,
to be trying to sell things

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to people, even when
I didn't necessarily

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know what it was about or didn't
necessarily believe in it.

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So that was really difficult.

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But what I found was
that was actually better

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for me to learn than if I had
just worked a journalism job

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and not ever known
that, honestly, I really

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don't like marketing.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I wish I had
liked it more, but I

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think it was better
that I didn't like it.

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Because now I know.

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And, moving forward,
I can really

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dedicate yourself to
journalism and maybe aim

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a little lower than trying to
apply to the New York Times

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when I have almost zero
newspaper experience.

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But now I know.

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And that's the biggest
thing I took away from this,

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that, even if you end
up completely hating

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the internship you
get, that's OK,

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because you know you hated it.

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I didn't hate mine.

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It was just not for me.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you!

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[APPLAUSE]

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