April ‘24 / Announcing SheMoney Summit 2024
The SheMoney + ShePlace Team
More than a conference; a cultural movement for those committed to women’s financial well-being, agency & advancement. Money is more than just numbers on a balance sheet; it's intricately woven into the fabric of our lives, influencing where and how we live, our ability to choose how we spend our time, and our capacity to care for ourselves and others.
Don't miss the opportunity to join us for an immersive event designed to foster social learning and provide a space for exchanging innovative ideas and perspectives on money, wellness, and power. Secure your spot now!
March ‘24 / We’ve Come A Long Way … Maybe
Featuring Guest Author: Deborah Siegel-Acevedo
Seventeen years ago, I published a book titled Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild. It’s a book about how generations of women have invented and reinvented women’s movements and asks how twenty-first century women+ can reconcile our “personal” experiences with the broader “political” contexts in which we live, love, and work. It’s a look at the longstanding inequalities that have persisted across generations. And it’s a deep dive into the fights and frenzies within “feminism” across two generations: the foremothers of the late 1960s and 1970s and the younger women who were making these movements their own as they came into adulthood in the 1990s and 2000s.
February ‘24 / Celebrating Black History Month
Featuring Guest Author: Deneiva Knight
Recently, I overheard someone comment on a woman's appearance, saying, "She comes to work with a full face of make-up and lashes, and I barely just throw on some clothes and head out the door," followed by light giggling.
I, too, laughed, because I, too, do what some might call "overdress" when I leave the house. The act of personal presentation was not a suggestion but an expectation in my household growing up.
For example, I remember my mom telling us not to leave the house unless everything was in place.
January ‘24 / The Power of Mentorship
Featuring Guest Author: Addie Huff
I'm "different”. There were times in my life when I thought that being the way I am was some sort of punishment. I was a Black girl in a small, white, Christian community in Utah County. I often got strange looks from little kids on the street, and when I was just 10 years old, I started using my mom's foundation to make my skin look lighter because I just wanted to fit in. While there were many outstanding women in my life, I never saw women who looked like me that I could look up to.
It wasn't until middle school that I met a girl who, despite being white, grew up in diverse areas outside of Utah. She started teaching me about my culture, and that's when I began to learn about Ebonics, a language used in Black culture, also known as "Black Speech". This early form of mentorship opened my eyes to understanding more about my Black culture, and it motivated me to seek out relationships that empowered my Black identity. I started finding connections with these women, and I was finally able to look up to people who looked like me.
December ‘23 / ShePlace Year in Review
Featuring Guest Author: The ShePlace Team
In May of 2023, we celebrated our two year anniversary as a community at ShePlace. And just last month, we celebrated the one year anniversary of SheMoney. As our network continues to grow, we are delighted that you have all decided to come on this journey with us. This year that journey has included 12 in-person and online events, including workshops, seminars, social gatherings, networking, and just plain having fun. We were also excited to collaborate with our incredible partners on an additional 12 events within the community.
November ‘23 / 2023 Mindful
Self-Intimacy
Featuring Guest Author: Nadège, Sex Scholar
Did you know that intimacy spikes in winter, and that more babies are conceived during this season than any other time of year? Talk about cuddle weather!
Hi, I’m Nadège, a scholar who studied human sexuality at Berkeley, and I can tell you why more pregnancies happen in winter than any other time of year. First, testosterone rises in humans, which leads to higher libido. Second, cold weather psychologically creates a need for closeness. Humans become more sensitive to skin-hunger, leading to a need for touch.
But winter isn’t all cuddles and future kiddos. It’s also a time of emotional fatigue, fast-paced holidays, and the gnawing anxiety that your loved one will ambivalently accept your gift (they are just so hard to shop for!). As your obligations and need for touch rise, how do you pause and prioritize yourself? I like to focus on “self-intimacy” during this cozy season.
October ‘23 / 2023 National Hispanic History Month
Featuring Guest Author: Nubia Peña
Reframing Legacy. As my twin sister and I celebrate our 40th birthday on October 11, the famous line in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical, Hamilton, plays over and over again in my mind, begging me to self-reflect and respond. In his famous soliloquy, Hamilton asks, “What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.”
September ‘23 / Health is Wealth
Featuring Guest Author: Chantel Chapman
(Content Warning: Addiction, Sexual Abuse)
Looking at me 10 years ago, you would have thought I had it all: vacations on private jets, invitations to presidential birthday parties, high-profile consulting gigs with fintech companies. But no matter how much outward “success” I achieved, shame and scarcity ruled my inner world. All the impressive-sounding experiences I amassed merely concealed a more painful reality. I was a codependent workaholic who was so financially avoidant, just the thought of asking clients to pay their invoices would send me into a panic. Even as my health began to suffer, I still overworked, undercharged, and used the money I did have like a “please-love-me” fund, compulsively spending it as a way to gain acceptance and belonging. So how did I get here? And more importantly, how did I get out?
August ‘23 / National Black Business Month
Featuring Guest Author: Sidni L. Shorter, PsyD
August is Black Business Month. The time when community, supporters, allies, and collaborators support, celebrate, and remind everyone that Black businesses exist 365 days a year and are vital to the economic ecosystem. Businesses are organisms – living organizations that require collectives, collaborators, consumers, and communities. These are the sum parts that drive commerce, and each is required for a healthy economy, no matter what culture they identify with or are defined by.
July ‘23 / 2023 Community Update
Featuring Guest Author: The ShePlace Team
Our ShePlace community is growing! It’s been two years since we officially launched with the mission statement: “It’s time for women+ to flourish.” A lot has happened in those two years, and we want to take some time to share with you how ShePlace has grown and developed since then. For one thing, last year we were thrilled to launch our sister-brand, SheMoney, a content platform and consultancy firm dedicated to financial inclusion and wellness. And that is just one of the exciting developments of the past two years. But before we get to all of our updates, we have to talk about the WHY behind all this.
June ‘23 / Celebrating Pride Month
Featuring Guest Author: Kathryn Bond Stockton
Extracts from my recent books, Making Out and Gender(s):
My confounding story—was I gay, was I trans?—opens onto mysteries flooding all genders. Some of us in retrospect were a linguistic prequel to “trans,” though transgender was happening and being somewhere around us, out of our grasp. Those of us said to be “girl” or “boy,” without any way to ditch our one word and get the other word, were impaled upon both while falling between them. Not-girl-not-boy (wasn’t the one, couldn’t be the other), not “trans” either (no such word we knew), we were prequel-people, linguistically stranded at that point in history.
May ‘23 / AAPI Heritage Month
Featuring Guest Author: Ze Min Xiao
As a Chinese American woman and an immigrant, I have struggled to find myself. However, I have come to accept that struggle builds character, and this adds to the many flavors of complexities of who I am.
I am and will always be one foot in the present and one foot in the past. The past being not in the sense of place (i.e., China and American Samoa), but in the memories of people and experiences. And the present being my life in America and all my hopes and aspirations, including finding belonging in a community that I often don't feel a part of.
April ‘23 / Financial Literacy Month
Featuring Guest Author: Jacki Zehner
Since 2004, the United States has designated April as Financial Literacy Month. This event was established as a way to raise awareness about the importance of financial education, as well as to encourage Americans to establish and maintain healthy financial habits. Great! And in the nearly 20 years since Financial Literacy Month has been established, how well are Americans doing when it comes to basic financial knowledge? Unfortunately, not so great.
For example, according to one study, only about one-third of American adults were able to pass a basic financial literacy quiz. Another study found that a lack of financial literacy cost Americans $415 billion in 2020. And in 2022, a survey found that 56% of Americans can’t cover a $1,000 emergency expense with their savings. Clearly, something has gone wrong in the quest for financial literacy in the US, and this can have serious consequences, including high levels of debt, bankruptcy, retirement insecurity, and the potential for financial abuse.
March ‘23 / Women+ Making History
Featuring Guest Authors: Lauren Schiller & Hadley Dynak
Women are building new power and breaking old rules like never before. We are stepping up time and again to claim our leadership roles, raise our voices, protect our rights, and elevate others.
We are tackling pervasive systemic challenges like equal pay, climate justice, and making the invisible visible. We’re pushing back against inadequate gun laws, white supremacy, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. We’re leadingthe fight for reproductive justice, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, and women’s rights. We’re running companies, serving in the military, and campaigning for the highest political offices in the land, and winning. And we’re aiming for even higher altitudes – literally summiting mountains and commanding missions to Mars.
February ‘23 / Celebrating Black Women+
Featuring Guest Author: Tamara N. Stevenson, Ed.D
These lyrics are the chorus to the 2021 song “Love My Hair” by country music artist Mickey Guyton, inspired by a 2018 incident of a Black girl sent home from her Louisiana elementary school because of her braided hair extensions. The school’s policy indicated that only natural hair was allowed. On the surface, this rule appears to be fair and equal across student populations. However, this policy, along with similar directives in corporate settings, penalizes culturally informed practices about hair care and self-expression for the sake of professionalism, which is coded language for perfection, conformity, and homogeneity based on white, Westernized standards of beauty. In other words, if your natural hair is wavy, loosely curled, or bone straight in texture, is soft to the touch, is long, thick, and flowing down your back, and requires minimal use of products or treatments to maintain this look and feel, then you have what some Black communities call “good hair.”
January ‘23 / The Power of Social Capital
Featuring Guest Author: Robin Rankin
Early in my career, I was blessed to work with Dawna Markova Ph.D., author of I Will Not Die an Unlived Life. Every January, she would start the new year by writing a juicy question on a yellow post-it, and then sticking it to my computer monitor to serve as a constant reminder for me to ponder the answer over the coming year. She encouraged me to live the question, not just answer it, which was an immensely powerful exercise and novel twist on the usual New Year’s resolution.
December ‘22 / The Gift of Reflection
Featuring Guest Author: Jacki Zehner
ShePlace officially launched in May of 2021, and for the rest of that year, every monthly newsletter began with a short introduction from me on that newsletter’s theme. These themes were mostly on the topics of money and financial well-being, but as we headed into 2022, we realized there were so many other topics that we wanted to explore here at ShePlace. We also wanted to use ShePlace as a platform to lift up the voices of our members and give them the opportunity to share their expertise with our community. Therefore, starting this past February, we moved my writing about money and finances over to SheMoney, and here at ShePlace, we began inviting guest authors to open each month’s newsletter with a short introduction and framing for that month’s theme.
November ‘22 / Indigenous Leadership Matters
Featuring Guest Author: Davina Smith
“Rural Utah is home to some of our nation's most iconic landscapes. Since time immemorial, the Indigenous people who call this region home have carefully managed these lands to sustain the health of our ecosystems and people. Across my district, people rely on our land for sustenance and livelihood. From the ranchers who run their cattle on public lands to the service workers who serve visiting tourists to the Indigenous people who know them as sacred—our landscapes are our most valuable resource.”
October ‘22 / Invest in Women+ Grow the Economy!
Featuring Guest Author: Sui Lang L. Panoke
“Utah has the strongest economy in the nation, highest population growth in the country over the past 10 years, ranks 4th in the nation in asset management, and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the United States. In many ways, our state is thriving, economically. On the other hand, Utah also ranks last in the nation on women’s equality, has one of the widest gender pay gaps, and as I engage in conversation with colleagues outside of Utah, their first thought is often that Utah is not the best place for women.”
September ‘22 / Web 3, easy as 1,2, 3
Featuring Guest Author: Rachel Hoffstetter
“These days, it seems like “magical internet money” is everywhere, for good and bad. For years, I was “crypto agnostic”. The things I heard about felt like speculation, so I just didn’t pay a lot of attention. But then I learned how web3 (a catchall term for all things blockchain technology, including concepts like crypto and NFTs) is an evolution of the internet that, at its core, puts ownership back in our hands. Suddenly, this was so much more than betting on a coin! Here’s what gets me excited about web3.”
August ‘22 / Time to Rest, Relax and Recharge
Featuring Guest Author: Mariel Fry
“Travel has a lot of meanings to a lot of people. Travel can be a relaxing time to take a break from your regular routine. Or it can mean living a digital nomad lifestyle where you’re constantly traveling all over the world. Some people (like myself) love to travel to remote destinations, while others prefer to explore new places that are close to home and won’t break the bank. As we head into August, I hope you are able to give yourself a break to rest, relax, and recharge. And if you're anything like me, I hope this break includes the opportunity to travel.”
July ‘22 / Summer of Self Love over Self Objectification
Featuring ShePlace COO: Madison Limansky
“It is fitting that the biggest challenge to reproductive rights in half a century happened as we are heading into the summer. Abortion access at its core is about control over women’s bodies, and summertime has a way of amplifying that control through the objectification of our own bodies and others’. After all, tis’ the season for tank tops, pedicures, weddings, and beach vacations. The beauty industry is worth over $511 billion and is driven by an unattainable beauty ideal that has harmful impacts on our self esteem, relationships, finances, time, and energy.”
June ‘22 / Celebrating Pride Month!
Featuring Guest Author: Olivia Jaramillo
“Even though we are in the 21st century, a time when progress has brought us to being on the cusp of finally witnessing the first female president of the United States, many people are still dealing with an elusive American dream. Our progress is constantly being questioned, challenged, and/or overturned. These hurdles and hardships have come in the form of inaction or actions that harm vulnerable populations, such as failing to ensure that dangerous individuals do not have access to firearms, or attacks against women’s autonomy over their own bodies. These injustices have even reached children, and not just any children. The most vulnerable population of kids: transgender and nonbinary youth.”
May ‘22 / May Is For All Kinds Of Mothers
Featuring Guest Author: Tessa Arneson
“I’m here for a special announcement. You can’t do it all so you should probably stop trying. Anyone who tells you is lying or blowing smoke. I’ve been trying to for 40 years, and every time I try, I get sick, injured, or depressed. So are you bummed the hustle is dead? Or relieved? Backing up here. I currently have a handful of jobs that I love. Dreamy, seem-to-be-made-up, pinch yourself kind of jobs. I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, and I own a Pilates studio and a co-working space, I am a developer with a focus on community, and I am an angel investor. I worked my tail off to get here, and along the way I have learned some hard knock lessons.”
April ‘22 / Inner Work - Outer Work
Featuring Guest Authors: Lucía Oliva Hennelly & Kate Weiner
”In our journeys as organizers and strategists in the climate movement, we have sought to braid together our “outer” engagement in the world we love with the “inner” work of fortifying our emotional, mental, and spiritual lives. Why? We have only about seven years left in which to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Confronted with such dire conditions, it will be the ability to allow ourselves to fully feel the heartbreak of this moment, and then to leverage this attunement toward courageous action that will guide us forward. As US climate leader Colette Pichon Battle says, “To really admit that you understand what is happening to the planet, it will break your heart [...] If you don’t cry deep, hard tears, you don’t yet understand the problem.”
March ‘22 / Humor for Change
Featuring Guest Author Liza Donnelly:
“Cartoons take what we know in a culture and twist it; that’s what provokes laughter, the unexpected. These humorous drawings are windows into our lives, and the humor often speaks volumes about ourselves. The few women in the past who were able to create them gifted us so much about their lived lives. Art and humor combined can teach us a tremendous amount, because in the laughter, not only are our defenses down, we also often see things anew. Today, we know that women are indeed funny, and always have been. Today, The New Yorker, and our country as a whole, has so many more women creating humor in drawings, film, and on stage.”
February ‘22 / The Portable Beloved Community
Featuring Guest Author Farai Chideya:
“This is a trying era, one where it’s easy to see the stark results of choices we’ve made as a society. Black women and all women of color feel these impacts disproportionately -- how long we wait in line to vote; how much we are under-capitalized despite being the most likely to start businesses; and the disproportionate impact on us of the pandemic. At times, just facing reality feels overwhelming and unmanageable.”
January ‘22 / New Year; New Way of Caring for Ourselves and Others
A big takeaway from 2021 was that this was the year I learned that I had to prioritize self-care. I learned that if I want to be able to care for others, I have to make sure I take care of myself. And if I had to guess, I’m thinking that many of you reading this might not be all that great at prioritizing self-care either. So many people, but especially women, are raised to think that self-care is selfish and that our value comes from caregiving. The more we give the better, and it becomes a badge of honor to selflessly serve others. And we should be there for others. But we also need to be there for ourselves.
December ‘21 / Courageous Conversations About Money
Over the years, I have justified my overconsumption with the fact that I can afford it. I also compare myself to some of my really wealthy friends and think to myself, “I spend less than they do, so I’m good.” Talk about a slippery slope. I also tell myself that buying things, especially from women+ founders, is a good thing. Without customers buying their products and services, they would not have a business. So the question becomes, how do I, you, all of us, reconcile the fact that in order to save our planet, we need to buy less, and yet if we don’t continue to buy stuff, particularly from women+, our economy will tank and businesses owned by women+ will suffer. The answer is more conscious consumerism.
November ‘21 / Courageous Conversations About Money
For me, the difficult conversations I need to have all revolve around what will happen when I die. But who wants to talk about their own passing? Or the passing of their parents? Of course, everyone is different when it comes to their financial situation and what financial matters are most pressing for them. But what will happen to your financial resources after you die is one of the many courageous conversations we all absolutely must have with our loved ones.
October ‘21 / Me & My Money
I like to think of money almost as a character, a person, an entity with whom we engage. And I know that for many of us, this relationship can be tricky, frustrating, and oftentimes downright negative. However, just like any relationship, if we want it to be a good one, we need to invest the time into cultivating it. We all have beliefs, habits, and experiences around money that may or may not be serving us. But the more we understand them, the more likely it is that we can change them if needed.
September ‘21 / Every Dollar Matters
Women make the VAST majority (85%) of all purchasing decisions in the US. So answer me this. If that is true, why do we still live in a world where at the current rate of change, it will take 135.6 years to close the global gender gap? Using our spending power in the interest of social change is something that everyone can do, because we all spend money every single day.
August ‘21 / Your Generosity Plan
“Philanthropy is each of us contributing our time, our talents, and our financial resources to make a difference.” All you have to do to start is identify the issue areas that, for whatever reasons, matter the most to you. If you can create a personal vision, you can let go of the feeling that you have to support all worthwhile endeavors.
July ‘21 / Pillars of the Power of our Purses
Power. I like the word and I hope you like it too because as women we need to become very comfortable with it so we can actually use it. My friend Gloria Feldt says “power unused is power useless” and sometimes I lay awake thinking, obsessing, about all of the power that women have and are not using.
June ‘21 / The Power of Our Purses
It is simply fact that countless women+ face economic and financial biases and inequities on a daily basis. If you are a woman of color, these injustices are only exacerbated. And yet, never in the history of the world have women, ALL women, held as much financial power as we do in this moment.
May ‘21 / Sistering Up
Welcome to ShePlace, where we seek to actualize a world where all women+ are valued, resourced, and thriving, and where we believe wholeheartedly that our individual prosperity is connected to the prosperity and well-being of all other women+.