Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
05 February 2021
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We sat down with Penelope D'Souza for #CloreSocialFellowFriday. Penelope is a Clore Social Fellow from our 2020 Emerging Leader: Women and Girls’ Sector programme. She is the founder of Stimulus, an organisation that offers coaching, consulting and other resources to empower everyday women, especially those from ethnic minorities and marginalised backgrounds.
Can you give us a little bit of background information about your organisation and your role?
I started Stimulus in August of 2020, while I was on the Clore Social Emerging Leaders: Women and Girls’ Sector programme. At the time, I was working for a women's charity. However, I started to realise that I wanted to start an organisation that really focused on the social difference I wanted to make. I decided that if I want to really put all of my effort into making a change, then I had to start my own company.
I chose the word Stimulus because that's how I see the mission of the organisation. I want to stimulate change within people and within organisations, but the real focus is on women, especially from ethnic minorities and marginalised backgrounds. Because that’s my own life experience, and I want to use my experience to shorten women's journeys to that realisation of what they are capable of. I’m 45, and it took me 45 years to get to this point, so if I can reduce that for other women, and they can live fuller lives because of it and experience accomplishments that they deserve, that would be amazing.
What are some projects you’re working on at the moment?
I’ve been doing a lot of work around identity. If you don't know who you are, you can spend a lot of time on that process of self-actualisation and self-realisation. I think that women from cultures where women are brought up in a traditional way, and especially second- or third-generation immigrants, can have trouble fitting into the frame of the workplace, and they face unique challenges that white women or men from ethnic minority backgrounds don’t.
I've run a values-based series of workshops with young women from ethnic minorities, called Show Up for Yourself, and there are two parts to it. The first part is called ‘Who am I,’ because it’s important to look at yourself and ask who you are and what you want, and then using that information as a moral compass for every decision that you make. For example, I’ve worked with a couple of young women who are finishing uni and are not sure which jobs to apply for, and we’ve gone through their values and the values of various companies, and made sure that they are aligned. The second part is called ‘Reclaiming Your Power,’ which is just looking at the things they can control and change in the workplace, and how to influence that space, rather than getting overwhelmed with all the noise that's going on.
Often, these women don’t see themselves as decision makers or as people who take a lead. So how are they going to suddenly say, ‘oh, yeah, I want to be on the board’? They're never going to come forward, so that middle management pool that senior executives can dip into is always going to be small. People often talk about how there are not enough BAME women in senior executive roles, but there won’t be unless you’re nurturing them from the front line, at the start of their career. If you don't nurture them, then that's where they'll stay, and people will constantly say we don't have the skill set.
Were there any ‘aha’ moments, when you realised that you really needed to start your own company?
Yes, I think that it was during the coaching sessions of my Clore Social journey. I was born in India, and had a really challenging childhood. Also, I feel that just being a woman in India can be quite confining. I survived that, but for a very long time I just felt very restless, because I always wanted to find my purpose. I was always asking the question why did you survive and not someone else, and what are you going to do with it? So, when I got onto the Clore Social programme, it was almost like, right, this is the conversation I've been waiting to have my whole life. My coach asked me about my identity, my core values, and all of those things you don't think about if you're just caught up in day to day life. Then through those conversations, I started asking some more questions: Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? What's my legacy? For me, legacy is really important, because I think it would be a shame if women in the future still came up against the same challenges that we are talking about today.
Penelope is running a leadership programme for women from ethnic minorities in Northern England from March 24th to March to 26th (COVID permitting). Please get in touch with her at penelope@stimulus.ltd if you would like more information.
You can find Penelope on Twitter @PenelopeSays2, and Stimulus @Your_Stimulus
If you would like to be featured for a #CloreSocialFellowFriday, send us an email at info@cloresocialleadership.org.uk.
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