How to Build Confidence and Empower Underdogs with Susannah Wellford

Susannah Wellford joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. Over the last two decades, Susannah has founded two organizations designed to raise the political voice of young women in America. The one that she will really talk about today is “Running Start” which she started to encourage young woman and girls to pursue political leadership. Susannah will talk about her relationship with politics starting from a young age, and how she came up with this idea of “Running Start” which to date has trained over 15,000 young women to run for elected office.  Susannah is a big believer in underdogs, she wants to empower underdogs, and she’ll explain why that is so important to her.

In this episode, they discuss what her childhood was like (4:20), what her family dynamics were like (7:00), her experience being bullied in 7th grade (11:10), being laid off in her 30’s (13:00), the vision she had for herself from a career standpoint (15:00), how to improve women’s lives in the workforce (19:40), why she was interested in politics (24:10), who saw the potential in her (28:00), the differences often found in men and women leaders (30:00), how she started Running Start (35:30), how you build confidence (36:40), self-talk and confidence (40:00), how to cultivate better self-talk (46:00, the difference in men and women wanting to be the #1 vs. #2 (50:30), what success looks like with Running Start (54:00), her vision for Running Start 10 years from now (59:20), the diversity on her team (1:00:00), how to get young women to step into power and be leaders (1:04:40), and her perspective on all women schools (1:05:40)

Thank you to Susannah for coming on the podcast.  We encourage you to check out https://runningstart.org/ and they have programs for high school students, college students, and young professionals. You can also find Susannah on Twitter @SusannahWDC.

Lastly, if you liked this episode and/or any others, please support us at Patreon or follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.

-Brian