Description: How do we adapt, collaborate and stay resilient in a fast paced and constantly changing environment? The answer, we cultivate and embrace the feminine qualities of leadership and empower multiple leaders to guide. In this interview with Coco Brown, CEO of Athena Alliance we talk about the importance of cultivating leadership qualities that are often associated with feminine energy and relate to increased collaboration, empathy, communication, and nurturing. You will learn how to prioritize and create a foundation of these important leadership qualities from the top down so that everyone feels empowered to lead together. Lastly, you will hear why having more women at the helm will support a more sustainable and equitable workplace and world. Episode Links: Coco on LinkedIn Athena Alliance Podcast Interview- What leadership skills are needed to create a healthy organizational culture with Carley and Coco. Learning & Conscious Leadership Development SHINE Links: Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust, innovative, and inclusive culture at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes Building Trust Free Gift Carley Links: Carley LinkedIn Consultation Call with Carley Book Carley for Speaking Carley’s Book Executive Coaching with Carley Well Being Resources: Inner Game Meditations Inner Game Leadership Assessment Social: LinkedIn IG Website Shine Podcast Page IMPERFECT SHOWNOTES: Carley Hauck 0:11 Hi, my name is Carley Hauck and I am host of the shine podcast. This podcast has been flickering strong since May 2019. I began the podcast due to all the research I was conducting. In interviews with organizational leaders, lead scientists, academic researchers and spiritual teachers for my new book shine, ignite your inner game to lead consciously at work in the world. I wrote my book to inspire a new paradigm of conscious leadership and business that was in service of higher purpose to help humans flourish, and regenerate our planet. The podcast focuses on the science and application of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices that you can cultivate to be the kind of leader our world needs now. I will be facilitating two to three episodes a month. And before I tell you about the theme of our season, please go over to Apple podcasts, hit the subscribe button on shine or go to your favorite podcast platform carrier. That way you don't miss one episode. Thank you. This season is going to be focused on what leadership skills are most needed to create a healthy organizational culture. Leadership and manager effectiveness has been deemed the number one priority for HR in 2023. And every person listening whether you have a formal leadership title or not, you are a leader. We all have the responsibility to lead around something that we care about whether it's at home, with our family, in our communities, and or in the workplace. And on to the podcast. Hi, Shine podcast listeners, I am delighted to be with my friend Coco brown. This is going to be an incredible conversation. Hi, Coco. Hi. So great to have you here. Thanks for being with me. Coco Brown 2:33 I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me here. Carley Hauck 2:36 You're so welcome. Well, I know a lot about you. But for our listeners, tell me a little bit about what you're feeling excited about. And perhaps even just sharing some of the roles that you wear from, you know, daughter to mother to CEO any identity identities that you want to share? Coco Brown 3:00 No, okay. Yeah, I, let's see my identity start with mother. I think within that identity, my biggest complaint from my kids about me is that I inhabit a seven year old mind maybe at the wrong times. I I'm playful and fun. And I like to I like to be young. And I'm trying to I think I'm trying to hold my kids back in that in that younger age. They're now in there. They're 22 and, and almost 19 So you know, my kids are growing older than me, I guess is what I'm saying. So, but they're my obsession, and I'm old by life and I'm a neighbor and Family is very important to me. Communities important to me. My my parents are are 3000 miles away from me. So as a woman in her early 50s I our mid 50s, mid mid early 50s. Now I worry about aging parents and I worry about kids launching into this crazy world. So those are that's I guess me personally, I I'm a potter. Not a great one, but a decent one. So I make pottery I am obsessed with pickleball although I've only played it a few times, and I play the beach volleyball as often as I can. And then on the work side of me. I am a fourth time entrepreneur. I have in one of those cases the very first one when I was in my early 20s. I created a product I couldn't take anywhere other than to sell it to another company. So and in the process. I talked to one on one venture capital firm, which is never advised you're supposed to talk to a lot of them and then As I became as Satya Nadella says a re founder, I became the second owner or sorry, the third owner of a company that needed to be pulled the Phoenix pulled from the ashes as it crashed in the.com bust and became really a shell of its former self. And I became the turnaround leader of that company and then ran it for about 10 years and grew it to a size where it could be sold. It was eventually sold to IBM. And my third entrepreneurial endeavor was really around, building a consulting practice and working with CEOs to build advisory boards for them and lead their annual and quarterly strategy planning sessions and help them build their teams cohesiveness. That was a lot of fun for a little while. And then I started Athena Alliance, and that is my, my passion. My kids are my obsession and my Athena's the passion project. I am growing Athena, which is an ecosystem of community content and coaching for executive women. Carley Hauck 6:07 Mm hmm. Amazing. Well, I didn't know about the Potter or the pickleball fan. But yes, I did know about the four time entrepreneur and I'm just amazed at your energy, Coco. And so do you want to share a little bit more about why you launched Athena? And why that is so important right now? Coco Brown 6:35 Yeah, I, you know, Athena has many mothers in a lot of ways. Athena has started in 2005, which is almost 20 years ago. Because I was finding myself in more and more high stakes environments as the President CEO of of Taos, I was walking into rooms where people had chief titles, and they were our customers. And I would run into women. Our customer was the CIO. So on the tech side, and I'd run into women, and they'd say, I'm the only one, you know, I'm the only CIO in the valley and, and it started, I started a dinner group to get us together, because there were more than just one. And I happen to keep running into the others. And there were about eight of us at the time. And so and I know there were more than eight, but eight is what I started with, and, and that grew and grew and grew and 10 years into it 2015, I had 80 Some women and by sorry, by 2012, I had 80 Some women, and by 2015, it was 157 women. And in 2012, I stepped down from running Taos, and it had been 10 years. And I stayed on the board two years. But I had a lot that I was trying to figure out. And these women who had been my, my, I don't know, what would you call it, that there was just like this nice place to go every two months where we'd have dinner and cocktails together. And we didn't talk about you know, woe is me, it's hard to be a woman or you know, we talked about our data center strategies and business continuity planning and network, you know, redesigns and that sort of thing. But it was this nice, easy place to be having those work discussions and, and that group of women said to me, when I when I was leaving everything behind, after so many years of being in the tech world, they said Don't leave us behind. And the many mothers became, you know, really evident. In the early days back in 2005, I think it was sunny as a day who suggested that I even start the dinner in the first place. And then Thomas tam Oliver, who said, I used to have these back in, in the 90s. And these dinners I called the no name group and you know, so I got inspiration from others. And in 2012, when I was walking away from the tech world for what I didn't, you know, I didn't know how long I was walking away from it. Gina Ray Haig said, don't stop the dinners, I'll pay for the first one. And then Cindy Reese said, I'll pay for the second one. And, you know, we we just kept going and, and then I got this mandate, you know, almost a flurry of emails. And after a group of us met with Senator Mark Warner, who was out from Virginia doing a hearts and minds tour, and he, you know, he said, what's on your mind and somebody said boardroom and I got a flurry of email the next day emails the next day saying that's it, Coco. You heard what was being said in that room. You know, we've got to get women on boards and you've got the ecosystem go solve this problem. And so it sort of started with me solving a problem. And starting it as a nonprofit and getting you know, we've got over 450 women to boards and then figuring out a commercial company that became even bigger than that. Carley Hauck 9:49 Amazing. Well, I love hearing that story. And I know that we're gonna we're gonna go more in depth in into why it's important to have women on boards and and women in leadership, but I want to move into how you're leading yourself. And also did just speak more into conscious leadership because I know we're both really passionate about that topic. So as I've gotten to know you, you seem to be juggling so many things. And what I always notice every time we talk is that you feel at least from the outside, calm, gr
