Feminine Intelligence Shaping our Future, with Karen Downes

Imagine a world where feminine principles guide our leadership, infusing qualities such as intuition, empathy, and deep listening into its core. This has been Karen Downes' singular focus throughout her extensive 30+ year career. Her journey began in the realm of health and wellness, gradually evolving into her passionate commitment to founding FemmeQ, an organization dedicated to exploring how we might create transformational and systemic change to address today’s multiple crisis, through the application of feminine intelligence.

In our discussion, we stress the importance of liberating the notion of feminine principles from the confines of gender, asserting that men too, play a pivotal role in shaping a world that embraces these fundamental values. We highlight the necessity for intergenerational and cross-disciplinary collaborations to catalyze systemic change, paving the way for "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."

As we conclude our conversation, Karen provides a sneak peek into the amazing program she has curated for the upcoming FemmeQ International Summit in Strasbourg.

Attention: This is NOT an event  just for women.  It is  for All genders and Early Bird pricing is still available on the website.

About Karen Downes:

Social entrepreneur, Transformation SME, Author
Co-Founder and Director FemmeQ,
Founder The Flourish Initiative, Member of Catalyst 2030,
Co-Chair Bounce Beyond.

 Over the span of her 35-year career, Karen has founded and launched successful start-ups, supported social change initiatives to transform entrenched cultural norms, developed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world.   She is a healer above all else.  At the beginning of her career, she trained in five alternative healthcare disciplines, building a multi-million-dollar Aromatherapy company from kitchen tabletop to global business success story, her mission was to ‘return natural healing modalities to the healers; women’.  Whilst building her business and empowering women across Australasia,  she committed to eradicating inequalities at a global scale, joining the Hunger Project, as an investor and activist.  For years she travelled to India and Bangladesh to end the subjugation and marginalization of women which had been identified as fundamental to ending the chronic persistence of hunger.  It was here she learned that without the inclusion of women as equal partners, a village will remain impoverished, that the feminine is critical to building a flourishing community.  She is a trained facilitator of Joanna Macy’s work -  ‘The Work that Reconnects’ – how to move from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining future.  

 Upon moving to London in 2003, she began to advise business leaders, designed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world.  In 2015 in response to the overwhelming statistics on the progress of women and gender justice, Karen co-founded the global movement, FemmeQ: Feminine Intelligence.  The first of 5 subsequent International Summits was launched in Berlin i

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Transcript

Claire: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Women Rise, a podcast about women changemakers that explores the emergence of a new leadership paradigm, which calls us to lead from within. I'm your host, claire Molinares, and I live and work on the island of Corsica, in the south of France. I'm a holistic coach and therapist. I teach and facilitate developmental programs for conscious women changemakers, helping them move from depleted and disconnected to resourced and interconnected. Every week, I meet with other women leaders and we explore the inner game of leadership and how, in this times of emergency, we are being called to our unique self-emergence to co-create a world that works for everyone. I'm delighted to welcome Karen Dones today on this new episode of Women Rise.

Claire: 0:58

Karen's work explores how we might restore balance between intellect and intuition, facts and feelings, reason and realism through the application of what she calls feminine intelligence. In her 30-year career, karen has built successful companies, supported civil society organizations to transform entrenched cultural norms, advised business leaders and led development programs around the world. From her beginnings in health and well-being, karen co-founded and built an 8.5 million alternative health care enterprise in Australia. More recently, karen launched the Fanku International Summit, which she's going to tell us more about today and which is happening this year in my home country in France, strasbourg. Karen, it's a delight to have you here. I've been looking forward to this conversation, welcome.

Karen: 1:58

Thank you so much, Claire. It's a joy to be here with you today.

Claire: 2:01

Totally and likewise. Karen, as we start this conversation, I would love for you to take a moment to define what do you mean by feminine intelligence, feminine values. These are widely used terms nowadays, and I feel it's important to define what we mean by them.

Karen: 2:20

Yes, absolutely. I'll go back a step, perhaps, claire, to say where Fanku began, because Fanku is the name of the organization that I co-founded In 2015,. We actually started Fanku, which is feminine intelligence, and three other of my colleagues and I sat down together when we looked at the statistics all of us or predominating myself and my colleagues or whether he had been working with women's issues for decades and when we looked at the statistics that were still apparent and being revealed by the United Nations, it was in the vicinity of well, certainly over 100 years before we would reach parity and equality for women. And so we looked more deeply at the systemic problem. When we look at equality and parity, and what we could see is it wasn't about quotas, because if it was going to take over 100 years to get women to the decision-making tables, then we didn't have a chance of changing the system. And we asked ourselves what was needed and the big question. We asked what was missing? That if we provided that, it would cause a breakthrough. And when we looked more deeply, as I said, from a systemic point of view, we realized the feminine was missing for all of us, not just women. So if women were missing at the decision-making tables. Now, that's gender, that the feminine principles and qualities, which are accessible to all genders, was actually not being fully integrated into our psyche and into our human system before we looked at the external systems. So we started developing this idea that the feminine needed to be restored, awakened, remembered in all of us, because it's been denigrated and subjugated as soft and weak, without power, domesticated, sub and marginalized across all sectors of society, and women and men had very few opportunities to be compassionate, to show deep listening, to listen to their intuition in a business setting. But when we looked more widely, it was in every system, whether it was media, the arts, science, medicine, health and healing and, of course, as you mentioned, that's my background.

Karen: 4:42

So we came up with this idea of Femme Q and started the movement, and in 2016, we launched our first summit and this year, as you mentioned, in Strasbourg, france, will actually be our sixth. So the first one we launched in Berlin in 2016,. 140 people from 17 countries came. That's pretty extraordinary for our first event and that showed us something. It demonstrated to us that people were yearning to have this conversation and out of the 140 that came, 132 of them were women. So we noticed that men were missing. So why is it that men, when they hear the word feminine, say that's not me, that's not about me?

Karen: 5:29

And so, in the subsequent summits that we did, we did, as I said, the one in Berlin, which is an interesting one.

Karen: 5:35

We looked at it because it's, of course, where the wall came down, where the Berlin Wall came down, and it was almost metaphorical, an analogy of the wall of the divide between the women and men and the masculine and feminine that needs to come down so that we are whole people again. And then, subsequently, we did two in London and in 2018, we went to LA and did the Femcuse Summit in LA, and then in Costa Rica, when I was living in Costa Rica in 2021, this will be our sixth one. So we've evolved over these years, into, over these eight years since we began, into a very deep understanding one by our as lived experience, two research and three by those that came and shared their experiences with us. So I'm actually just starting to write the book on this experience and this journey that we've taken over these last eight years. So that's a long background, but it gives a context to why it's so important to have this conversation clear.

Claire: 6:39

Yes, context is everything, and I really appreciate your discernment between masculine and feminine as gender, and masculine and feminine as qualities that are accessible to both genders, and the need for cultivating this feminine qualities in our leadership. So, yeah, it's such an important discernment and often there is a lack of clarity in what we mean by these. Yes, in describing feminine principles, you brought up words just compassion, intuition, deep reasoning all qualities that are needed more in leadership today. So how do you bring these ideas? How do we awaken men and women to these qualities?

Karen: 7:22

I think there's two sides or many sides to that question. Clear or many responses I could make to the question. I think one of the things for me is often I've sat with men and when they've asked me what feminine intelligence is and I say these qualities, and they nod like you are now yes, in agreement. And then one particular conversation that really struck me one time is I was speaking to a man that worked in the stock exchange and I said so what are the qualities you need to exhibit at work every day? Name them for me. So he went, you know, aggressive, assertive, focused, clear and named an excellent set of qualities. And I said now, now tell me, when you go home of a night, what are the qualities you need to your family? Because he told me he was married with children and he said he just looked at me and went right, he could he just.

Karen: 8:18

The response to the question was not that. So I said if you're operating for 12 hours a day in a competitive, aggressive environment, cultivating those qualities every day, because you're sharpening your astuteness in terms of your capability of exhibiting those qualities and that's a muscle, so to speak, that you're building for 12 hours every day, how is it? You can just possibly walk in the door and, like that, switch off and then be compassionate, deep, listening to your children and your partner and exhibiting these qualities or having time just to be, still reflect and be intimate when you've shut down and arm it up your body all day. And I said, imagine the analogy I would give you is that you're literally walking with one hand tied behind your back. So you've got this working all the time and this one's tucked away in, waiting, waiting, waiting to have just a couple of hours of an evening to be really human With another in intimacy. How's that going? How's that working for you? And he said yeah, my marriage is in disruption. You know, my children are always asking me to put my device down, etc. So when we give someone something very personal and the impact on their lives, that hits home.

Karen: 10:00

When we talk about how we need to change the world and the world's in crisis, men in those decision making positions will often say we have the solution, we know what to do and we'll fix it, because that's an orientation that they've been trained in. We've got a problem, let's fix it. But these leaders are not thinking systemically the impact of how they, their ways of being and not just what they're doing, but their ways of being and the way that they think is using the left brain, the intellect. They haven't been, because the arts and beauty and the creativity stimulates and activates the right hemisphere of the brain and the right hemisphere of the brain sees the whole picture, whereas the left has the answers and the solution is very narrow. So I would say this is a very long answer to your question, but I would say an access to starting to bring about those attributes that men have not felt there one allowed, given the right, one allowed, given permission to exhibit.

Karen: 11:00

Many men that I meet were told in their upbringing grow up and grow, some don't cry.

Karen: 11:06

So the emotions and their access to their emotions and their feelings has been pretty much shut down in many instances Now. Fathering and parenting is very different today than, say, my generation or yours. So I think conscious parenting now is much more in play. However, we're still dealing with the ramifications of men in those positions of power are often over 50 and white and privileged, and they're not dealing with the reality of what one women deal with in the home is carers, the carers for family, the carers for the elderly and they're certainly not present to say many of the conditions I've witnessed when I worked in India and Bangladesh of what happens when women are subjugated and marginalized. So when we get these statistics, one is giving them in facts, but also giving them the opportunity to have experiences where they get in touch with their true essence, like we women can do. But also there is the toxic feminine. You know we talk a lot about the toxic masculine but there's not many conversations happening about the toxic feminine.

Claire: 12:14

I think you're making an excellent point here. Thank you for bringing that up. Actually, we don't speak as much as the toxic feminine as we talk about a toxic masculine, and obviously patriarchy has created much of what we need to repair now, and at the same time, there is a tendency in culture today, in the gender conversation, to conflate toxic masculinity with masculine principles, and there are two different things. There is such thing, as you said, as the shadow of the feminine. Just as we have the toxic masculine, we have the toxic feminine, and when we conflate toxic masculinity with masculine principles, then we end up comparing or putting next to each other toxic masculine next to healthy feminine principles, and that's actually, in my view, a lack of discernment that leads to conclusions that are not accurate. And so one it's important to distinguish gender conversation to feminine and masculine principles, and it's also important to distinguish both healthy and toxic aspects of both the masculine and the feminine principle, Absolutely.

Karen: 13:33

And I think what exists inside of us, as you pointed out, Claire, what exists inside of us, all of us, for whatever reasons, through more our experiences and the parenting that we had is that these titles that we now use, like toxic masculine, I would say and I'm using it because it's generically used in companies. Now, it's not a term that I use because I do think that what has happened is that what my experience has shown me is that when a strength is overplayed, it becomes a weakness. So aggression is not a healthy response, Whereas assertiveness can be very healthy, but if it's overplayed it becomes bullying and it becomes the shadow side. So I tend to speak of it as the light and the shadow, because we walk into the light with the best of ourselves, but we often don't turn around and look behind us for the shadow we're casting. And when something is maybe equality, for example, that I'm proud of in myself is being courageous, but if that's overplayed it becomes risky and people don't like being around me because I take too many risks. So these qualities are really important to hold them in a balance.

Karen: 14:49

And then I think, as you're saying about the masculine overplayed, that too with the feminine, with the shadow side of the feminine that I've witnessed in many organizations and in myself that I've worked on all of my life is the feistiness inside of me Because I had to fight for my place in my family with a very aggressive father, so I found myself having to in my nervous system and in my somatic way of operating in the world, to survive. I was always ready. You know, someone was going to come at me, which was typically in my family environment when I was a little girl and that's in my nervous system. So I'm like ready Women have said to me I feel safe in the world because you're here, Karen, and I know it's partly because I stand up for and I say that I stand up for women and I stand for the feminine to protect it. However, that has a shadow side.

Claire: 15:49

And why does?

Karen: 15:49

it. The shadow side is bullying.

Claire: 15:51

Yes, yeah, yeah. I recognize in my own psyche and life experience. It's more of a place where I just want to engage and I'll do the opposite of you I associate, I'll just dissociate and I'll be in my own bubble. And it's also an aspect of the shadow of the feminine. I'll just hide it, you know, for a few centuries and wait until this is over. You know exactly, Centuries are millennium, you know. Just hide in the corner and let it happen.

Karen: 16:21

Exactly true, exactly true, yeah. And I guess the other side we see it play out in the very simplest of ways, clare, I certainly do in relationships. You know, if anyone that's listening has ever been in a relationship and their partner asks them are you OK? And so often a woman will say with this particular tone, I'm fine. And then you can feel the aggression and the rage inside and instead of regulating the nervous system to have a more responsive Shut down, shut down, yeah, shut down, but not just shutting down the rage can be felt by that partner. And then the partner says I know you're not fine, tell me, I said I'm fine. And then it plays out and this is another part because we haven't learned to regulate our nervous system to just be with and feel safe, to be vulnerable and say actually what I'm feeling is yeah, because one women are often not heard. Two women are often told they're too emotional, Too emotional, and for me I'm too emotional, too much, too passionate too. So many descriptors.

Claire: 17:40

And all these things which play out at home, they play out in the workplace.

Claire: 17:45

And so that's why Exactly and I just wanted to know, which just started with this man that you interviewed and asked him how is this working for you at home? The bringing vulnerability and being with oneself in the workplace is really the beginning, I think, of bringing these qualities that we need so much in the decision-making places where the critical changes can happen today Exactly, and I think, claire, especially in business, in organizations, because that's an area that I work in is in corporate development and in transforming those systems.

Karen: 18:23

But the system is the people in it. So when people talk about a business culture, there's no such thing, because, in a sense, that we can't point to culture. We can feel it, we can hear it, but we can't point to it. It's not like pointing to a table. So when we're looking at business culture, one of the things that I encourage people to look for is what's the conversation around the coffee machine? And that's where you get the business culture. It's one of gossip, it's one of empowerment, it's one of assertiveness, it's one of authenticity, but you can hear it in people's conversation. That's the only message and how they behave toward each other. And so one of the things to we can encourage business leaders to adopt is very simple, what I call business rituals, where, if business leaders don't know emotionally what people are dealing with and emotions are only an energy, but emotions largely drive our decisions and if you're sitting in a business meeting and you haven't done a check-in and say how's everyone doing today, can we have just a moment to authentically say a couple of words about how you're coming to the meeting, how are you arriving? It doesn't have to be a meditation, it doesn't have to be. We're all going to get grounded. And still, because I think, unfortunately, a lot of the women's movements that I've seen are fixated on bringing the goddess through, which is beautiful but not appropriate in a business culture, in a business corporate environment usually, and it's like you wouldn't go to church and put on hip music, hip hop music, or you wouldn't go to a nightclub and sit praying, necessarily in considering it a reverent space. So I think we have to keep context in mind wherever we're working and the subtle differences we can make.

Karen: 20:14

So just a business leader saying let me attune, let me become aware of what people are dealing with emotionally, so that they can come back to the table using their discernment for the next decision we're about to make.

Karen: 20:27

But if someone's just had a fight with their partner or they've heard about it, their child having an accident at school or their mother's not, well, something that's important to us, that's affecting us, and you, as a business leader, don't know about that, and it's not everybody will reveal everything that. However, if we just say I'm having a tough day today, then I know how much energy is going to be available to me with us in this meeting, because you're half already checked out. Now we have to allow for that in business that, unfortunately, business leaders say you have to be on, you have to make decisions, and when we're making decisions in that survival mode or not truly present, we're distracted or somewhere else with our feelings and our emotions and our thoughts. How do we possibly make right decisions for the future of life, the future of the organisation, but importantly, for future generations? And I think we're missing a huge chunk of that when we're not listening to what's going on in people's lives, and especially after the pandemic.

Claire: 21:35

Totally. It's really about listening right, this quality of deep listening. We can listen to each other. If we can't listen to each other, how can we listen to what the world needs? How can we listen to what the future is calling us for? How can we listen to the invitation? It's just not possible. We can't hear if we're not listening.

Claire: 22:00

And today, as you said, we need to be able to listen to future generations and what they need from us, because we're the only ones who can do something the ones who are gone before us and all the mistakes that have been made have been made.

Karen: 22:17

I think the other part that I work with and we'll be touching on a lot of this in the summit, claire is that we don't consider often that we're mostly listening to ourselves. So you're always having a conversation with yourself and I'm always having a conversation with myself, and so is every listener, and if anyone's asking what is she talking about? What? I don't have conversations with myself. That's the conversation, because we wake up in the morning and most people I speak to wake up in the morning and they put their feet on the floor and the first thing they say to themselves is I didn't get enough sleep. That's the conversation that you start the day. You start the day with, or taking your feet off the floor as you climb into bed of a night, and the conversation we have with ourselves often is I didn't get enough done today.

Karen: 23:09

And this notion of scarcity that perpetuates is part of, I think, the shadow side of women as well. There's not enough seats at the table, so I have to compete. You know there's not enough hours in the day. I've got so much to do, I haven't got the energy, and there's this notion of it's like scarcity that we're operating in or we haven't got the resources we need in the company. We haven't got enough hours in the day.

Karen: 23:34

If you start listening from, there's never enough. That's how your life becomes. Versus go into the world, walk barefoot on the grass, look up at the sky, celebrate the stars, acknowledge the trees for the oxygen we breathe. How much we have is so not acknowledged? Our world of abundance, our freedom to choose we, you and I are so privileged with the choices we can make versus being in Iran or Afghanistan right now, the choices that we have in a privileged environment, and we're often looking at what's wrong or negative. And, as you mentioned, the ancestors. I'm constantly these days reminding myself how grateful I am for the feminist movement, for the suffragettes, for my mother, Even though I vowed I would be the opposite to what she was. I was hosted by her to come into the world, and when I say that, I can almost start crying, going wow, what a gift. Even if every man and woman, every gender, every person on the planet put their hands together and said thank you to all the mothers in the world.

Claire: 24:53

I'm totally with you on the need for resting on what has been given to us. There's definitely a need for all of us today to remember where we come from and what's been given to us, and when we're able to see how much there is, then we have this natural desire to protect it and to serve it. So it's just this appreciation and gratitude allows us to rest in. I am enough, there is enough, and wanting to carry that, to be responsible for that, to protect that, that being our planet or living beings that are on it, this really starts from feeling that I am enough and there is enough.

Karen: 25:42

Yes, and if all of us lived from this, enough for all of us that we wouldn't have wars, we wouldn't have the migration we have with the violence that's happening now because of climate change. And, as you know, because you're coming to the summit, as you know that one of the things that we are bringing into the summit this year is the combination of climate and environment, peace building, injustice for all to and right, livelihood, which is earning a living, was doing no harm. And the reason I came up as because I'm now my other partners have left Femcure and I've continued because I know it's mine to bring this lifetime for sure. It's like it moves through me. I don't think it's what I'm doing, it's just who I am these days and what I see.

Karen: 26:28

When I created these three initiatives and bringing them together is I wanted everyone in the room to start to think from systemically how everything is connected and how violence we've been violent to Mother Earth and we've been. We've damaged and destroyed her beauty in so many instances and taken her resources. And in the movement of ecofeminism, which started back in the 1970s, they correlated the ecology, ecological system, our ecology, with what has been done to the planet and what has been done to women's bodies for centuries, and so when we start to attune and feel deeply that we are her and I lived in Costa Rica for two years and you know I make public cities so public these days and, having had experiences and psychedelic ceremonies on mushrooms, I actually tapped into another realm of consciousness and it was the first time in my life, in ceremony, that I didn't see Mother Nature. I looked out and went I am her. Yes, there was no difference. Intellectually I could have said that before, but I had this profound experience of sitting under the stars in a cactus labyrinth looking at going. I got it. This is who I'm protecting. This is why I'm standing for the feminine, because we won't make it without the feminine.

Karen: 27:57

And if I looked back in my history, of course it led me here because in the 1990s I was working with the hunger project in India and Bangladesh and I could see that if women were not included as equal partners in villages, there was poverty and hunger. It had nothing to do with food. And the hunger project did the research and found that the chronic persistence of hunger had nothing to do with food. Femin needs food, but the chronic persistence of hunger is a systemic problem which is due to the subjugation and marginalization of women. And I now say if women are not included, a community and a village will be impoverished, and if the feminine is not included and reintegrated into our system, we are doomed. I'm sorry to be so bold, but I know it.

Claire: 28:51

I'm 100% with you and everything you said in one of my podcasts. A few months ago, I was discussing with a woman who works for the Asian Bank of Development who'd advocate for a green and blue economy, and her big point is to say we don't just need gender inequalities, we need women in leadership roles in green and blue economy because they bring projects and solutions to the ecological transition that we need in place in the next 10 years and we don't have 50 years, so we need women now. She was making the same point. As you are, women, just by their community building capacities, their compassion, their different creative projects bring solutions that are needed today.

Karen: 29:37

For sure and I would add, clear that many things have to change, because, unfortunately, there was a fantastic article written in the Guardian a few weeks back around the burnout of women, because now the mantra is it's up to the women and it's up to the youth. Now, unfortunately, women are all already overloaded. So when we say it's up to the women, I have to say it's not just up to the women, it's up to the men to now switch their role, shift their consciousness into the roles they play and the contribution and the partnership they have to offer or need to offer, not have to. They need to offer. And also, when we put that upon young people, they are filled with despair because they need us. We're intergenerational. Now it's not the women and the youth, it's not one sector or another, it's all of us, because we're facing a crisis.

Claire: 30:31

Many crises, many crises, then we need all of us. I think, as you said, we need mature women and men who can lead.

Karen: 30:42

Yes.

Claire: 30:43

Our young generations who are so courageous and brave, and they also need awakened guides. So we need everything. We need psychedelics and we need to bring psychedelics and wisdom together. We need the ancestors wisdom and the indigenous wisdom. It's so important, so important. We need healing in the workplace. We need all the threads of wisdom and medicine that we can fathom, and there is so much. That's the beauty of these times there is so much on the table.

Claire: 31:17

It's all on the table, will we be able to weave a beautiful tapestry with it in a beautiful future Hopefully yes, that's the plan for the summit.

Karen: 31:29

I'm so glad you're going to be joining us.

Claire: 31:31

That's the plan for the summit. So tell us more about the summit as we're weaving into it. We're just about five weeks into it?

Karen: 31:39

Yes, yes, we are, so there's still time. We've actually left the early bird offer open now on the table because we haven't reached the limit and we just want to fill the space which there's only 70 places that we just want everyone who can make it. And what the idea is is we're unfolding and the first day of the summit will be about letting go of acknowledging how the environment, the system, has shaped us and how we have responded, how we've shaped ourselves to fit the system, so becoming much more conscious of where we're actually contributing to the very thing that we're wanting to shift. So we've got a whole day of listening to people. We've got a beautiful speaker, catarina, who's coming from Cyprus, who works in trafficking. She's a lawyer, she works in trafficking and slavery we're working with and the violence that happens when the marginalised or those that are less privileged to take an advantage of and end up in the most tragic of circumstances. So we have to listen to these stories that are being told on the first day, to acknowledge what the system is actually and be able to hold the pain and suffering, which is a Buddhist practice, be able to hold the pain and suffering of the world in our hearts and then move into a beautiful interactive evening of two women, new friends of mine, coming from India, and they do an interactive performance on the goddesses from India and we're going to weave that century old wisdom into the performance and we'll all be participating.

Karen: 33:07

And then the second day is facing the uncertainty how do we build our resilience and how do we actually understand how to change the system, versus just focus on one fractal or one part of the system. How do we see the whole and see our part in it? And that's in the uncertainty of the world, but also in the uncertainty of where we find ourselves, confused at times. And then the last day is going forward, and that's the day that we resource ourselves with the new story. We tell the new story about the world, the more beautiful world that we know is possible.

Karen: 33:38

And how do we do that? In language, how do we do that in action, how do we do that in our projects and how do we collaborate so that we have this massive impact? And this is the first year that I felt, in eight years of holding this space of FemQ, that it feels, every conversation that's come into my field, every conversation that's going out, it feels like everything is shifting and it feels like this vortex we're creating in Strasbourg, and what this was the woman that has offered the chateau to us, ouly is when I first met her, I hadn't realised that Strasbourg is the centre for the European Parliament and human rights, and so it's a very, very powerful centre and we're going to be there, influencing, spreading our community.

Claire: 34:30

That's amazing, karen. I have that connection as well. That's amazing, and I'm so glad I'm entering this vortex and meeting you at this time. And it happens in my country, so it would have been impossible for me not to come Exactly.

Karen: 34:51

So it's going to be very, very special.

Claire: 34:54

Very exciting. I'm super looking forward to meeting you in person there and I'll write the website address on the little blurb, but if you want to spell the website, just in case people are listening, and type it right away For sure.

Karen: 35:12

So it's wwwfemfemme, the letter Q, so FemQorg, and you can register online through the website.

Claire: 35:22

Beautiful Well, Karen, thank you so much for this conversation. It feels like only the beginning of a long conversation. It was really delightful to have you here and so inspiring. Thank you for the work you're doing. It's so important.

Karen: 35:37

Thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It's been beautiful to be with you and with your guests.

Claire: 35:43

My great pleasure. Thank you for listening to Women Rise. If you enjoyed the show today, please leave us a review. To get announcements when a new podcast is published, send me an email at Claire at UnixelfEmergencecom to be added on my distribution list. If you're interested in being a guest on my podcast or you would like to join my private free group for female leaders, go to my podcast description for the links to apply. Thanks again and see you soon on the Women Rise podcast.