Thrive Project asking women if their careers are thriving
The Thrive Project wants to hear from women in the advertising industry. Coming after a strong 5th Annual 3% Conference that promoted strong female leaders and diversity in the industry, the Thrive Project seeks to expand the roles of women, create change on an employee and individual level and shift responsibility on to the individual.
According to founder Chelsea Szabo, that’s where change will happen. Szabo is the founder of the Thrive Project. The project is a survey of professional women that she hopes will garner 500 or more responses from women in the advertising industry – media, technology, marketing and related roles – to help get to an understanding of what it means to thrive, what thriving looks like and what it takes to get to a point of thriving. Those participating in the 15-minute survey will receive a one-hour review of the survey and its results to help them unleash potential; a workbook to integrate the lessons and action steps necessary to thrive; and an invitation to Verbal Courage’s exclusive Facebook community for professional women.
Szabo is a life and career coach for professional women with her company called Verbal Courage, but before that she had high-profile marketing positions with Disney, thinkLA, Site Systems and Cmedia. Her strength comes from having battled cancer twice by the time she was 20 and also recovering from a serious auto accident. From that point she decided to embrace life and live it with purpose. After graduating from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, she moved to LA and immersed herself in both professional and philanthropic opportunities. She discovered coaching and founded Verbal Courage to help people grow and change, to become more confident.
The Thrive Project initiative had 171 respondents as of early November, and quick stats found some interesting information in responses to these qualifiers:
- I identify as a woman thriving in my career - 67.3% agree, 22.2% neither agree or disagree, 10.5% disagree
- I have equal opportunity to thrive in my role as my male colleagues - 43.9% agree, 24% neither agree or disagree, 32.2% disagree
- At my current company, women in leadership roles serve as mentors and advisors to women in junior-level positions to help them succeed - 35.7% agree, 26.3% neither agree or disagree, 38% disagree
- My current career path is one I've purposely chosen vs. pursued out of feelings of obligation or shoulds - 66.7% agree, 22.2% neither agree or disagree, 11.1% disagree
So far, most of the participants have been from western states but Szabo hopes to expand the reach by getting the word out.
How it started
In her work, Szabo saw that women who worked together in a team would often feel energized and would thrive while other women would share their frustrations about not having the right opportunities and feeling constantly drained.
“Through my coaching I saw the stuff that individuals were frustrated with were things that they had the power to change. That was where it was like, ‘Aha,’" said Szabo.
“Opening the door for women to find their voice and their way through their careers in a way that is fulfilling is important. So many women that I have worked with and talked to, especially in advertising, lack that.”
Szabo said that women need the passion and drive to thrive, and she is passionate about helping them get there. She helps motivate women to take action to get to their next career goals, which is where the survey comes in.
“Through the survey I hope to get what those actions and tools are. I have a feeling of what they are, and I have an idea of what thriving in advertising means to me, but I want to pull in everybody else's definition and come up with something that is cohesive,” she said.
Some of the findings are similar to those of the 3% Conference, including:
- 25% of women believe In order to thrive professionally, they must use male traits that are unnatural to them
- 35% of women say their own negative chatter (inner critic) holds them back from thriving
- 35% of women believe they need to hide parts of their personal identity to thrive at work
These things can often get in the way of job fulfillment and performance.
With the ongoing results, Szabo hopes to have workshops to get to the core of what the findings are, which she and her team will present on November 10 to the 4As, which is helping bring more prominence to the project. They are also working with the Orange County Advertising and Marketing Association. Eventually, Szabo wants to grow the survey and work with the 4As to get with agencies to help promote thriving women in the workplace. But helping women achieve their goals is more than just having them make more money at work.
“They want to feel empowered. They want to feel strong in their job,” she said. “I want to normalize frustrations that women have because so often I get these women together in a workshop and they haven't shared their frustrations because they think it's just them or they think it's going to debunk their opportunity for a job. When I leave the workshop one of the biggest things I hear from individuals is, ‘It just made me feel good. I'm not alone.’”
Szabo hopes the Thrive Project keeps growing, which will help her reach more women and build a staircase to the next level.
“The 4A's and Think LA are very passionate and have their own initiative around this so we are just tying together and also seeing next year how do we take this to the next level and collaborate all of our learnings and assets and tools.”