Suzanne Barker – Co-Founder of When I Shop

Website: www.whenishop.com

“My name is Suzanne Barker. I’m the co-founder of When I Shop, an e-commerce start-up. My co-founder and I built a discovery platform to help women find fashion brands and products based on specific attributes.”

 

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“Covid-19 has made us hyper-aware of how fragile the environment is and the need to support our local businesses and jobs. But we found that the tools didn’t exist. It wasn’t easy to find products based on specific attributes like “sustainable” high-waisted jeans or “Made-in-USA” dresses, so we built the tool ourselves.”

“For me, International Women’s Day is a moment to reflect on and be thankful for all the women in our lives and everything they do for us.”

“Despite all the rhetoric around gender equality, we continue to bear children and play an irreplaceable role in our children’s lives. We shouldn’t minimise the importance of that as we strive for equality in our careers. International Women’s Day is when we can acknowledge and celebrate the incredibleness of being a woman.”

“I live in New Zealand and have been proud to see the world celebrating our female Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who gave birth while in power. She has successfully led our Covid-19 response with decisiveness and compassion. It is her compassion that helped me understand the outsized impact women can have in leadership roles.”

“There’s plenty of evidence that soft skills, like compassion, create better managers, and I hope we see the benefits of this as women make strides in leadership roles.”

“We can collectively thrive in the workplace by setting high personal standards in how we expect to be treated. Of course, the hard bit is proactively calling people out when we feel our standards are being breached but it is often only required once for an immediate and long-lasting impact in the workplace.”