My name is Pamela and I am 16 years old. This summer I am in an Enterprise (virtual) program where we explored a variety of careers and jobs as well as preparing for future jobs and opportunities.
This morning a local author named Diana Kapp joined us for a Q and A conversation. Diana has been a freelance journalist for the past 20+ years. Kapp is a business journalist who has recently published a book titled, Girls Who Run The World—a nonfiction book used to shed light on female CEOs and founders that society has slept on.
by Diana Kapp
She gained inspiration for her book through listening to a podcast, How I Built This, where Sara Blakely shared her story about starting her own company, Spanx. Kapp was so moved by the determination of Blakely, she knew more people had to hear it and thought to herself, “most teens don’t listen to podcasts, maybe they’ll read it in an illustrated book.” She then proceeded to pitch her idea to publishers. As anyone could imagine, writing a book is not an easy task. After pitching her idea she reached out to multiple female entrepreneurs to interview them. This was also not an easy task because it was challenging to reach them, Kapp says that she even had to try to guess their emails!
The struggle to get in contact with these other females was not her only challenge, she also struggled in finding the right tone and words to use. Luckily, her daughters and their friends helped her add trendy words and get rid of cringey ones in order to target her younger audience.
While writing Girls Who Run the World, Kapp has found that 1 in 4 high school girls answer “No” when asked if they think they can achieve their goals. With this book, Kapp hopes to normalize female entrepreneurship, to any gender, and increase the number positive responses when asked about future achievements.
I personally felt inspired! I was part of the 25% mentioned earlier. After reading a few chapters and talking to Diana Kapp, I am now part of the other 75%. Not only did the women highlighted in Kapp’s book inspire me but she herself was inspiring. She wrote this book to amplify the ambition and boldness of females and she portrays the perfect representation of it.
By Pamela, Enterprise intern
July 20,2020