5 Questions With The Founders Of Glassbreakers
Being a career-minded woman in America isn’t easy. Yes, the gender wage gap might be closing, but frankly, its very existence remains a slap in the face of feminism and women in general.
The pay gap aside, many women continue to be denied many of the opportunities granted to their male peers, particularly (but not exclusively) in male-dominated fields like science, math, technology and engineering.
It’s gender-biased, dated practices like these that can often cause feelings of isolation, insecurity and low self-worth in women. Glassbreakers, a new site built to create a community of career mentors, is aiming to change that.
“Our mission is to empower women to break the glass ceiling, together,” reads the site’s manifesto. “These core values are the pillars which uphold our culture, community and purpose.”
Catering specifically to “anyone (whether trans or cis) that identifies as a woman,” Glassbreakers is creating a new wave of career-oriented feminism, a community in which women can build each other up and offer workplace advice.
We spoke with the founders of Glassbreakers, Eileen Carey and Lauren Mosenthal, to discuss where the idea for the startup came from and where it’s going.
Can you tell us a bit about the origin of the social network and why you chose to start Glassbreakers?
EC: We knew from the beginning that when you wanna start a startup, you’re told you have to find a problem you want to find a solution for. One of the problems we’re both obsessed with is gender inequality in the workforce and to succeed and break the glass ceiling. Once we started doing the research, it became clear that this needed to be a gender-based platform.
We asked “What’s the solution?” Mentorship. We started talking to women and did a survey of 700 women that we put online for them to take. So we got some good stats and then we literally asked every single woman we met about mentorship and if they wanted to be a part of a program. Then we did tons of user experience research.
LM: First we thought, “Okay, this would be a mentorship program.” Then decided we want it to be a peer membership program and realized this came naturally for women. So it wasn’t just one-sided. We realized that mentorship is normally perceived in a certain way — as a hierarchy — but this peer-mentorship is a mutually beneficial partnership.
If someone wants to move ahead in their career, it’s most beneficial is to talk to someone two years ahead, because someone 10 years ahead might not be up to date on the latest.
EC: One thing we found is that there’s a huge difference between millennial women and older women in the workplace. For older women, they’re used to being the only women in the room, as opposed to millennial women, who believe they should be 50/50. We found older women in their 50s and 60s really value the idea because they themselves also could use mentorship.
How did you guys meet? Did you always have this dream of starting an empowering community?
EC: Lauren and I both moved to San Francisco. I came from New York and she came from Boulder, Colorado and we both came here to start our own company. I had bought the URL for glassbreakers.co because I realized it wasn’t taken! We connected on the Internet via a mutual friend and got together to talk about all our ideas. And from there we decided to start the research.
Lauren (left) and Eileen, Founders
Who would you say is your user or ideal Glassbreakers user?
LM: Any woman that cares about her career and is looking to move forward.
EC: Ladies with ambitions!
LM: A huge part of our network is also for mothers. Because they don’t have as much time to go to networking events and meet people. Glassbreakers kind of connects you automatically to women you wanna meet. And with being a mom in the workforce, this really helps.
Can you describe what the application/acceptance process is like to become a Glassbreakers member?
EC: Everyone’s a mentor. Everyone has something to give, something to teach and share. You’re connected with women who provide mutually beneficial mentorship.
LM: [It’s] a mixture of LinkedIn, API data and user info. When you log in, you fill out the info to get a better sense of your skills. It’s a little bit like OkCupid, where there’s a percentage of how much we think you’d be a perfect match with someone. So far, we’ve done over 47 offline matches. We’ve also spoken to the women and are using the data we found to help improve matches.
Our users have said the women they’ve matched with, they have so much in common that they’re women they can go to for advice and some they can share tiny victories with! it’s that idea of being able to connect to and empower other women.
What do you hope to accomplish with this unique network in the future?
EC: Our mission is to empower women to break through the glass ceiling together. To get over imposter syndrome. Ask for that raise people haven’t been asking for. For us that’s victory. We want to build a hyper-connected, supportive workforce. We don’t have to do this alone. We can do it together.
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Prior to co-founding Glassbreakers, CEO Eileen Carey led a successful career in corporate communications in enterprise software at Thomson Reuters and at Citigroup in New York. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland and an MBA in International Marketing from the Fordham Graduate School of Business, and spends her spare time career mentoring young women and researching the global behaviors, trends and needs of the millennial female workforce.
CTO Lauren Mosenthal previously worked as a Creative Developer at AKQA in San Francisco and a Creative Technologist at Made Movement in Boulder. She attended graduate school at BDW of University of Colorado Boulder where she learned development and user experience design. When she’s not creating software, she runs the blog Inspiring People in Creative Spaces and is an avid half marathon runner and yogi.
To learn more about Glassbreakers or sign up, visit the site here.
