Last Tuesday night, we gathered at The North Face on Union Street for a San Francisco Pop-up Mappy Hour. The night was full of meeting new friendly faces, recruiting mentors and learning from local leaders.
Our panel was moderated by Mappy Hour founder Sarah Knapp and featured:
Qayyuma Didomenico, a course director for GirlVentures, which aims to empower adolescent girls to lead through outdoor adventure, inner discovery, and collective action.
Narinda Heng, a course director and instructor at GirlVentures and a board member of Banteay Srei an Oakland-based organization dedicated to supporting young Southeast Asian women and girls.
Vera Arias, a certified bicycle mechanic, instructor and the leader of Good Karma Bikes (based in San Jose) women’s night!
April Webster, a software engineer by day and a SheJumps ambassador by night. SheJumps is a national non profit that motivates women and girls to step out of their comfort zone in the great outdoors.
A few discussion highlights include:
What/who is a leader?
You don’t need to be loud or the center of attention to be a leader. Leadership is stepping up as your authentic self. Introverts can be leaders too. – Vera
Anyone can be a leader, if you see something you want to change… step up. – April
What are best practices for creating leaders?
At GirlVentures we use a community agreement process to facilitate establishing shared goals & values which help us trust one another’s leadership.- Narinda
Being able to step back to give space for leadership (while still acknowledging that you’re there to help and support) – Qayyuma on GirlVentures programs
We also learned that there are quite a few ways we can all help support our panelists and their organizations including:
- Follow each organization on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/good_karma_bikes/
https://www.instagram.com/girlventures/
https://www.instagram.com/shejumps/
2) If you can, donate to their amazing programs!
3) Joining in the fun! GirlVentures is looking for mentors for their climbing program and Good Karma Bikes Women’s Clinics and SheJumps are open to all who’d like to attend.
As always, thank you to The North Face for hosting us and Sierra Nevada for providing brews!
