EmpowHer is almost ready to launch, and I have to admit, I am nervous.

I have been asking myself why. After all, I have had a strong career over the last two decades, meeting clients, pitching ideas, taking risks and putting my work out there. So why should this feel any different?

I think it is because EmpowHer has become far more personal than I had originally imagined.

The idea started with women and the many changes we go through in our careers. There are times when work is everything. Then life changes. We get married, become mothers, take breaks, return, grow into bigger roles, question ourselves, find our confidence again. I have been through some of these phases myself and have seen so many women around me go through their own versions of them.

While working on EmpowHer, there have been several moments when I have stopped and thought, I wish I had this then.

When I shared the content with a few fellow colleagues and friends – I got the same reaction – I wish this was available earlier. With this, don’t assume we are old now 😀 

That made me wonder whether I was really creating EmpowHer for other women, or whether somewhere in it were different versions of me too.

Maybe that is why I am feeling the way I am today.

There is a lot of me in EmpowHer. My experiences as a woman, my research on gender bias and mental health, conversations I have had with other women, things I have questioned in my own life, and things I understand very differently today than I did ten or twenty years ago.

I don’t know yet how EmpowHer will be received. Of course, I want women to love it. I want it to grow. I want everything we have imagined for it to happen.

But right now, just before we launch, I am allowing myself to feel all of it — the excitement, the nervousness and that slightly uncomfortable feeling of putting something very close to your heart out into the world.

So, here goes. EmpowHer.