RURAL BOOKS: BELINDA CLEMMENSEN - Women, Leadership & Saving the World

Clearing a New Path™

Belinda Clemmensen - Women, Leadership and Saving the World

Over the holidays this year, I took a connection break. That meant trying my best to unhinge from social media and work. I felt like I needed to rethink the podcast strategy and actually take a look at myself and what was holding me back, my own personal journey.

I watched the documentary “Deconstructing Karen” with Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, two women of colour who host dinners with white women that they call Race2Dinners. To say watching this documentary changed me would be a huge understatement. It really made me look at my own complicity, playing nice as a liberal white woman, in my case, living in rural Canada. I had to sit in my still racist beliefs, my long-held, ingrained belief system of white supremacy that I was upholding by not naming it, upholding white supremacist, capitalist ideals like beauty, weight, hustle, wealth, success, accomplishments, sacrifice. I spent most of my life trying to chase those things. And worse, I looked around my own rural community and thought, I’m the one who ‘gets’ it, I’m anti-racist. Oh but I’m not. I’ve still got lots of work to do to dismantle the thinking and actively uplift and give power to, black and brown women and people.

And in walks Belinda Clemmensen. She answered my call out for rural authors and rural books, and while we did talk about Belinda’s book, Women, Leadership and Saving the World, Why Everything Gets Better When Women Lead we also talked about white supremacy, equity, intersectionality and where we go from here.

Belinda is the Founder of the Women's Leadership Intensive. A changemaker myself, she believes that women are not only capable of changing the world, we will be a driving force in making it happen. After more than 20 years in leadership development she had a crisis of consciousness that her work was upholding systems that she didn't think were working for many people, and values that did not align with her own. From that realization she set out to create the Women's Leadership Intensive or WLI, their mission to inspire, empower, support and equip women to lead the change the world needs. WLI offers leadership development by women, for women and a powerful community of women leading for positive change.

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