Creating Authentic Connections in Business

Creating authentic connections in business starts with allowing your whole self to be seen and genuinely seeing others in return. If you’re a woman entrepreneur or professional who’s tired of surface-level networking and wants relationships rooted in meaning, impact, and genuine care, this episode of Mindset Unlimited with Women Belong co-founders Kate Alpert and Dorothy Rosen is for you.

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Valerie Friedlander 0:08
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Mindset Unlimited: Mindset Tips, Tools, and Inspiration for Women in a Time of Change. I’m your host, Valerie Friedlander, and I am so excited to welcome Kate Alpert and Dorothy Rosen to join me today for a conversation about creating authentic connections in business, so I’ll just give a little bit of an intro to them, and then we will, we will dive in and let them introduce themselves to you, so Dorothy and Kate started Women Belong in 2017 and Women Belong is an international networking organization that grew from a single Chicago circle into a global community dedicated to supporting women professionally and personally. Women Belong was born out of a vision they had for bringing women together in an authentic way. When we come together and explore business honestly and vulnerably, relationships form and connections deepen. These relationships create space and opportunity for a higher vision of what we can collectively achieve. And I am also a member of Women Belong. It has been a wonderful space to connect personally and professionally, and you both come from a marketing background and have had some really pivotal life experiences along the way, kind of almost like seems like solidifying that this was the direction that you really were meant to go in and build, so I’d love for you each to share just a little bit about yourselves as we get started.

Dorothy Rosen 1:48
Well, yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. One of the things a couple of years ago I started to think about, well, what’s my hero’s journey, which turned into what’s my the heroine’s journey, which is like all about the journey, internal journey from my perspective, and you know, being in corporate America, one of the things that felt really inauthentic was that I couldn’t be myself, that I wasn’t seen for who I was, that I felt like there were conversations that were happening that, while I understood them, they didn’t seem to really get at what was important in life, if you will. Right, I’ve always been a relationship developer, which is why I went towards loyalty marketing and relationship marketing, because it felt wrong in those days. Direct marketing was all about acquisition, right. Who are we going to acquire rather than thinking about the full cycle of an of a customer, and so got into relationship marketing and loved it. And then I got a little tired of making a lot of money for the patriarchy, right, which I couldn’t have articulated back then, but what I could articulate was that I wanted to see other women be successful in business, so that was a lot of my journey, and then my husband got sick, and it will be actually seven years next week that he, since he passed away, and going through that huge life. I mean, we all go through life events, right? Whether it’s having children, the loss of a parent, the loss of friends, the loss of a partner, loss of children, God forbid, right? All of those moments create an impact who we are if we are aware and and Kate’s doing this death and dying class, which she can talk to a lot more, but I feel like I’ve, I’ve experienced a lot of that because of my age, because of my experiences, right. So I don’t know what else to say, other than the fact that the importance for me of my journey right now is the impact we have on others. It’s not the financial gain, money is just a, it’s just a measure, it’s just a KPI, but it’s not the ultimate KPI for me right now. Impact is what makes the most difference.

Valerie Friedlander 4:23
Yeah,

Kate Alpert 4:24
Yeah. So, my background, in marketing also, I worked more on the agency side for digital and database agencies, and so doing kind of a mixed bag of websites and online marketing, email marketing, and I was doing that business, working at an agency, when I met Dorothy, trying to build a book of business, being a new mom with what was a very high needs baby, who didn’t take a bottle and didn’t sleep well, and was just trying to navigate what that looked like to be a working mom that was all in on breastfeeding. And my mom breastfed, but she was a stay-at-home mom, and so I didn’t really have a lot of archetypes for what that looked like, and I didn’t understand why there weren’t any archetypes out there, like for me I had this vision at the time of why is it okay for two men to be on a golf course, and that’s like a vision of how a deal can be made at work, but two women breastfeeding together can’t be how a deal at work would ever go, and I wanted to change that. I thought that we can do whatever we want, we can breastfeed and work at the same time, and that should be totally fine. And when I met Dorothy, Dorothy was in a place doing a lot of social emotional intelligence work, and bringing that to this business group that we were sort of a rogue chapter of, and I wanted all the pieces of whatever that was, because those two versions of Kate, the Kate that was the seeker, the Burning Man attendee, and the seeker of culture and community, and you know all the weird parts of myself, was not the worker, Kate, and when I found a place and a person that I was like, this is a vision of what we could build together, and so when we, when Dorothy and I got together and started talking about Women Belong and what it is, it was also at what was an unbelievably pivotal time in the world, and certainly in America, with an important election in 2016 and the birth of the Me Too movement, and just sort of bringing to consciousness and voice, like a lot of the things that women were going through, and so when we built Women Belong, it was with that intent of just having an organization that was exploring and being expansive for what we are as people and how we work in ways that are in service and purposefulness, and right, where money is is a KPI, but it’s not the only. There’s so much more that we’re here to do.

Valerie Friedlander 7:17
Yeah, it’s one of the things that I love about Women Belong, and something that I have felt as well in my own journey, I also came from that, like I’m a connector, I am someone who really builds relationships. I was in corporate, I was a credit collections manager for many years, and so building relationships was how business worked, how I understood not just, you know, threatening people and stuff, but there is a very distinct difference of I can show up as an aspect of myself, but not as my whole self, you know. So I can be my personality, and I think there is some privilege in that as well, of course, and to be able to go like, but there’s a part of life that I can’t share, because it will be used against me, and a lot, a lot of people who aren’t white men, I mean, and I would say also white men, for sure, too, just at a different level, have that experience where there’s that peace that can’t be shared, and what I love about Women Belong is how much it is a personal and professional. It’s we’re business women, and we’re whole human beings that we can be whole human beings and do business. We can have multiple hats, we can have more hats than the one that we’re doing business with, and we can still be really amazing business owners and professional women too, so that all really resonates a lot.

Kate Alpert 8:50
Right.

Dorothy Rosen 8:51
And you know, you say professional women, and one of the things that I want to actually hit on is something that has been a huge aha for this last year, which is that we think of professionalism, professional categories within a certain construct, right, and what we have seen is that a huge growth area within women belong is for those women who are I don’t want to use the word dabble, but that’s what historically society would say, that they’re dabbling in the arts, right? They, these are women who embrace a lot of the what we would call the woo out there, right, and these are women who have been sidelined and and haven’t found a place, and all of a sudden we’re having conversations that are so much bigger, wider, deeper, richer, as a result of saying, why have we lived within this limited.. oh, there you go, Valerie, this limited construct, right? And now we have an opportunity to absolutely broaden and. Every time, so there’s there’s we have one member who’s an animal communicator, right, and I was talking in one of our circles about the fact that we’ve got an animal communicator in this other circle, and they’re like, oh, I need her name, I need her name, I need her name, it was like everybody needs to have help with their dogs or their parrots or whatever their animals are, right, and it’s like, oh, look at this. This is so much broader, and why do we think of business in such a narrow context?

Valerie Friedlander 10:30
Yeah. Oh, that conversation about what makes someone professional, and yeah, actually, I thought you were. As soon as you were about, I could see you wanted to say something. I was like, I wonder if she’s gonna say something about saying professional women, how often do we say, like, professional men, you know, or like the, we, where we caveat, right?

Dorothy Rosen 10:50
Oh, yeah,

Valerie Friedlander 10:51
And, and so that actually kind of leads me to one of the questions that I also always like to ask folks, which is, what is an unconscious limit? So, one of, as you mentioned earlier, Dorothy, like I wouldn’t have thought to say that or call it that before, but those unconscious things that you have since unlearned, and how did you unlearn it?

Dorothy Rosen 11:16
Okay, I’m going to jump in. All right, so this is a recent one, and I think that Kate referenced that I had done a lot of work in emotional and social intelligence, and there was one lesson that we were working on, which was rules, myths, and beliefs, right, and one of my recent rules that I was like, wait, where did that come from, and why, and it was around reading, so every day Kate and I have a growth mindset philosophy. What is it we’re here to learn today? And Kate especially challenges, I mean, hello, she challenges has challenged so many of my beliefs and has raised me up and made me such a more bigger person, if you will, but so around reading it’s been that I thought that I could only read at night, because we have a book club, right? We started, and one day I was like, “When do you guys read? Oh, I read at night. I used to read under the covers with a flashlight as a child. Reading was dessert. Reading was the last thing you consumed reading was the thing that you were allowed to do at the end of a day when you’ve done everything else that you are supposed to do. Wait, what? This one woman said to me at a book group, she’s like, ‘Oh, yes, I read every day from two to four. I sit on the couch, I’m like, ‘Wait, are you allowed to do that, right? so I mean it’s a limiting belief, because there’s so many rules that we live within that we don’t question,

Valerie Friedlander 12:50
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I love that you were talking about differentiating the myths, which are the bigger picture, like those social myths, and then the inner rules, and I’m very curious about that. I also want to make sure that Kate gets to share too…

Kate Alpert 13:08
Sure. One that comes up for me a lot, and I don’t know that I’ve unlearned this, but I certainly am conscious of it now. It’s like this belief that I have to finish my work in order to go play, and is similar, I think, to Dorothy’s, but as an entrepreneur, especially, there is no end to the work, and so in all of my working, this was a really disorienting thing, because, like, the end of the day would come, and I would be like, man, I’m not done, there’s still so much work left to do, and I would have this really defeatist attitude of like, I have to stay longer, I have to keep working, and like, which is where burnout, right, burnout comes from, and everything else, but I would feel that I couldn’t relax or play or vacation, or etc, etc, until it was all done, and so challenging that to really just say, like, no, this is I stop at this time, it’ll be there, and making peace with the fact that it’s undone, or yeah, I’m entitled to play, and I’m entitled to relaxation and rest.

Valerie Friedlander 14:19
Yeah.

Dorothy Rosen 14:20
I mean, in this, this thing about rules around playing, I mean, I have that in spades, right? My husband held the pole of play in our relationship, and I was like, so angry so much of the time because he’s playing and I’m working right, and at what point have we not understood, especially as women. I think it’s more prevalent for women than it is for men that play is not a part of what we should be doing. When I ran the office for Brierley, we had a foosball table, I, and I was the one who brought the foosball table, and I’m like, okay, we’re gonna, you know, make this a fun place to be. And I was annoyed every time I walked by and saw someone playing foosball.

Valerie Friedlander 15:05
Yeah, I always wonder if that’s that, you know, there are those layers of standards that we’re held to. We have to prove ourselves more, we have to do more in order to earn our place in the in this space to be seen as professional, to be seen as whatever, and that that pressure that we’ve internalized, then understandably comes out as frustration towards people who don’t have to carry that and aren’t even necessarily thinking of it, but then reimagining, I mean, I have certainly found as a parent, like watching my kids play and having them invite me into play, and I used to love imagination games. I led them, like let’s be the My Little Ponies prancing around the playground, like I was all over that, and yet there’s a resistance, and some of it is play looks different for me, and reclaiming what does play even mean in my life at this particular point? Like, what it sort of like going to that topic of like authenticity. We were just talking about all these places where we change, where things happen, and our perspective shifts, our way of being shifts, and so I would love to know, for both of you, you know, you’ve worked with so many women in community and building the space of authentic connection. What have you noticed, maybe for yourselves, maybe you know within the space that you’ve built around these shifts that we go through in life, when something something changes, and maybe it’s a big thing, and maybe it’s a small thing, but yet we still, we’re in the, you know, we’re together and we’re being authentic, and we’re also not the same person we were, maybe, you know, a month ago.

Kate Alpert 17:02
I have one that comes up really easily, and I think it’s true for us and members, and I see it over and over, and it’s that we never dream big enough, like our visions as women are so small and so like stair stepped of like achievable next goal, and they are never big and audacious in the way that I think men just throw around their goals. I feel that when we get together and there is sometimes this magic thing that happens where people start identifying bigger goals for each other, and it’s so cool to watch, but we, I even with some of the most badass women, I just think we, we set our sights too small.

Dorothy Rosen 18:02
Hmmm. Yeah, I think that I’m thinking, actually, about my.. I did a trip to Egypt in December, which absolutely changed so much for me, and one of the things that the leaders of that trip said is we have forgotten more than we remember and that for me feels so true, that we go through this process of first of all, we go through this process of learning, and meanwhile everything is slipping out the other end, right? I think of Dumbledore and his pen seed, where he takes the wand and he takes the memory and he puts it into the bowl, and then when he wants to, he can retrieve it, and I think we lose a lot, right? We lose a lot from our childhood, like you, you were talking about Valerie, the sense of play, the sense of wonder, the sense of achievement, you know, that Cape talks about, like, when she’s talking about how we dream small, we also celebrate small.

Kate Alpert 19:08
Mmmm. Yeah.

Dorothy Rosen 19:09
Right? And it’s the other people within the circles, when they see our authentic selves, they’re the ones who are lifting us up and creating a wider vision for us.

Valerie Friedlander 19:22
Yeah, and I certainly see it with my clients, and I do think that there’s very much a tie between how much we don’t celebrate and how limited we make our vision, and I wonder also sometimes you all were talking about before the money part, often when we’re talking about business, and we’re thinking about the vision, we’re thinking about how much we want to grow capitalistically, right, like unlimited growth forever and ever, and you know, while the podcast is about being unlimited, part of it is choosing limits, all right, instead of allowing. Knowing just the internalized limits, those places where we don’t allow ourselves to go, but going, these are the boundaries that I want to create, like this is what’s important, this is what growth looks like when I think about expansion. Yeah, I need the KPI of the money, but what is my vision, and a lot of times, when I’m talking to women, vision really has to do with the difference that I want to make in the world, so, and that, of course, ties to a mission that we have. I would love to know from both of you, what is the world that you want to create? Like, when you think about a mission, what is that for you? And maybe it’s personal, maybe if it’s professional, because I think it can be both. Usually they’re related.

Dorothy Rosen 20:49
That’s a big one right now.

Valerie Friedlander 20:51
Yeah.

Dorothy Rosen 20:53
I think that there’s so much, and I’m, I’m emotional because I’m thinking about all of the things that have been taken away recently, and how women are being slotted back into a place where we don’t have autonomy over our bodies. There are ways that women are being limited because it’s, we’re threatening, we are the creators, and I, so for what I want, I want a world where my daughter feels that she can go out and do whatever she wants, and that she can create the change that she wants, and that people are welcoming and loved on. I mean, there’s so much wrong. There’s so many things in this world that need to be fixed, and they don’t get fixed if I’m concerned about my own hide all the time. It’s about how the impact the richness that we have is about community and lifting up community and lifting up and changing the world, so that people aren’t hungry, people aren’t worried about we’re talking this weekend about the homeless situation in Evanston, and how these people, they go to these shelters that are only available 31 weeks a year, and that you know they are kicked out at seven in the morning on a cold winter day. What kind of humanity do we exempt? exemplify if we allow this to happen, that children are hungry, that children aren’t going to school and aren’t being supported and loved on? I, although I don’t know that school is the best thing anyway, but that’s a whole nother story that we could talk about, but you know, there’s just, there’s so much hurt in the world, and there’s so much opportunity. We are so wealthy and privileged, and it comes from a scarcity mindset.

Valerie Friedlander 22:55
Yeah, I, I really see that. What we were just talking about, the play, how we can’t play when I don’t vision, like there are men who vision, but it’s such limited visions, like the men who are visioning into what we’re, what we’re currently living in, it’s so limited, it’s so limited, and yeah, I really, there’s a lot to learn. I’ve been learning a lot about the homeless situation, with, you know, the lack of housing, and how things are treated. I mean, if we’re talking, you know, for the folks in Chicago, learning about how the accelerated housing events, you know, we think that they’re fixing things, but only half of an encampment usually gets housing, if that, and then they’re only allowed to stay there for two years if they can’t get money, and they usually pair up the accelerated moving event with a sweep to close down the encampment entirely, so people can’t see how much it’s not solving and not actually caring for people, so there’s a lot to learn there. I encourage anybody listening, especially those in Chicago, learn about what’s going on, because housing is a real, a real crisis. But I think, yeah, it’s all very related.

Dorothy Rosen 24:19
And it’s why Kate and I are so dedicated to Habitat for Humanity.

Valerie Friedlander 24:24
Yeah, yeah,

Kate Alpert 24:24
Absolutely. So, Dorothy mentioned this class that I’m taking right now, called Dying and Death, and it’s got me really thinking about one of the things they’re talking about, the class is how, if you’re not living like truly living during your life, you’re dying prematurely, and that when you know we don’t talk about death, we’re scared of it. We’ve taken it and given it away to hospitals and businesses, and it’s not something that we deal with tangibly in our lives and. Yet it’s 100% guaranteed that all of us are moving in that direction, and what are we working towards in that journey? And it has me really rooted in this idea of purpose. What are we doing with our, you know, one wild and precious life, and how are we making, leaving our stamp in our, and taking care of each other on this on this journey, because it really is all the stuff, all the money, all the status, all of it is meaningless at that point. None of it goes with you, and I think that as I’m learning more about what people’s end of life’s look like, there is that coming back to center. I didn’t realize that there’s a statistic that something like 90% of people die in old age, they die like, of just, you know, that’s that’s their end. Only 10% are taken prematurely, right? So most of us are headed in that direction. And what does that look like, right? And I don’t know, I’m really just interested in being more conscious of my own and, and leading others to a fruitful life that also ends with a beautiful death, right? Because we should all aspire to have, have that be the goal.

Valerie Friedlander 26:36
Yeah.

Kate Alpert 26:36
Oh, think we think about it like how we want that to end.

Valerie Friedlander 26:41
No.

Dorothy Rosen 26:41
You know, and that’s one of the questions I was asking Steve in his last couple of years, because if he was, he wanted to die every day, then okay, I knew, you know, I had a way of being with him, but were you wanting to live every day while you can, or you want to die if you go towards death, and it was just like one of those moments where we were like looking at each other, going, okay, this this puts a framework on how we’re going to be.

Valerie Friedlander 27:12
Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting juxtaposition, you know, I feel like the connectivity of, you know, living and death and play and big dreams, and knowing that we’re going to have an end, and what does that mean, and I think about, like, the little ways that we show up and the impact that has on our ourselves and what we connect with and who we connect with as well as other people and how you know that that big dream, that big vision, you know, can be something that is big in its expansion, but not necessarily. I have to do this giant thing. I have to. I have a former client who was diagnosed with cancer and has been learning how to live, knowing that it’s a terminal situation, and she’s had a lot more years than she expected to have, and thinking about legacy, and what is a legacy, and that created a lot of pressure, and I think one of the things that, as I’ve also been sitting with a lot of death and a lot of grief, and thinking about, like, purpose, I feel like it just kind of naturally inclines you to think about purpose, like, what am I doing here, and purpose for me has to do with those little moments of impact, those ways that we show up with each other, and while I have a mission of difference in the world, because I think, you know, like, you were saying, Dorothy, everything that’s happening right now is so heartbreaking, and hope lives in action. It’s, you know, and that it’s important for us to name our feelings, you know, the social emotional, like naming our feelings and recognizing when something’s not about a feeling, it’s about a doing, it’s about a showing up. It’s, you know, I think of gratitude as an exercise, it’s a practice, it’s not just a, you know, I feel grateful, it’s because sometimes I’m not receiving things, but I can still practice gratitude, and I think hope is the same way, where I can practice hope, you know what does hope look like in this conversation, and so I would love to invite you, know, as we’re thinking about connecting and authenticity and doing business, what is hope in action look like? For you all in the space of Women Belong

Kate Alpert 30:06
For me, I think it looks like belonging, it looks like being in the flow and the feeling of community and connectedness when I’m in my own space alone and feeling disconnected from source, from purpose, from community. Those are those can get it, can get dark, and knowing that when I plug in it, it feeds me, and I know that it’s mutual. It feeds the other people in community as well.

Dorothy Rosen 30:44
For me, hope is connection. Hope is that next conversation that is so surprising. It takes my breath away. Talking to people like every week, Kate and I are talking to so many women around the world, right, and the connections are just like they are yummy, they are delicious, they are dessert, they are, they are the promise.

Valerie Friedlander 31:14
Yeah, dessert for breakfast or anytime…

Kate Alpert 31:16
Right?

Dorothy Rosen 31:17
I mean, can I tell you, it’s like I feel, and when I hear oftentimes women of my age saying, oh, it’s hard, so hard to make new friends. It’s like, really, I feel like I do it every day, and it’s because we show up authentically, we ask the questions, we’re curious, we’re interested in the other, right?

Valerie Friedlander 31:38
Yeah, it is hard in a lot of ways for people to make friends, and I think I think it’s a contrived hardship, you know. We are much more manipulative the less connected we are from ourselves, from each other, you know. The loneliness is a, is a contrived thing to make us more manipulatable, and so I believe in rest being resistance, and I also believe in connecting with other people in an authentic way, in an open, as you said, honest and vulnerable way, where we don’t have to be the expert, we can just be who we are, and and it goes into valuing our gifts, right? Like, if we’ve bought into the limit that we have to earn our value, then we have to produce in a relationship, whereas if I know that I’m valuable, then I can show up with you, and I can have space for your value too, because it’s that scarcity, I’m not in scarcity, I’m in abundance, I’m valuable, you’re valuable, and we’re learning, we’re curious about each other, we get to grow and learn, and I love that you all have created a space that uplifts that amongst women business owners, because I do think that we often very much internalize the patriarchal, hierarchical mindset of I have to be an expert and I have to look a certain, you know, way. It’s hard to break out of that. I think it’s tough.

Dorothy Rosen 33:18
Yeah, you know, in the social emotional intelligence work that I had done, the leaders of that organization identified five primary yearnings that we have as individuals: to be seen, to love and be loved, to be known or heard, to matter and make a difference. And I always thought matter and making a difference that resonated the most with me, because I knew that I was loved, and I knew that I loved, right, that was like a given for me. I felt that I was heard because I’ve got a big voice, and I often swear, not today, at this moment, but the matter and making a difference was always externally focused, like, how do I make a difference to you, how do I matter to you, and the last year and a half or so has been me reclaiming and understanding that I matter and make a difference, because I am what an opportunity for all of us if we understand that we matter and make a difference because we simply not simple, but simply are.

Valerie Friedlander 34:25
Yeah, yeah. Thank you both so much for this conversation. I have really, I mean, it’s, it’s been a very much a heart conversation, so thank you. I like to wrap up with a couple questions before I do that, real quick. All the all the links will be in the show notes, but if you just want to say out loud verbally, how can people connect with you?

Kate Alpert 34:51
Womenbelong.com is our website. There are tons of events to come to visit a circle. Which are chapter-based organizations around the world, and some are online, and some are in person, and it’s free to visit. So, women belong.com/circles for that, or women belong.com/events We have book club and seeds for growth speaker series, and other networking events called introductions and connections, tons of opportunities to connect with other women around the world,

Valerie Friedlander 35:28
Awesome. And all the links, as I said, will be in the show notes. And now, just as a final question, What does it mean to you, each of you to be unlimited?

Dorothy Rosen 35:45
We were once asked whether we were going to go national when we were first one circle in Chicago, and I was like, oh yeah, and then, oh no, we’re going international, no, we’re going galactic, and that’s what unlimited means to me, because I don’t know what it means. It’s a challenge, it’s a constant challenge to think, well, what does galactic mean? What does, what is the bigger place that we can go to? So that’s what unlimited means to me. Galactic.

Kate Alpert 36:15
I’m kind of ditto what Dorothy said. I, yeah, I don’t know that I can add anything to that.

Valerie Friedlander 36:24
All right. Well, so final question for the Mindset Unlimited playlist. What song do you listen to when you want to evoke that unlimited feeling?

Kate Alpert 36:38
For me, one thing, and this was hard because I am a person who skips around a lot. I do not have a one song that is the all the time song, but right now I have been listening to this song that my dad, who recently passed, he played at my wedding. It’s the song Ooh Child by the Five Stair Steps, and I don’t know, it’s a, it’s a song that, to me, the lyrics are about how today might not be the best, but it’s a brighter future tomorrow, so just always the striving and the working towards the next thing.

Valerie Friedlander 37:14
Yeah,

Dorothy Rosen 37:18
Well, I’ve got two, I can’t, I can’t.

Valerie Friedlander 37:23
That’s all good. I’ve had to limit it when it comes to, like, an entire album, but I can go with two

Kate Alpert 37:29
Unlimited selections, Dor.

Valerie Friedlander 37:32
There’s a, if there’s an album, I’ll link it in the show notes, but for the playlist purpose.

Valerie Friedlander 37:37
The two songs, the two songs, one is, of course, because my name is Dorothy – Wizard of Oz was always a big thing, so Defying Gravity is like it gets me right in the feels. And then the song that I sang to my daughter at her wedding, and yes, I was loaded at the time, and I actually did a shout out to Kate, as I’m walking up to give my mother of the bride speech. I’m walking up and I’m yelling at Kate Alpert.

Kate Alpert 38:10
We did it! We did it, Kate!

Dorothy Rosen 38:12
There was an F word in there, though. And I don’t know what the hell I was referring to, but I just felt in that moment…

Kate Alpert 38:21
You thought you were at a Women Belong event.

Speaker 1 38:23
Women Belong. Right. It was, I thought it was a Woman Belong event… and that song is, I’m At The Top of the World.

Valerie Friedlander 38:30
Yeah.

Dorothy Rosen 38:30
If there’s, when I’m feeling down and I call my daughter and leave her a message, I will often sing that.

Valerie Friedlander 38:38
Yeah.

Dorothy Rosen 38:39
yeah.

Valerie Friedlander 38:40
I love it. Thank you both so much for being here. I really, as I said, really appreciate this conversation, and I encourage all the listeners to check out the show notes, check out the links. I’m in the Albany Park Circle, so yeah, and so yeah, come visit, and thank you, thank you, all, for listening, thank you for being here. I appreciate everyone.

Dorothy Rosen 39:09
Valerie, what a pleasure. We really appreciate you. Thank you.

Kate Alpert 39:12
Yeah, thank you.

Valerie Friedlander 39:13
You’re welcome.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Some of what we talk about on this episode includes:

  • Redefining professionalism and showing up as your whole self in business
  • Challenging internalized rules about work, rest, play, and success
  • How loss and grief can invite new clarity of purpose and connection
  • Creating spaces of belonging as hope in action

Have thoughts or questions about this episode? Share them with me! Send me a voice memo HERE

Why Authentic Connections in Business Matter

So many traditional networking spaces ask you to perform a narrow version of “professional”:

  • Hide your grief and big feelings
  • Tuck away your “woo,” creativity, or non-linear career path
  • Prove your worth with productivity and profit alone
  • Look a certain way

In this conversation, we explore a radically different vision of business. A vision where belonging, humanity, and impact are central, not afterthoughts.

Women Belong grew from a single Chicago circle into a global community because women were hungry for a place where:

  • You can show up as a whole human
  • Your story and lived experiences matter
  • Business growth is tied to connection, purpose, and support (vs hustle and grind)

If “networking” has ever made you feel small, unseen, or like you have to leave parts of yourself at the door, this episode offers a spacious alternative.

From Corporate Performance to Authentic Impact

Both Dorothy and Kate come from marketing backgrounds. On paper, they had the kind of careers that “make sense” in traditional business narratives.

But inside corporate environments, Dorothy described feeling:

  • Inauthentic, unable to be fully herself
  • Misaligned, listening to conversations that didn’t touch what truly matters in life
  • Tired of making money for systems that didn’t reflect her values

Her turning point came not just from career dissatisfaction, but from serving as primary caregiver to her husband who eventually lost his fight with cancer. That experience sharpened her clarity:

Money is just a KPI. The real metric that matters is the impact we make in other people’s lives.

Kate also felt like something was missing. As she strove to build a book of business working in agencies she was also

  • Navigating motherhood with a high-needs baby
  • Noticing how few examples existed for women who visibly and unapologetically breastfed and worked

She had a disruptive vision: if men can close deals on a golf course, why couldn’t women build business relationships while breastfeeding side by side?

Women Belong was born from their determination to create that space where impact-driven women could show up as their whole self and support each other in making a difference.

Redefining “Professionalism” and Who Belongs

A major thread in this episode is the unspoken rules about what counts as “professional” and who gets to claim that label.

Within Women Belong, a big growth edge has been embracing women who:

  • Work in the arts
  • Identify with “woo” or spiritual practices
  • Offer services that don’t neatly fit into traditional business boxes

Historically, these women might be dismissed as “dabbling” or “not serious.” Inside Women Belong, they’re recognized as legitimate professionals and leaders whose perspectives deepen and widen the conversation.

Dorothy shares the example of an animal communicator in one of their circles. The response wasn’t skepticism—it was an enthusiastic, “I need her!” That story illustrates a core shift:

  • Instead of trying to squeeze ourselves into narrow professional standards
  • The community broadens what’s possible and acceptable in business

Valerie names what’s underneath this: many of us have internalized the idea that we must earn our value by producing, performing, or fitting in. Authentic connection becomes possible when we start from: I am inherently valuable, and so are you.

Unlearning Limiting Rules About Work, Rest, and Play

Another big theme is the unconscious rules we carry. They are the beliefs we rarely question, but which quietly govern our choices.

Dorothy shares a powerful example about reading:

  • As a child, reading was “dessert” – a reward you got only after finishing everything else
  • That turned into an internal rule: you’re only allowed to read at night, after all the work is done
  • Hearing another Women Belong member say she reads on the couch from 2–4pm every day shattered that rule: “Wait, you’re allowed to do that?”

Kate shares a similar rule around work and play:

  • As an entrepreneur, there is always more to do
  • She carried the belief: I must finish all the work before I can rest or play
  • But since the work is endless, that rule leads straight to burnout

The unlearning is about:

  • Claiming rest and play as legitimate, non-negotiable parts of life and business
  • Allowing the work to be incomplete and still choosing to step away
  • Recognizing that creativity, joy, and restoration actually support deeper impact

These stories will resonate if you’ve ever struggled to “earn” your rest or felt guilty for anything that doesn’t look “productive.”

Dreaming Bigger Together (Because We Rarely Dream Big Enough Alone)

Kate shares a striking observation from years of facilitating circles:

We almost never dream big enough. Even the most badass women aim for small, incremental steps instead of bold, audacious visions.

Why? Because:

  • We’ve been trained to be realistic
  • We’re socialized to avoid seeming arrogant, greedy, or “too much”
  • Many of us are still navigating survival, so dreaming big can feel unsafe

But when women gather in community, something different happens:

  • Other people see more in us than we see in ourselves
  • They reflect back possibilities we didn’t dare consider
  • They celebrate our wins more loudly than we do

Dorothy notes that we don’t just dream small – we also celebrate small, or not at all. The circles help women:

  • Acknowledge their achievements
  • Expand their vision
  • Anchor into a sense of mattering and making a difference simply by being who they are

Grief, Death, and Living Fully in Business

This episode doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff. Grief and death show up as teachers, not just personal tragedies.

Kate is currently taking a Dying and Death class, which has reshaped how she thinks about:

  • How we avoid talking about death
  • How our culture has outsourced death to hospitals and systems
  • How that avoidance keeps us from fully living

She shares a striking idea from the class: when we’re not truly living our lives, we are in a sense dying prematurely.

A few key insights emerge:

  • Death is 100% guaranteed – yet we rarely plan for the kind of death we want
  • Most people die in old age, not suddenly; we have time to consider how we want that phase to look
  • Thinking honestly about death can actually bring us back to purpose

For Kate, the question becomes:
What am I doing with my one wild and precious life?
How can I live, and help others live, in a way that leads to a beautiful, intentional end?

That resonated for Dorothy, who shared how she would check in with her late husband, Steve:

  • Are we moving toward life each day?
  • Or toward wanting to die?

That frame shaped how they chose to be together in his final years.

For listeners, this invites a deeper reflection:
How does awareness of mortality shape the way you connect, work, and prioritize today?

Purpose, Mission, and the World We Want to Create

Valerie asks Kate and Dorothy what kind of world they want to help create.

Dorothy’s vision is deeply rooted in justice and autonomy:

  • A world where her daughter can pursue what she wants, without being pushed back into restrictive roles
  • A world where women have full autonomy over their bodies and lives
  • A world where people are not hungry, unhoused, or discarded by systems that could easily support them

She highlights concrete issues like homelessness and housing in Chicago, pointing out how current approaches often appear helpful but fail to truly care for people.

Kate ties this broader social vision back to mortality and purpose and reminding us that:

  • Nothing – money, status, stuff – goes with us at the end
  • What really matters is how we care for each other along the way

Purpose, then, is less about grand, performative legacy and more about how we show up in small, daily acts of impact and connection.

Hope in Action: Belonging and Connection as Resistance

When Valerie asks what hope in action looks like inside Women Belong, their answers come back to one core theme: connection.

For Kate, hope looks like:

  • Belonging
  • Plugging into community when she feels disconnected from purpose or source
  • Knowing that showing up for circles nourishes both her and everyone else

For Dorothy, hope is:

  • The next conversation that surprises her and takes her breath away
  • The joy of making new friends at every stage of life
  • The experience of genuinely seeing and being seen

Valerie ties this to a larger critique: loneliness is not an accident. Disconnection makes people more manipulable. So:

  • Rest can be a form of resistance
  • Authentic connection is a form of resistance
  • Showing up as whole humans with one another becomes a quietly radical act in a culture that profits from our isolation and self-doubt

Women Belong models a networking ecosystem where:

  • You don’t have to be the expert all the time
  • You don’t have to hide your grief, your “woo,” or your softness
  • You’re invited to be curious, vulnerable, and real

What It Means to Be “Unlimited”

To close the episode, Valerie asks what it means to be unlimited.

Dorothy shares a playful but potent answer:

  • When someone once asked if Women Belong was going to go national, she said, “No, international.”
  • Then she upgraded that vision: “No, galactic.”

“Unlimited” becomes a living question:
What does galactic even mean?
How much more expansive could our vision for women and business be?

Kate simply echoes Dorothy, because sometimes the biggest vision doesn’t need more words.

How to Connect with Women Belong

If this conversation resonates and you’re curious about what authentic, belonging-based networking could look like for you, you can explore:

Visits are free, and circles are welcoming spaces to experience the kind of connection this episode describes.

Listen, Reflect, and Take One Step

As you listen to the episode, you might reflect on:

  • What unspoken rules are shaping how you show up in business?
  • Where are you withholding rest, play, or authenticity from yourself?
  • What might change if you believed you matter and make a difference simply because you are?

Then, consider one small step you can take to move toward creating more authentic connections in your business.  Join or visit a circle, reach out to someone who sees you, or simply let yourself be a little more honest in your next conversation.

LINKS TO REFERENCES MADE IN THIS EPISODE:

Habitat for Humanity

Chicago Coalition to End Homelessness

CONNECT WITH DOROTHY & KATE:

Women Belong Facebook

Women Belong Instagram

Women Belong LinkedIn

Dorothy’s LinkedIn

Kate’s LinkedIn

CONNECT WITH VALERIE:

Ask Valerie (anonymous form)

Sign up for Valerie’s newsletter

Apply to be coached on the podcast

Schedule an exploration call

This podcast was produced by Valerie Friedlander Coaching

Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective

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