Ep 45: Raising the Next Generation of Women Leaders: A conversation with Sarah Jakle

What if leadership isn't something you're born with—but something your brain can learn?

In this inspiring episode of Rewired, Tiffany sits down with Sarah Jakle, Founder and Executive Director of DemocraShe, a national nonprofit preparing historically underserved high school girls to become future leaders, voters, advocates, and elected officials.

But this conversation goes far beyond politics.

Together, Tiffany and Sarah explore what neuroscience teaches us about courage, confidence, belonging, and why so many capable people hesitate to raise their hands—even when they have something meaningful to offer.

Sarah shares how DemocraShe combines evidence-based brain science, resilience practices, and leadership development to help young women move beyond self-doubt and into purposeful action. One of the most powerful ideas from this conversation is the practice of developing your "Inner Best Friend"—the compassionate inner voice that encourages growth instead of reinforcing criticism.

Whether you're leading a team, raising children, advocating for your community, or simply trying to become more courageous in your own life, this episode offers practical wisdom for rewiring the way you think about leadership.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why courage comes before confidence—not the other way around.
• How neuroscience explains our fear of visibility and leadership.
• The difference between your Inner Critic and your Inner Best Friend.
• Why leadership is a practice, not a personality trait.
• How small, intentional acts of courage literally reshape the brain.
• What gives Sarah hope for the next generation of leaders.

As Sarah reminds us, leadership isn't reserved for a select few. It begins the moment we believe our voice matters.

Learn more about DemocraShe:
www.democrashe.org

Follow Inner Best Friend on Instagram:
@innerbestfriend

If this conversation inspired you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who could use a reminder that courage is a skill—and the world needs their voice.

Stay connected with Rewired
Listen anytime on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or yesempower.com/podcast

Join the Empower community on LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube
for weekly tools, neuroscience-based inspiration, and stories of real change.

Discover upcoming workshops, LaunchPad learning, and coaching opportunities at yesempower.com

Empowered people empower people. Live intentionally. Lead thoughtfully. Grow through awareness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

An amygdala that's picking up on potential danger, right? Something that's undone, becomes cautious and avoidant. An amygdala that's tracking safety is motivated and exciting to explore further. So men who walk into the room, who look at the history book, who look at the pictures, looks exactly like them. They track safety. They're like all motivated to go for the promotion. They want to raise their hand in the meeting. Ambitious women whose prefrontal cortex is all in on leadership, raising your hand, going to promotion, is having a dissonance with an amygdala, who remember is unconscious, that is tracking potential danger because it doesn't look like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

If you love that excerpt, folks, you are going to love today's Rewired Podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Grimes, and I had the privilege of meeting and talking with Sarah Jacyl. She left me absolutely feeling hopeful. In a world where so many conversations focus on what's broken, Sarah's focus is really on what's possible. She is the founder and executive director of Democracy, a national nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to empowering historically underserved high school girls to become future leaders, voters, civically engaged citizens, and elected officials. Sarah understands something we talk about often here on Rewired, which is that leadership isn't just about knowledge. It's about our brains. It's about courage. It's about rewiring stories that we carry. It's about understanding the fears and where they come from and how to create new ways of thinking and new ways of being and new identities that we can grow into. Her work integrates neuroscience with leadership development, helping young women understand why stepping into leadership can feel so uncomfortable and giving them evidence-based tools to move through that discomfort anyway. Sarah's own path is remarkable. I think you'll find her energy and enthusiasm contagious. She earned her bachelor's degree from Yale, a master's degree in social work from USC, and public policy from UCLA. She has led National Voter Engagement Initiative and was recognized as a 2025 movement builder fellow with How Women Lead, as well as a fellow with Obama's organizing for action. But what you'll hear today isn't just a story about these amazing, and they are amazing, credentials. It's a conversation about belonging, about why so many capable women wait to lead until they feel ready, about the neuroscience of courage, about building communities where everyone believes wholeheartedly that their voice matters, and ultimately about creating a future where leadership looks like the people it serves. All right, Sarah Jacyl, welcome to the Rewired Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you, Tiffany. I'm so glad to be here. Yeah, I was so um just intrigued when you reached out and uh, you know, got to go to your website and look at the amazing work that you're doing uh in a time that it's so very uh needed. And I'm just excited to hear more about it and what you're doing and what you're bringing to the world. But we always start before we jump into your work. I want to just know a little bit more about you. And we always start with the same version of a question, which is what does empowerment mean to you? And what is empowering you right now?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Great question. So I have a two-part answer because I I see empowerment as knowing you have inherent worth and value, and your voice belongs in every room, and possessing the skills to get back in touch with that when we lose it. Because we always lose that. The most empowered people also lose that feeling. And there are evidence-based practices to help you come back to that, and that is part of my work and part of my answer. And I think what is empowering me right now is working with high school girls. They are amazing, they are underestimated, and they are so exciting as they take their first steps into getting engaged in their schools and communities, and that is what is empowering me.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yes. Oh, I love everything about that answer, but I I want to underscore this idea that you know we all lose touch with empowerment at some point. And I do think that there's this belief out there that people are born with it or not, right? It's like they just have this disposition or they don't. And and you know, you you said this, and I want to underscore it that we build resiliency. It really is a practice that we return to every day, this idea of how we talk to ourselves, how we support ourselves, how we challenge ourselves, the brain that we build along the way. I think, yeah, this is a practice, and I love that. And I love, I love that what's empowering you is the future, right? Like women in these younger versions of themselves and putting their voices in every room and knowing their worth. And I just, yeah, I love that. As the mom of a 13-year-old girl, I am behind that completely. So, all right, so let's dive into democracy and tell me about this. What is it? What inspired you to create it? Tell us everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yeah, so democracy is a national civic leadership training program for high school girls with both the public policy skills to be engaged, informed leaders, and the evidence-based neuroscience practices to keep moving forward on their paths when they encounter barriers, which we know women face. I feel like democracy started when I was the get out the vote director of the California National Organization for Women and working with women candidates and seeing, and I think many of your listeners have encountered that with women they've worked with. There are amazing, brilliant, capable women who can't see themselves, in my case, as candidates for office, but as worthy of the promotion, right? Men apply for a promotion if they meet 50% of the requirements. Women apply if they meet a hundred percent of the requirements. Right. We are socialized in a different way to be perfectionist, to not see ourselves in the room, to hesitate. And I was seeing that with recruiting women to run. But the other thing I was seeing was when women did step into leadership, the pushback against women leaders was much greater than against male leaders. So Facebook in 2020 found that female candidates got up to 10 times more harassment and bullying than male candidates. And I think women in any workplace will tell you women get different pushback. So it occurred to me, and I'll tell you a little bit with an origin story here. Yeah, it occurred to me that we need to not only encourage women to step into leadership, right, and take these leadership positions, but equip them with the decades of research that have been done on how to help people step out of their comfort zone and go for something that is nervous but they authentically want, but also protect their nervous system. If someone is dysregulating at you, with the sole purpose being to throw you off and make you flood and go into fight, flight, freeze. How do you protect your nervous system so that you can stay embodied and true to yourself and not be triggered by people who are trying to trigger you?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Oh, it's so true. And it is a technique, right? That like rage baiting that let me throw you off by being by presenting this emotional trigger that you know we're we're wired to connect. And so it happens. Yeah, yeah. And so you started to talk a little bit about your origin story. Tell us a little bit about that. I love hearing entrepreneurs and leaders talk about, you know, what where they came from.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So I I have kind of a windy story. So we we start with myself as a direct service social worker with our homeless community dealing with mental illness. I got a master's in public policy to fight for them because they made me quite angry to see how they were treated. And then I missed the work, so I went back. And then I got a master's in social work because I was like, you should not be letting me have these conversations. I need some training. And I got a military, a military social work degree because I've never even heard of this. Yeah, so USC had a military social work degree, and I was seeing so much trauma in the population that I was working with. It was unaddressed, and I wanted to understand how do we deal with PTSD? How do we deal with adversity? How have people, there's tons of research on how to help brains thrive when they've gone through extremely difficult things. So I uh was lucky enough to work with some unhoused veterans and study that.

unknown 10:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

And then just as I was going back to my work, Tiffany, a very nice rheumatologist, told me I had been diagnosed with a brutal autoimmune disease called psoriatic arthritis. Okay. And that I would never work again. It was the nature of the illness, it wasn't fair, and I was devastated. This had been my whole life, this career.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

I imagine you're describing your work. It's so it's the passion. It was so important to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And I lived on a couch with my puppy dog Max for two years, but Tiffany, I was like, the trauma that I have studied academically, I am now living in.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And I may not be able to control the pain or the fatigue that I experience, but I can try to control who I am right now and how I'm going to show up to this moment. So I immersed myself in the brain. I immersed myself in the neuroscience and the different modalities that help people through adversity. And then the election of 2016 happened. And I was like, I am not sitting this out on a couch. So I took all of that work I'd been doing and all of that research I've been doing and turned it into kind of simple brain hacks that I could use to get up. For example, I had an inner best friend. We all know the inner critic is very loud. She's and she's a survival part of the brain, right? So she's hard to turn off because she's trying to keep you alive. She thinks she's keeping you alive. But my certain my inner critic said, You'll never get up. This is impossible. So I developed an inner best friend. My very first one was Barack Obama. And I would say, What would my inner best friend say to me about trying to get up? And Barack Obama said, You can do it. Just get in the car, try, you never know. And I ended up doing that so many times that I became a national outreach director for a voter registration organization called Field Team Six, and then the get out the vote director for the California National Organization for Women. And at each point, my inner critic said, You can't do that. You're never gonna have a job again. And I turned to my inner best friend who said, Go for it. Yes. And so when I was seeing what was happening to women underestimating themselves, right? But also going through trauma, I would say, big T trauma and little T trauma, when they did step into leadership spaces, I was like, Tiffany, I have trained my whole life for this.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

To find the evidence-based practices to step out of a comfort zone, which is what I had done by getting in the car and registering voters and having these jobs, but also regulating nervous systems under attack. In my case, pain and fatigue, right? How do you regulate? How do you stay? And so democracy was born by thinking this Venn diagram of teaching young women. High school is the last time boys and girls think they can run for office equally. And also all the women I was talking to kept saying to me, I wish I knew this in high school. Yeah, what would my life have been like if I knew this in high school? So that is the origin story of how we started.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Oh my gosh. I am just so enjoying that you had Barack Obama as your BFF. Did he did that voice come to you or did you intentionally create this?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

You know, I was doing so much self-compassion work by Dr. Kristen Neff. Yeah. To try to train that self-compassion voice.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

And out of that, I thought, who could who could somebody be that I could carry with me?

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And I will say 100%, Tiffany, when I imagine Barack Obama, I imagine him hugging me.

unknown 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Very platonically, he's with Michelle. But like the um but noticing the warmth and physicality of a hug from Barack Obama and the encouraging words 100% got me up and got me into the car and got me driving to, you know, various places to register voters. And so it's very full circle moment to teach high school girls to meet their inner best friend.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Yeah. You know, I want to just again highlight for our listeners, because we're constantly talking about what we have control over, what we don't have control over, and the neuroscience behind sustainable change and and resiliency. And you're describing this just one beautiful technique. This you don't have control over the illness, over what is delivered to us in life, but this choice, this decision to a, I mean, this is part of Kristen Neff's work, is this common humanity, right? You're seeing yourself, you're not the only one ever diagnosed with something hard. Instead, what I'm hearing you say is you connected it to that the trauma that you've been training for to work with other people, right? There is this pain, and I'm now directly tapping into it, both metaphorically and and physically. And also, I have choice in this. I can lean into these tools that I've been teaching other people for trauma. I can do it here. And so, this understanding we already have the critic. There's not much that we can do. We can build a relationship with the critic. We can have boundaries with the critic. We can, but to then create this BFF, this inner advocate for yourself and to name it and to feel it and to, it's a tool that we can all use and create and even talk to, right? I think I talk about a lot on the podcast when I'm driving and I don't have my kids in the car. That's when I'm just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I was talking to myself. And and you can have a relationship with the critic and the BFF, can be in the car while you're driving and kind of having this conversation around, okay, what can I do? What is the next step forward? And I'm just, I love that. And then look what came out of it, you know, this work, this fertile ground that you're creating. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

And I think to your point, Tiffany, certainly I'm, you know, I'm working in civic engagement and it can feel overwhelming. Yeah. It can feel like I don't have control, right? Exactly like you're saying, right? There's so many things in life we don't have control over, and that can wash over us and flood us in our own fight, flight, freeze moment. Yeah. And figuring out what is that one thing, and sometimes it is just who am I going to be in this moment?

unknown 18:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

How am I going to show up to my family, to my friends, to my coworkers? Sometimes that's it. And having that voice, that inner encouraging voice. And inner best friends can be somebody real in life, they can be a fictional character, they can be, you know, anything. But that voice that keeps anchoring you so that you're not alone in the journey. Because we can feel very isolated. That's why Kristen Neff's work on common humanity is so important, but often we feel cut off. And the inner best friend lives inside of us. So wherever you go, your inner best friend goes. And that encouraging inner voice that reconnects you back to the world is sometimes our anchor in having control over something in our life.

unknown 19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah. Beautifully said. Beautifully said. So this led you to this amazing work that you're doing with women. And what kind of, you know, again, I've been poking all around your website. So do feel free to guide me if it if it feels like there's a different direction. But one of the things that I would was admiring about it is how you're not just simply teaching women how to lead, you're really helping them believe that they belong in leadership. You said this earlier that people's voices belong in every room, right? So, what are some of the invisible stories or beliefs you've seen hold women back from stepping into their influence? And you mentioned a few earlier. Just I guess the statistics underlining that statistic of maybe I'm not, my skills aren't enough. And so, unless it lines up 100%, I'm not going to step forward with this and how different that is for men. So tell us more about those stories, the beliefs that kind of hold us back as women.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, and I'm thrilled to be asked that on Rewired, because I do think we know a lot about perfectionism. We have a lot of conversation around imposter syndrome, if that's even. But I we haven't talked as much about the role of the brain. So I know your listeners are familiar, but very quickly, right? The prefrontal cortex is where we have our conscious thoughts, right? We're aware of it. The amygdala is tied into the limbic system. It is our fight, flight, freeze. It is constantly, unconsciously scanning for danger. One of the things that's so interesting about the amygdala is it was trained from evolutionary cave person days to see something unknown as potentially dangerous, right? So if you're a cave person walking down the road and you see something on the road, if you went up to that and were like, wonder what that is, you got bitten and died, and we did not get your genes. The cave person who didn't know what it was and ran away survived and we got their genes. The reason why that's important, Tiffany, is because so many of these spaces are still unknown for women. When you look in the history books, we are not there. When you look at the pictures of the walls of the leaders who have come before us, we are not there. And often when we walk into the room, we are not there. So what that does, a an amygdala that's picking up on potential danger, right? Something that's unknown becomes cautious and avoidant. An amygdala that's tracking safety is motivated and excited to explore further. So men who walk into the room who look at the history book, who look at the pictures, looks exactly like them. They track safety, they're like all motivated to go for the promotion. They want to raise their hand in the meeting. Ambitious women whose prefrontal cortex is all in on leadership, raising your hand, going through promotion is having a dissonance with an amygdala who remember is unconscious that is tracking potential danger because this doesn't look like her. So I think so much of when we need to help women step into their power, know that their voice belongs, we need to actually teach skills for the amygdala. Skills that let the amygdala tap into safety. If it's safe to tap into safety, it isn't always so that their whole brain becomes their ally and they can go for their authentic ambition. But I do think women blame themselves and think I'm not a good feminist, I'm not a good leader, how could I hesitate to raise my hand? How could I do this? When that's just part of your brain. And when I'm training this for men, I'm like, guys, if You're in a room and it suddenly goes dark. Do you feel excited and motivated to explore further? Or do you feel cautious and avoidant? Because it just became unknown. It became an unknown space. It's not that women's brains do this, men's brains, it's just the brain. It's the way the amygdala looks at the world. So since we are looking at a world where women have not been represented, we need to be teaching women amygdala skills.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yes. I just want to pause and take that in. That is how you're describing that is so there's so many layers. It's like so complex and also so amazingly simple, right? We our brains, when and this is the emphasis of brain-based coaching, is it's not a lack of knowing what to do that keeps people stuck. It's the underlying wiring and belief systems and stories that are there from our ancestors to present day that are reinforced over and over in conscious and unconscious ways. And so this work of moving from fear to confidence or stories about unworthiness to worthiness, it's a brain-based. It's not, it's not a knowledge, it's not that we don't have the skills, it's the inner work of creating a brain that believes we are worthy of that space. And it's it's it's so good. It's so good. So how do you teach that movement from fear to confidence or not worthy to worthy? And I want to preface this by saying, I have, you know, I've done neuroscience-based, coaching-based work for over 20 years. I started working with young people in a program called Youth Build. And people love, they loved it then. The teens loved it then, adults love it now. It's like when people understand more about their brain and research backs this up, there's this, I don't know, I guess, empower to not overuse that word, but there's this empowerment that happens of like, oh, this is wiring. There's nothing wrong with me, right? And so you're teaching people about this. I'm imagining these young women are like leaning forward and engaged in it. And then how what are the tools that then help people move forward?

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Yeah. And I just quickly want to say before I answer that, yeah. I love that I mean, brain-based coaching is so important. I love that you were working with youth. I was seeing a lot of this type of coaching for high-level executive. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

It's definitely a tool of privilege.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

And I was like, we actually pay our students a stipend to participate.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Right? Because, like, by the time you've reached that high-level executive, there are so many things that can knock out people who don't have the same background.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

So thinking of paying girls to make sure everyone has access to these tools in high school, because the other thing I was seeing, you know, in coaching and certainly experienced in my own way, but like so many women have just pushed through kind of with opposite action to get where they are and are exhausted and burned out. And by the time they land in a coach's, in the coach's lap, the coach has to kind of reconstruct and teach everything. So it was I was thinking, you know, rather than Desmond Tutu had an amazing quote about not just picking up the logs that fall into the river, but going back to the beginning and stopping them from falling in, and doing some of the brain-based coaching that is so effective and gets to high-level women, but getting it to young women who look like America. And we are 90% girls of color and 70% first generation Americans. And the you know, and your audience knows these tools are so helpful. And what if we democratized them? Yeah, not just democratize access to our country's leadership, right? So that America truly reflects all of her people, but democratize the tools that we know are so effective to let every young woman reach her potential.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah, yeah. Uh yes, yes, yes, yes. And so give us an example of one of those tools, one of one of the techniques that you teach.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah. So and a big a big one is inner best friend. Like so girls use inner best friend before they take tests, before they apply to college, before they, you know, do a speech. Like it's a huge, a huge tool. A big one is grounding.

unknown 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Right? And we all know grounding, and you know, it's asking yourself to notice making contact with something solid. And when you are starting to flood or feel with anxiety, it lets you come back into your body. And in democracy, we take it one step further. So we ground on our first feminist mother earth, and we notice Mother Earth's strength and support beneath our feet. We notice that you never have to ask, she's always there, and we notice that no matter where you go, she goes with you. So a lot of high school girls have anchors with teachers or parents in high school, and then they go off to college and their world turns upside down. Right. But democracy girls in college, Mother Earth went with them, their inner best friend went with them. There are these tools that they possess that they carry inside of them that aren't dependent on a particular person or relationship that they have in. And so girls talk about grounding as a superpower because it does help manage anxiety, right? And there's so much anxiety before you're going to use your voice.

unknown 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

And so a lot of our girls run for office at their schools, and they do a lot of tying grounding and inner best friend together. So they would ground with Mother Earth and notice her salinity, come back into their bodies, ask what their inner best friend would say about their right to run, and then go ahead and run. So I think those are two of the of the main tools. And then there are some hold from positive psychology, like savoring the good. So, right, we have a negativity bias. We're all if if you say nice, if you say nine nice things to me, Tiffany, and one that nice thing, I'm just gonna ruminate over and over on the so savoring the good is asking yourself consciously to notice things that are beautiful, joyful, happy. We ask girls to name things in their room, name things at their school, and you start to train the brain to pick up on its own things that are positive and joyful in your surroundings and kind of fight the negativity bias. Yeah. Um, and last, gratitude. There's so much science behind gratitude, right? So teaching girls early to have gratitude less or have and also not toxic positivity. Yes, right? Identifying that toxic positivity is not what gratitude is, right? Having all your emotions. Um, and then one last tool I'm gonna save for a later question.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Okay. Keep the listeners engaged. That's wonderful. So I guess I'm I'm led to ask a little bit more about, you know, when you're talking about working with high school girls, how are you doing this work? Is it all virtual groups? Tell us. Great question.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, that's a great question. So we are virtual. One of the things that I was seeing when I was working in politics in 2018 and 2020 is some of our states are being siloed off into different countries. And I live in Los Angeles and I care about Los Angeles, but I also care about the girls in Alabama and Mississippi and Texas and Florida and New York. And sometimes there are girls where there's nothing around them that supports them, right? And by opening your phone or computer, you join this completely unconditionally loving and supportive sisterhood that has your back and encourages you. And the other thing is creating a cross-cultural exchange. There are differences between Indiana and California and Texas. And if we want to move forward as a republic, it's important to understand what women are going through in different parts of our country and supporting all women, making sure all women's voices are heard and nobody is left behind. So our virtual model has been really effective. And we also have a model where the girls go through the program and come back and lead it. So it's high school girls teaching high school girls. Okay. So, you know, they hear this is how I use my inner best friend to be brave at my school. They hear this is how I called my representative and what I said. Yeah. You know, they hear, I launched a youth civic engagement nonprofit, and this is how you could do it. So the developmental stage of high school, peer-to-peer, is uniquely effective and also provides our young women not just a chance to learn about leadership, but to immediately turn around and act as leaders. Because I think it's one thing to say to a young woman, I believe in you, and it's another thing to show her by trusting her with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Yeah. Oh, this is exciting. I'm excited as a brain-based coach. I'm excited about a mom of a teen girl. I'm excited about because I live in this country and I and a woman myself, like the work you're doing is profound, Sarah. I just want to pause and say thank you. Thank you, Tiffany. That means a lot coming from you. Yeah. Wow. So when I sometimes, you know, we get into, I would say this kind of happens with finances sometimes. Like people start talking about money and then we just kind of turn off. I think sometimes this happens with politics, right? And so we hear words like civil engagement, democracy, and republic, and some of these words that we know, but what do they mean? And immediately just start to go into the world of politics, which then I hear people say, I don't do politics, right? So we just kind of shut it off. So the work feels much bigger than just about the politics that you're doing. And so how do you define everyday leadership? Maybe within the context of politics, maybe not. So you can decide where you go with that. What does leadership look like for someone who never plans to run for office? Although as I'm asking that, I'm realizing maybe we aren't planning because we don't think we're skilled or we're worthy, right? Maybe, maybe if we even let go of that question. So I'll just say, what does leadership look like for women? Is what I I'm gonna just kind of open it up to that. What does leadership look like for women? How can I see leadership in me?

SPEAKER_01 35:45

So I think bringing the perspectives of the radiant spectrum that make up women into every room where decisions are being made is to me an everyday leader. And taking that just one step further, I think being an everyday leader is having the confidence to advocate for your values in the rooms that you are in. So I know women who are working in the arts who are advocating for women's stories to be told and diverse stories to be told. And they are fighting really hard to make sure these stories make it to error. And that's a critical piece of I would say civic engagement that people can turn on the TV and see themselves reflected and stories that need to be told reflected. And those women really have to tap into their leadership and courage because they get a lot of pushback. I think of women in science. Tiffany, I was shocked to learn that so many more women died in car accidents because the only way they ever trained dummies with seatbelts were dummies that looked like men. So more men were surviving because they were practicing with dummies that looked like men, and women were dying because women's voices were not represented in how we tested car safety. So I do think there is every room you are in you can be advocating for your values and tapping into your inner best friend to speak up on behalf of somebody who's being bullied, somebody who's being marginalized, people who are being repressed. There is that is in every room we're in as humans, right? Every room is making decisions that help people or hurt people, help people around you, hurt people around you, and deciding that you want to stand up for what you believe in is not without cost. It is something that requires tapping into the fact that you are uniquely you and only you have your perspective and can bring your voice into the room and it belongs there. So I think to me, I am as excited by girls who, you know, getting a PhD in neuroscience, you know, as exciting to me as the girls who have actually already run for office. I would say I understand completely when people get turned off by quote unquote politics. I I do passionately want all of our girls to vote because in the rooms we're in, we're making small decisions that impact just the people around us. Our elected officials are making huge decisions that impact millions of people, and they work for us, and our voices deserve to be in those rooms, and if we abdicate voting, we abdicate our values in making the decisions that affect millions of people. So I would say, while I totally get being turned off by politics, I would not let go of that right. It is your birthright to vote, it is your birthright if you're interested to run for office and have have your voice participate. And I would encourage people to find one race or something that they're interested in and get involved because I do passionately believe that this country belongs to the people, but only if we use that power.

SPEAKER_00 39:29

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I I think about the many times I've sat in meetings and I think I question, you know, why are they doing it like this? This doesn't need to happen, or you know, the the meeting after the meeting, like I'll go home and just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, talk about it. And I think we just did this with the pride event that we went to of like, oh, they should have done this, they should have had that, they could have done. And then what we talked about was we should get involved, you know, we should get involved. We don't have a right to, I guess, the way we were feeling about it. We don't have a right to complain about it and not do anything about it, right? And how I think for me, what I immediately start to think about is, well, I don't I don't have the right thing to say, or I don't know what to say if somebody says this or does this. And how if we wait for that, we just keep waiting, right? Like we don't have to have, we don't have to know. We learn along the way, we trust ourselves, we have curiosity, we le you know, all of these things, and we just keep going forward. You know, we don't have to wait for the to know exactly what to say and to have the speech and and to know what all the words mean. We can just come in and start. What's the next? How do I get involved? How do I go to a meeting? How do I, yeah, how do I have my voice heard a little? Or how do I listen to the other voices?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

I will say, Tiffany, I love that. And the the piece that I would offer that I would use is it can be overwhelming. If you think to yourself, I'm gonna go to the Pride event and make and talk about what I believe in, the inner critic will very quickly come in and be like, you can't do that. Right, right. However, if you break it down, so when I was on the couch and I wanted to get up to, you know, I would think to myself, I want to register voters. Very quickly, the voice comes in, you can't register voters, that's exhausting, that's too big, you'll never work again. So Barack Obama and I, my inner best friend, work together and I would say, just get in the car. Just get in the car, and then you can get out if you want. And I had to actually mean that. You know, if I need if I was like, that's all I can do today, then I got out of the car.

unknown 41:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

In the car, I would say, just drive there. Just register one voter. And I broke it down. And then two years later, I'm a national outreach director registering 485,000 voters. But if you told me that back in, you know, after the election of 2016, I would have been like, that's impossible, that's overwhelming. I can't even start and I won't get up. But I do think trying to figure out what is your just get in the car. Yes, maybe it's signing up for a newsletter. Maybe it's looking for just signing up to volunteer, maybe it's just showing up and not saying anything the first time, right? Like, what is that thing that is an entry gateway that helps you take your steps forward without in democracy? We train girls in a model I learned in social work called safety, growth, and overwhelm.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

So safety, you try nothing, you learn nothing. Overwhelm, you go too fast and you learn nothing. Growth is you're slightly out of your comfort zone, and it's where you grow and thrive.

unknown 43:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

And so it's just as important. We don't want to be in safety, right? And we all kind of know that, but we also don't want to be in overwhelm because we can't retain information. We get overwhelmed, we don't go back. So thinking, what is my growth step? Yeah. What is my growth step toward this goal I want to have is a great way to kind of get into it.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Yeah. That's a great, yeah. I love that. Cause you I feel that as you say that, I'm like, oh, I've done the overwhelm thing and I've done the, yeah, I think I feel the word growth. Like that feels a little nervous, but doable. Yeah. And the science breaks it down. I think that's Charles Duhig's work of like breaking it down, right? Going, that's this is the same work that we do for exercising and these little habits we want to create. It's like break it down to what is doable right here, right now, and just this very first step. Yeah, if we think about the end, we we rarely get there. So, okay, so you, I mean, we may have just talked about this a little bit, but I'm curious, you know, how are you cultivating these qualities that you're talking about? These starting small, the listening, the staying open, the staying curious. How are you cultivating those qualities in these high school emerging leaders?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

Yeah, so we have a couple ways we train them. We have a 10-week program that's two hours a week. We have a one-day intensive, and then on our website, we have a free self-directed program that literally any girl can go through and learn our curriculum. You know this with the brain. The point is to keep wiring it, to keep firing the to keep firing the neurons. So we will teach something like grounding an inner best friend it very quickly. And then as we take our steps toward leadership and civic engagement, so girls advocate for issues, they advocate for something based on their lived experience, they advocate for something based on somebody else's lived experience. They all pick up the phone, and trust me, that age, picking up the phone, they pick up the phone and call their representatives and learn that they just stood up for a hundred people. They do democracy. Christian Congress, where they co-sponsor and pass bills. But every step along the way, we keep repeating. We'll say, first of all, can you put a heart on your screen if there are any nerves in the room? We're all gonna advocate for an issue. And the hearts light up because this is the work of Kristen Neff, right? You have to see you're not alone. We think we're the only ones who are nervous, and everybody else has got it together. And when the hearts light up the Zoom screen, we're like, see, it's totally normal. Everybody has this response.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

We have some tools. So before we're gonna step up and advocate for what we believe in, we're gonna ground with Mother Earth. We're gonna check in with, you know, in the chat, can you put what the inner critic is saying? Notice the inner critic is also normal and everybody has her. Can we put what the inner best friend would say? And it lights up with my voice has value, I am important, I belong in this space, right? And we crowdsource the courage from the inner best friends, and then we speak. And we do this over and over throughout every activity so that it just becomes second nature to girls as they report back to us. You know, I went to an AP test and got so nervous. So I grounded with Mother Earth and I checked with my inner best friend, or like I took a driving test. So I grounded with Mother Earth and checked with inner best friend. And the more they use it because it works and it helps them support them to be brave and go after things they want, they're wiring that into their brain as a way to respond. Right. So if we intervene in high school, these are girls who are grounding and checking with their inner best friend for four to six years before they reach the workforce. So we're looking at what does our future look like if women have the skills to go back to your first question about being embodied. If women have skills not only to know that they have worth and value just inherent in who they are, that their voice belongs in every room. But when they lose touch with that, as we all do, they have the skills to get it back. And what would a future like with those women flooding our positions of leadership?

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Ah, hope. That just gave me hope. Well, okay, and well, before I get to my next question, I want to ask. So you've got free courses on your website. We'll we'll link all of you know this in our show notes for anybody listening. So they can go, people can go. Do you have to be high school? Is it just is there an age limit on the free? Tell me more, tell folks more about how they would access this.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah. So it's grades nine through 12 for our 10-week program and our one-day program. And both of those have paid stipends.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

The the program that is on our website is meant for high school girls. It is high school girls, you know, leading you through videos and stuff, but we've also had college girls go through it, right? Because it's just self-directed. Yeah. Okay. So it's available. Gotcha. And then I also, because I love the concept of an inner best friend and it's been so useful to the girls. I actually just started an Instagram page called Inner Best Friend.

unknown 49:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

So if you're interested in finding your own inner best friend or learning more about it, that is a place with resources.

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Oh, that's great. Okay. And again, we'll link that. So make sure we get a copy of that so folks can find that. That's beautiful. So, you know, I think about we're kind of in this time right now where people are feeling, I would say, a lack of hope, maybe some disconnectedness from politics, discouraged, not everybody, but I think overwhelmingly that's that's present for a lot of us. And so, you know, I think about you spend your days helping people engage with this rather than disengage, right? To lean in in some way rather than just go, ah, I'm this is hopeless. So I'm curious, what gives you hope, Sarah? What keeps you going and what are you seeing that makes you optimistic about our future?

SPEAKER_01 50:05

I mean, obviously, the young women, yes, right, these bright lights of potential and hope and ambition and watching them start to use the skills, both the public policy skills and the resiliency skills in their lives. I think what gives me hope is that there is an America that has never yet been, but absolutely could be. And I double down on her. I continue to believe in her. And the way that I'm coming into this work is wanting to launch all these young women into civic engagement and leadership who can access hope, right? Who can access their worth, who can speak up about on behalf of their values and advocate. But I know I'm on a team of millions of people. There are millions of people working on an America that has never yet been, but absolutely could be. And we're all teammates. And sometimes, you know, you in your life, something comes up, you have to take care of a parent, you have to take care of a child, you have to step back, and your teammates step up. And sometimes you, you know, and sometimes your teammates have to step back and you step up. But I think it's always been, this has always been a group project. And this has always been a team effort.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

So I am a tiny, tiny part of the team over here doing my work. And what gives me hope is that I know I'm not alone. And there are millions of people working, sometimes explicitly in politics, sometimes they're working at a job shelter or a food bank or they're going to a pride event. But millions of people in this country are working to make it better every day. And that's what gives me hope.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Yeah, so great. Yeah, it's a team effort. I love that. All right. We're gonna end with a few rapid fire questions here. This I've never done this before on the podcast, so I feel kind of excited about it. All right. So the first question is what book has most influenced your leadership?

SPEAKER_01 52:19

I would say The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhymes. Love that book. I mean, it's amazing. And like training yourself to say yes to opportunity and yes to things. I think there's no better training to be a leader.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

Yeah, yes, yeah. Oh, that's great. Okay, what's one belief you've changed your mind about in the last five years?

SPEAKER_01 52:43

That being a leader means you step up and lead a room. I think working with young people, you learn that being a leader means often that you step up and leave a room and let the young people have the agency to make the decisions. And that's been a profound teaching for me.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

Yes. Yeah. Really let them lead. Yeah. That's beautiful. What's one daily habit that helps keep you grounded?

SPEAKER_01 53:12

Walking the puppy dogs with my husband. Because living vicariously through them as they find fascinating smells and they leave their little P mails, it just brings me tremendous joy. Yeah, tremendous joy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Simple. The simple, beautiful things. Yeah. All right. And the last one, if every listener remembered just one thing from today's conversation, what would you hope that that would be?

SPEAKER_01 53:45

You matter. There's only one you. You are unique, you are valuable, and you are precious. We need to hear your voice wherever you want to use it. But we need to hear it. And I hope that you meet your inner best friend to encourage you to speak up and use it because you are valuable and precious and we need you.

unknown 54:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:09

So beautiful. Sarah, you are valuable and you are precious and we need you. And I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful for this connection and inspired, really, um, in so many ways. So thank you. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you for having me, Tiffany. Such a pleasure. Take care. And listeners, we'll make sure we link everything in the show notes. I know personally, I will be uh going in and checking it out. Rewired listeners, if this episode resonated with you, I'd be so honored to stay connected. Follow the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Share an episode with someone in your life, and leave a five-star review. It helps people access these tools and support and grow our community. At Empower Coaching and Training, we believe that when you understand your brain, you gain the power to change your patterns, your relationships, and your life. If you're ready to go deeper, you can always learn more about coaching and resources at yesempower.com.