Lisa Niver's Blog: We Said Go Travel, page 86

10 Women’s Magazines that Pay Freelance WritersThe post...

10 Women’s Magazines that Pay Freelance Writers

The post appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Can We Make America Great Again Together?

I believe we really can make America great again. And we can decisively begin in just a few days, if all of us — both Republican and Democrat — commit to it wholeheartedly by putting country before party, listening to our deepest conscience, and reclaiming the values that have eroded in recent years. Specifically, we can:

· Return to a time in America when the message of the Statue of Liberty meant something; return to the belief in abundance over scarcity that enabled us to welcome immigrants instead of scapegoating them, walling them out, or calling them rapists, terrorists, or criminals; we can return to a time when we would not seize frightened children and cage them without remorse in defiance of international human rights standards.

· Reassert our fundamental American values of freedom of press, journalistic integrity, and scientific fact instead of labeling inconvenient truths as “fake news” or choosing fear and anti-intellectualism over truth. And we can remember that Freedom of Speech does not endow us with permission to utter any mean-spirited, poorly-formed thought that happens to come to mind. It bears a responsibility of reasoned contemplation.

· Recall that our nation was founded on a premise of religious freedom instead of the vilification of different faithful paths; and those of us who do embrace religion can do a better job of translating the universal spiritual principles of love, compassion, and acceptance into our everyday lives and politics – instead of allowing religion to be distorted by angry fundamentalism and cruelty.

· Restore the American middle class by meaningfully addressing the structural constraints that keep low-income and working class families from economic mobility; and instead of trying to revive old or toxic industries, we can remain at the cutting edge of free enterprise. We can re-energize the spirit of honest business ownership instead of celebrating serial scam artists and masters of bankruptcy, tax evasion, and nepotism.

· Re-tap the great traditions of the civil rights movement, to continue the long-term healing process necessitated by the institutions of slavery and racism; Replaying the words of Abraham Lincoln – a President heroicized by both Republicans and Democrats — we can collectively, forcefully, and explicitly reject racism as anti-American. We can restore a time when armed, white supremacist militias had been driven away from public places and were not threatening to hold mock trials of kidnapped governors or turn peaceful demonstrations into outright Civil War.

· Reassert the values of the suffragette, farm worker, and gay rights movements, restoring past victories for “liberty and justice for all” that have been undermined– and we can even make the qualitative leaps forward that bring us closer to the realization of those principles.

· Resume a global leadership role where we honor our allies and hard-fought victories instead of cynically — and irrationally — aligning with our most despotic adversaries or abrogating our own signed treaties that are intended to keep peace in the world, support economic cooperation, or slow climate change.·

Restore a state of honor to our soldiers, both fallen and living, and stand up to anyone who calls them “losers” or “suckers,” or who forbids their own children from military service; we can once again remember that our soldiers have made ultimate sacrifices for the cause of freedom and democracy abroad, not despotism and voter suppression at home.

· Re-channel the same powerful, collective commitment that put people on the moon to systematically eliminate this pandemic and jumpstart an inclusive – and yes, green — economy.· Rebuild a culture where our elected officials seek to embody empathy, strength, kindness, decency, and honesty. And we can put behind us the age where leaders abdicate responsibility or demonstrate cruelty, narcissism, selfishness, dishonesty, childish name calling, and unremitting criminality.

All of this sounds profoundly different from the country we live in now. But it is a greatness that we can return to very quickly. We know this, because much of it was already true four years ago.We must simply remember that being an American is not merely a privilege that is bequest upon us; it is a responsibility that every generation must understand, embody, and take responsibility for. And in this election, at least, that leads to only one logical and moral decision.

In short, I am not going to suggest that anyone take off their MAGA hat, because we do indeed need to make America great again. You can wear it – without any sense of irony – as you head to the polls to vote for Joe Biden.

[image error]

The post Can We Make America Great Again Together? appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Birthday Wishes We Said Go Travel News Oct 2020

Oct News 2020 with We Said Go Travel:

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, I have been in Los Angeles since March 9, 2020. That is 234 days. I have to say that my birthday this month was much better than I expected. Thank you to all of the friends and family who called, sent text messages and shared their love on social media.

[image error]Lisa Niver on her birthday Oct 18, 2020 at Hotel Erwin

I have a birthday wish! Please watch, comment and like my videos and subscribe to my YouTube channel! I now have over 1.25 million views and my next goal to have 3,000 subscribers! On my birthday, I had only 123 to go! Thanks for making my wish come true!

[image error]



[image error]



My second wish is for you to VOTE!



[image error]



Thank you to the Jewish Journal for putting my column IN PRINT twice recently! Special thanks to Brett Barenholz for always looking out for me and saving me print copies!

My comments about Elul leading up to Rosh Hashannah were in print on page 28 of the Oct 2-8 edition.

“During the month leading up to Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, I think about what has happened in the year that is ending. As I have this chance to reflect on what went well and what I want in the new year, I set goals. During the pandemic, I have had to pivot and write more about books as I have not been traveling. What will you focus on?”

[image error][image error][image error][image error]

My article about Los Angeles Teens Changing the World: Tikkun Olam was in print on page 26 of the October 9-15 edition. I was honored to be a mentor in The Julie Beren Platt Teen Innovation Grants which are part of the ​Jewish Federation of Los Angeles’ LA Jewish Teen Initiative (LAJTI).

[image error][image error][image error]



Thank you to Canadian Affair for interviewing me about my experience on Rocky Mountaineer.

Lisa from  We Said Go Travel  explained how she learnt a lot about the history of the railroad on her train journey: “While travelling in luxurious comfort on the Rocky Mountaineer train between Vancouver and Banff, I loved learning the history of the railroad and seeing the spiral tunnels, Hells Gate and the last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at Craigellachie, British Columbia from November 7, 1885.”

[image error]



Enjoy my video journey on Rocky Mountaineer

Enjoy my video of the waves at Santa Monica Beach. I filmed with my new LGV60ThinQ phone. I took many videos of my recent stay at Hotel Erwin at Venice Beach. New videos coming soon!

THANK YOU Twitter! I love getting balloons on my birthday!

[image error]


WHERE CAN YOU FIND MY TRAVEL VIDEOS?

Here is the link to my video channel on YouTube where I have over one and a quarter million views on YouTube! (Exact count: 1,262,264 views)

Thank you for your support! Are you one of my 2,892 subscribers? I hope you will join me and subscribe!

For more We Said Go Travel articles, TV segments, videos and social media: CLICK HERE

Find me on social media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and at LisaNiver.com.  My social media following is now over 160,000 and I am verified on Twitter.

Thank you to Larry and Dolly Parton for my birthday card and song!

[image error]



My fortune cookies said:



“You are an Adventurer: Travel the Highway of Life”



“You are headed in the right direction. Trust your instincts!”

Stay safe and healthy! We will travel again….

Lisa

[image error]

The post Birthday Wishes We Said Go Travel News Oct 2020 appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Thanks @wesaidgotravel for including Andrew David MacDon...

Thanks @wesaidgotravel for including Andrew David MacDonald's WHEN WE WERE VIKINGS! @ScoutPressBooks @simonschuster https://t.co/ib4ge4bNwk

— RHA Literary (@rhaliterary) October 27, 2020

The post appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

.@KTLA travel reporter @wesaidgotravel is grounded due t...

.@KTLA travel reporter @wesaidgotravel is grounded due to the pandemic so her escapes these days come through fiction. She gives @thrive her top picks for the fall, including INVISIBLE GIRL by @lisajewelluk and FORTUNE AND GLORY by @janetevanovich https://t.co/fkMVO8U5Yq pic.twitter.com/b6AkzFdNHd

— Atria Mystery Bus (@AtriaMysteryBus) October 26, 2020

The post appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

PLEASE VOTE NOW 2020

[image error]



Make your voice count and be heard. VOTE NOW in the USA Presidential Election. It is important to participate and exercise your right to choose.

As @VisitLA4Locals says: ‘You may not love the choices, but you don’t have to. It’s not your soul mate or life partner. It is your obligation as a citizen to take part in the process. Speak up and make your voice heard!
If you live in LA County you can find a list of official drop boxes (and also how to vote by mail) at
https://locator.lavote.net

Are you ready to PIVOT? Be Your Own Publicist! Ask Aliza Licht

Thank you to Thrive Global for publishing my article, “Are you ready to PIVOT? Be Your Own Publicist!”



[image error]

Where can you turn for help during a COVID-19 pandemic?

I loved reading Aliza Licht’s book, Leave Your Mark. I felt like I had my own personal PR mentor explaining step by step on how to re-vamp my resume, handle interviews, create award winning social media and make my dreams come true!!

She created the social media for DKNY PR GIRL which had over 1.5 million people listening to her fashion views! She shares her insider tips from over twenty years of experience.

In college, Licht changed from medicine to fashion public relations and asked herself, “Could I really walk away from a goal I’d had for such a long time? And what would I tell my proud parents?”

But the “bottom line: It’s never too late to start over. We hear stories all the time of people later in life going back to school for something completely new and different...You get one life, but many chances.” During this pandemic, many people will be pivoting to try again at something new. Licht’s book is a primer for how to make it happen.

You can pick yourself up and try again! Remember that “the journey of a career can go in many directions. What would my life have been like if I never had the courage to quit medicine and pursue my childhood love of fashion? And what would happen if you made a decision to cast yourself in a completely new leading role?“

[image error]



Chapter 15: Being Your Own Publicist

Excerpt courtesy of Aliza Licht: “Leave Your Mark: Land Your Dream Job. Kill It in Your Career. Rock Social Media“

I’LL NEVER FORGET WHEN I WAS AT ATELIER MAGAZINE AND I WOULD CALL IN HERMÈS BIRKIN BAGS FOR A SHOOT. THE SAMPLES WOULD ARRIVE WITH AN inventory sheet that would detail exactly what I borrowed. But then, the PR people at Hermès took it a step further. A warning read, “Please inspect this sample upon receiving. We loaned it to you in perfect condition. If it is returned to us with any scratches or marks, you will be charged for the replacement of the handbag.” Gulp. Please note the package also included white cloth gloves to handle the sample. Pretentious for a simple leather bag? Yes. Did I believe the hype? Yes. We all drank the Hermès punch. I borrowed plenty of major designer bags for shoots—everything from Chanel to Saint Laurent.

No brand asked us to treat their bags in the way Hermès did. Hermès showed us that they valued their samples and in turn, so should we or we would pay… dearly.

Was there a legitimate reason they took their bags so seriously? They certainly wanted us to understand the artisan handwork behind each bag. I was even once invited to attend a Hermès sewing event, where I learned and experienced what went into making an Hermès design. It wasn’t simple. It certainly was artisan. Was it involved? Yes. Was it worth the price they charge? Probably not. But they walked the walk. Hermès decided what value they wanted to hold in the minds of their consumer, and so it was. Yes, they have hundreds of years of heritage, and yes, it takes countless hours and artisans to make each style, but at the end of the day they made public perception exactly what they wanted it to be.

With that in mind, people can also decide what they want their public perception to be and they can actually shape it. Think about all the people you know and how you have labeled them: She’s the stressed-out one. He’s the lazy one. She is always so productive. He is an overachiever. I bet if you think about your top ten closest friends, you can sum each of them up in a one-sentence description. We’re all innately judgmental even subconsciously. So the question is, how would your friends or colleagues describe you? And is that the message you want to convey? If it’s not, you need to change it. You need to self-examine and decide what you want to stand for and what you want your personal brand to be.

Shaping a brand is indeed an art. Take, as another example, how a publicist manages a photo shoot at a celebrity client’s home. They are next to the photographer at all times. They are directing what can and cannot be shot. They are curating the story and creating the point of view in the way they want their client perceived. Their strategy is one you can mimic, editing your life for public consumption in the same way. You need to think like a publicist, but as a publicist for YOURSELF. You are the brand.

[image error]

But first, what is a brand? The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “A name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” A brand in many ways is an identity. Branding on a personal level is the art of aligning what you want people to think about you with what people actually think about you.

Personal branding for non-celebrities is a relatively new idea, even for me; I never thought about personal branding until it started coming up as a catchphrase in social media. Prior to that, the only people who were considered brands were celebrities. For the rest of us, the closest we got to a personal brand was our reputation. To be clear, caring about your reputation was always valuable. But what changed, thanks to social media, is your ability to strategically shape and amplify your personal brand’s message. Publicists do this daily, so why not do it for yourself?

Most people wouldn’t naturally think of themselves as a brand, but there are a lot of reasons you should. People are consuming your words, actions and how you present yourself in various ways. The sum of those ways is your identity. But is that the identity that you even want? I’m a firm believer that every person has something unique to offer and that branding yourself is the best way to make sure people know what that is.

To do this you need to look at yourself from an outsider’s point of view. Forget the person you are. Step outside yourself and pretend for a moment that you are a public relations executive and your new client is YOU.

No matter the industry, a publicist’s strategy for generating brand awareness is the same. A publicist always considers:

1. What are the best products or assets that I have to work with?

2. What’s my hook or story? (a.k.a. What will the media, and ultimately the public, care about?)

3. How do I create an emotional connection between my product/brand and the audience it’s intended for?

4. Where is the best place to launch this strategy? (Print, online, socially, etc.)

When crafting your personal brand, you need to keep those angles in mind while answering the following questions:

1. Who are you? What are the core principles that you stand for? You can think of these answers from both a professional and a personal standpoint. Write down three to five words that answer this question. The fewer words you can describe yourself in, the tighter your “filter” is.

2. What do you want to be known for? Every good brand gives off an air of expertise in a specific area. INSIDER TIP: A lot of people do a lot of things, but the person who does it the loudest gets the “expert” credit.

3. What are marketable qualities or talents that are unique to you? Do you promote them?

4. What do people remember most after meeting you?

Consult with friends and colleagues who can give you honest feedback on this answer.

These are NOT easy questions, but I will show you how to navigate this thought process and come to a conclusion that you can digest and use to your benefit.

Step One: Get to know yourself by writing your bio. A bio is a summary of you, your professional and your personal lives. It’s everything you are that you probably never thought to put on paper. Famous people have bios because if someone in the press is doing a story on them, it gives that reporter an easy, digestible snapshot of the celebrity’s life and career. It is essentially a summary of your personal brand.

Bios are written in the third person, which is genius for the purposes of your branding exercise, because it allows you to take a step back and not feel totally awkward talking about yourself. So when you’re writing your bio, pretend that you’re a journalist who is writing an article about you for the New York Times. Instead of writing things like “I did,” write “He [or she] did.” It’s an out-of-body experience, one that will help you understand who you are and what you have done so far. Also, it’s OK to brag a little, so do list your most important accomplishments. But remember, a good journalist has a critical eye. If there are some less-than-stellar facts about you, it’s important to include those. You need to paint a vivid picture of yourself—not just what you have done, but who you are as a person. What is your personality like? How do you present yourself? What do you look like? Throw it all in there.

Write your bio in chronological order: Start with your current position and then take people through a brief synopsis of the past. Include only the most noteworthy points, the things that really have had an impact on who you are today. The goal of the bio is to show how you got where you are. If you can try to keep it under five hundred words, you will challenge yourself to be edited. When you start writing, you might get to a place where you have nothing left to say. That’s OK, because your story is never actually done. Life is to-be-continued, right?

Once you reach that stopping point, cozy up in a chair somewhere and pretend that you’re reading a story about someone else. Do you like this person? Are you impressed by what he‘s done? What do you feel this person should change about himself? Be objective. Pretend it’s not you that you’re reading about.

So what do you think? Did you paint an accurate picture of yourself? Were you being honest? If someone Googled you, would they be able to write the same story based on what came up about you in their search results? Are there pictures, if not articles, that come up in the search that tell your story? Is that the story you want told? Would you write it in your New York Times article?

You have to ask yourself these questions so you can get a real assessment of what you’re dealing with. Do you need to start doing more of something? Do you need to start doing less?

Step Two: Make your life “word cloud” by pulling out the keywords in your bio that really summarize your story. These words will essentially describe the overall picture in a list format. The stronger the attribute, the bigger the word should appear.

Step Three: Find an image for each word that you pulled out and create a mood board of your life. Take a step back. What does it look like altogether? What do you want to keep? What do you want to change?

Step Four: Continue the journey. Since your story will end right in the middle somewhere, think about where you want it to go. Start imagining what you want the rest of the article to say. Continue writing it all out as if it has already happened, but this time in italics—all your aspirations, everything you want to accomplish. Perfect the story until it reads exactly the way you would want it to be printed in the New York Times. This all may sound like a lot of work and a lot of soul-searching—and it is. But, when you’re finished, you will know yourself so much better. Your article might be tough to read and you might not like it, but that’s OK. This could be the match that lights the fire under you to make some positive changes.

People don’t innately like to look at themselves in the same way that most actors don’t like to watch themselves on camera. But to improve in any area, you need to be honest with yourself about who you are, where you are and where you are heading. How do you connect with people in your world? Do they feel you have something special to offer? Do they get value from knowing you? If the answer is yes, it’s that value you uniquely offer those around you that you need to promote and capitalize on.

But I want to be very clear about something: Personal branding is not about becoming famous. In fact, that’s the least it’s about. Personal branding is about self-reflection and ultimately outward presentation. Personal branding is about identifying the best version of you and striving toward achieving and communicating that every day. If you think like a publicist, you will be conscious about how others perceive your message and you will be able to fix that perception as needed. Being conscious of your personal brand will allow you to perform better in every area of your life, no matter what you do.

Every day gives you an opportunity to reimagine yourself differently. If you are brave enough to really look at yourself with eyes wide open, you will be all the better for it. There is no right answer here. The closest you will get is being happy and proud in your own skin and to me, that’s worth a hell of a lot. What you do with your personal brand depends on you. How hard do you want to work on it and how committed are you to shaping it? The answer had better be “very,” because no one is going to do the work for you. You are your best PR person.

Aliza Licht is the Founder & President of LEAVE YOUR MARK LLC and the author and host of LEAVE YOUR MARK 

GET A COPY OF HER BOOK HERE!



[image error]

We Said Go Travel.

Women Do Need A Lab of Their Own with Rita Colwell

Thank you to Thrive Global for publishing my article, “Women Do Need A Lab of Their Own with Rita Colwell.”



[image error]

In “A Lab of One’s Own: One Woman’s Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science,” Rita Colwell shares her six decade journey of incredible science, discoveries and sexism. 

[image error]

Colwell changed the world with her work to understand cholera and help people have clean water, she was the first female leader of the NSF, and she was the leader of the committee working with multiple intelligence agencies to discover who sent anthrax after 9-11.

Colwell had her own laboratory for almost sixty years and loves science but her path was made challenging by men who blocked her career. As she explained: “There have always been highly capable women wanting to be scientists. But there has also always been a small set of powerful men who wouldn’t let women in.”

[image error]During her tenure as director of Maryland Sea Grant, Colwell continued working on her own research in her lab in the UMCP Microbiology Department. Photograph, Skip Brown

Colwell was determined to do science. When she was 15 years old, her mother had chest pains and instead of being treated for a heart attack; she was sent home by their family doctor and died. Colwell vowed “to become a research scientist or a medical doctor to give poor and powerless people the care my mother was denied.”

At Beverly Hills High School, her chemistry teacher refused to write her a letter of recommendation because “Girls don’t do chemistry.” In May 1956, Professor Henry Koffler at Purdue University told her: “We don’t waste fellowships on women.” 

“Astronomer Nancy Roman, known as the “Mother of Hubble” for her work on the space telescope, recalled asking her high school guidance teacher for permission to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin: “She looked down her nose at me and sneered, ‘What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?’ ” It’s no wonder that 97 to 99 percent of the era’s top high school graduates who did not go to college were girls.”

Due to male professors being unwilling to support her, Colwell’s “thesis on the bacteria that live in marine animals was approved, not by the microbiology department or the oceanography department, but by the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.”

It is hard to believe that in the 1960s, she was the only woman in Georgetown’s biology department and when she was at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, a leading microbiologist, Einar Leifson, asked her, “Does your husband know where you are? Why aren’t you home pregnant?” 

[image error]Rita R. Colwell in 2011.

Even though there was a lack of support from many of the male scientists, Colwell had “more than $1 million in funding from the US Navy, the NSF, the NIH, and soon from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for microbial ecology studies.” While she had data, research, and the requisite publications, it was a challenge to have enough lab space. Women researchers consistently were given smaller labs and not enough support from their departments.

“Two years after Title IX came into effect, zoologist Sue V. Rosser was pregnant with her second child and working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin. One day, the professor supervising her fellowship told her the birth of a second child would interfere with the lab’s grant writing schedule. He told her to get an abortion. Rosser had her child, quit science, and became provost of San Francisco State University, making her one of the first women provosts at a research university. With experiences like these, is it any surprise that the number of women on prestigious faculties actually dropped during the 1970s?”

Science, the leading American scientific journal, published research in 1974, showing that: “women advanced in their careers more slowly than men, that they were paid less at every stage, and that this salary gap expanded as men and women gained professional stature. For every dollar a man earned, a woman with the same degrees made do with, on average, 68 cents.” 

[image error]Rita Colwell

While women earned 40 percent of the new PhDs in biology in the early 1980s, they were not invited to give talks, did not receive grants and were not able to publish many articles about their research. Colwell was aware that for many important journals every single editor in chief was male and of the “750 ‘expert’ volunteers chosing which articles to publish—more than 90 percent of those ‘experts’ were men.”

In 1994, Pardue and Hopkins reported that “MIT’s six science departments (biology; mathematics; physics; chemistry; earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences; and brain and cognitive sciences) employed 197 tenured men and only 15 tenured women (including themselves).” Additionally “more than half the undergraduates in three of the School of Science’s six departments were women and the number of female PhD students was rising nationwide, MIT’s percentage of female science faculty had been stuck at about 8 percent for twenty years.”

*Women were getting lower salaries, pensions, and funds to start their labs; less equipment and heavier teaching loads; and fewer nominations from MIT for awards, department chairmanships, and influential committee seats.

*There had never been a female department head in science or engineering.

*The percentage of women on the faculty of MIT’s School of Science went from zero in 1963 to 8 percent in 1995 to 19.2 percent in 2014. There were fourteen women faculty members in MIT’s biology department in 2009—and there were still fourteen ten years later in 2019.

*At this rate, MIT estimates it will take forty-two years for women faculty members in the School of Science to reach fifty-fifty parity with men.

Colwell published “more than eight hundred scientific papers over the course of my career…I had no choice: as a woman, I had to prove my findings twenty times over just to get them taken seriously…[As a woman,] you were always swimming against the current.

Colwell’s study of cholera in Bangladesh and in Maryland was to “mitigate a disease that, over the course of history and around the world, has killed hundreds of millions of people.” Cholera occurs when there is polluted water but Colwell figured out where the “Vibrio cholerae hide between epidemics.” She trained in bacteriology, genetics, and oceanography mainly because there were so many obstacles in her career she was forced to find a way to open doors when men were constantly closing them on her. But due to her diverse training, she discovered the life cycle of this bacteria.

After the biggest cholera outbreak in recorded history struck Yemen in 2017, “in what the United Nations and the World Health Organization called the worst humanitarian crisis on the globe. More than 1.2 million of Yemen’s 26 million people were diagnosed with cholera, a third of them small children. To date, more than 2,300 people have died from what is a preventable and cheaply treatable disease.”

Colwell created “a cholera-forecasting system for Yemen …and in March 2018, the Department for International Development began using [her] model’s forecasts.” Colwell helped UNICEF and other aid groups target their response where support was needed most.

Colwell’s leadership in the Sea Grant College Program at the University of Maryland as well as the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute which received more than a hundred million dollars in state and federal funds for building laboratories and for grants to do research allowed her to support many woman researchers and scientists.

In 1997, Vice President Al Gore invited her to become the director of the National Science Foundation where she served for six years from 1998 to 2004 as the agency’s first female director. The NSF grants support thousands of scientists, engineers, teachers, and students each year.

Colwell also served on the CIA’s Intelligence Science Board and worked with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Colwell was the leader of NIGSCC—the National Interagency Genome Science Coordinating Committee which was the anthrax task force after 9/11. She was chair of the NIGSCC until it disbanded in 2011 and was awarded a medal by the CIA for her work.

Colwell was instrumental in the Gulf of Mexico clean up after the BP oil spill. She was chair of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) along with experts from leading oceanographic research centers: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the National Oceanography Centre in England. With BP’s half billion dollars, they “funded a new generation of Gulf scientists: 455 postdoctoral positions, 630 PhD students, 562 students in master’s programs, 1,048 undergraduates, and 115 high school students, some of whom will spend their careers in the Gulf area.”

In addition to working to solve the environmental crisis in the Gulf and save humanity from cholera, Colwell has continued her focus on safe drinking water. “The World Health Organization and UNICEF say that one in three people on Earth—some 2.2 billion people—lack safe water… safe water is a women’s issue. Women and girls are the water haulers of the underdeveloped world, so providing conveniently located sources of safe drinking water also helps keep girls in school.”

What can we do to help make sure humanity has access to Safe Water? The Safe Water Network has been “serving more than one million people in parts of India and Ghana with water-purifying kiosks the size of a telephone booth. The key to their success has been charging customers a nominal but realistic fee—as little as five cents for 20 liters—to cover the cost of the kiosk, training its operator and staff, repairing and replacing parts, and educating consumers.”

What are you willing to do? How can you help more people have access to drinking water? “Safe Water Network estimates that four billion people will lack safe water in the next ten to fifteen years.” What issues on our planet are important to you? 

Despite unequal treatment of women in science, Rita Colwell has spent six decades in science and changed many lives. What a tragedy it would have been if any of the men who blocked her path kept her from making her discoveries, leading task forces or creating opportunities to support the women who came after her.

“Despite having both the scientific smarts and the scientific degrees, women are still not getting ahead. Once women earn their PhDs, they receive only 39 percent of postdoctoral fellowships, the stepping stone to a career in academic science, and have only 18 percent of the professorships. How can this be? It’s not for lack of interest…women have been actively excluded from science for decades.”

Colwell asks:

“How can we achieve true equality within the scientific enterprise so that men and women can thrive and compete as equals?”

We do not need to cater to women in science. We need only give women an equal chance to achieve.

[image error]

The post Women Do Need A Lab of Their Own with Rita Colwell appeared first on We Said Go Travel.

Thrive Global: “You Have to Fall Down, to RISE UP!” with Lisa Niver

Thank you to Phil Laboon and Thrive Global for interviewing me: “To develop Grit, appreciate that you have to fall down to rise up”



[image error]



There is an old Japanese saying: “Fall seven, rise eight.” You have to fall down to rise up. Duckworth tells us: “Grit rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty […]

There is an old Japanese saying: “Fall seven, rise eight.” You have to fall down to rise up. Duckworth tells us: “Grit rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.” When I first started my blog, We Said Go Travel, I had an editor at a site called Technorati who used to send back my articles 4 or 5 times. It never bothered me to try again because I knew I was learning a different style of writing. When someone suggested that I should learn to shoot video; I listened. I bought a used Cisco Flip video camera on Ebay for $50 and took it on my next trip to Taiwan. When I returned, I said to my 5th grade science class: “I shot all this video on my trip, but I do not know how to make a movie.” I have no idea what inspired me to say it but it changed my life. My student, Hannah, came up to me at the end of class and said, “Ms. Niver, I will stay in at recess and teach you iMovie.” That 8 minute lesson started me on my way to creating videos for YouTube, Smithsonian and KTLA TV.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa Niver. Lisa is a travel journalist and the founder of We Said Go Travel which is read in over 200 countries. She sailed for seven years working for three different cruise lines and has visited more than 100 countries on 6 continents. She shares her travel stories on TV for KTLA, on her YouTube channel with nearly 900,000 views and in stories for Ms. Magazine, AARP, American Airlines and others.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what events have drawn you to this specific career path:

When I was 11 years old and my sister was 9, my parents took us on a cruise in the Mediterranean. I saw the Parthenon in Greece and the pyramids in Egypt, and I felt like my history books had come to life. I was mesmerized by all of the incredible places. I have always wanted to see more and learn the stories of the people where I visit.

Can you share your story of Grit and Success? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

After an eleven month adventure, I decided to give a talk at my temple called, “Uncovering Jewish Morocco,” to promote my first book. One of the Rabbis told me it was not a very good idea, he said, “how will you feel when no one shows up?” I responded “Well, I am by myself now, so I think it will be okay.” It turned out that over 40 people came to my talk and it was a great success.

I read marketing guru, Seth Godin’s books and emails, and at that time he was fond of saying: “Artists Ship.” He encouraged entrepreneurs and artists of all types to share what they were working on as soon as possible and not wait for perfection. I was not sure I was ready to give a talk or that I was the best person to speak on Jewish Morocco, but I had the idea and I went for it. While promoting that talk, other doors opened. I was introduced to the Editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal. He offered me a column which still runs today! (http://www.jewishjournal.com/wesaidgotravel) Writing for the Jewish Journal has been a great opportunity, in fact, I won an award for one of my articles from the Southern California Journalism Awards.

“A Journey to Freedom over three Passovers:”  https://jewishjournal.com/culture/religion/passover/219472/journey-freedom-three-passovers/  (story that won the award from Los Angeles Press Club)

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

In my late 40s, I was diagnosed with an eye condition called left intermittent esotropia. I had it since I was little, but I never was diagnosed. What I did know was that other kids were much better at sports than me and just figured that I was clumsy. Little did I know, there was a medical reason why it was hard for me. As an adult my eye doctor explained: “You have always had to work harder to keep up with everyone else.” After a year of weekly vision therapy and daily homework, I noticed the difference of vision therapy. When I went skiing, I was amazed to see and experience the mountain with my eyes working together. It brought me fresh understanding about why I used to get so scared on the slopes and cry on the side of the mountain when I was a little girl. I have made great progress, and now challenge myself to see all the new things I can accomplish.

So how did Grit lead to your eventual success? How did Grit turn things around?

After traveling in Asia for 18 months, I returned to Los Angeles and got two job offers. One was to be a set teacher for a Nickelodeon series, and the other was to be a freelancer for USA Today in the 10Best section. I was not sure if I should keep teaching but in a new way as a studio teacher or start to shift my focus from teaching to journalism. I chose to do both, it was a great choice for me and enabled me to slowly transition to focus more on writing and video. I learned as much as I could from the two very different paths, and it helped clarify what I wanted to do next.

Lisa Niver’s stories on USA Today 10best: https://www.10best.com/local-experts/lisa-niver/

So, how are things going today? 

For The People: Kamala Harris

Thank you to Thrive Global for publishing my article about Kamala Harris.



[image error]

Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice presidential nominee for the 2020 election, was the first female district attorney of San Francisco and served as the Attorney General of California. She has a history of breaking barriers as she is only the second female African American United States Senator and the tenth African American United States Senator. She is a highly qualified lawyer and political servant who cares about people and legislation that protects and serves. To learn more about Harris as a political leader and her past achievements I read her book, The Truths We Hold, in which she describes the community that helped shape her and thereby the policies that she has supported, which have helped change California state and our country.

[image error]Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris’ parents met during the civil rights movement while they were both earning their PhDs at Berkeley. In her early life, she was exposed to the civil rights movement and key leaders including Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker and author and activist Maya Angelou, who was the first black woman to achieve the title of “bestselling author” for “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Harris’ heroes were lawyers, including giants of the civil rights movement like Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Constance Baker Motley. Harris shares that she ”cared a lot about fairness, and saw the law as a tool that can help make things fair.”  Harris was inspired by her role models to become a lawyer who could affect change. 

Harris chose Howard University for her undergraduate degree, which was Thurgood Marshall’s alma mater. She returned to her native California to attend UC Hastings School of Law in San Francisco, followed by a job as deputy district attorney in Alameda county. She recounts how things have changed since 1990 when she was admitted to the bar. When practicing law in the early 1990s, women wore skirt suits because they “were not permitted to wear pants in the courtroom.” In contrast, it is no longer risqué to wear trousers–Kamala Harris can be seen wearing pants suits on the campaign trail, symbolic of breaking barriers of a historically male dominated public sphere.

Kamala Harris has been breaking through the glass ceiling for decades. “In 2015, 95% of our country’s prosecutors were white, and 79% of those were men.” She helped to break racial and gender barriers in 2003 when she was elected as California’s Attorney General. As a lawyer and political leader, she has been able to “look out for the overlooked, to speak up for those whose voices aren’t being heard, to see and address the causes of crime, not just their consequences, and to shine a light on the inequality and unfairness that lead to injustice. It is to recognize that not everyone needs punishment, that what many need, quite plainly, is help.”

[image error]Kamala Harris

Her innovative programs have included Back on Track, which was a law enforcement program in which former inmates do community service, get their GEDs, reconnect with family members, pay outstanding child support and remain drug free. Keeping former inmates from returning to the prison system is a huge challenge but Harris’ program had proven results, which led to reform in 33 states that have adopted revised sentencing and corrections policies aimed at promoting alternatives to incarceration and reducing recidivism.” Harris has always had a commitment to long term solutions that make people’s lives better.

One of her first contributions as California District Attorney involved the mortgage crisis of 2010 when the Attorneys General of all 50 states worked together on a joint investigation. At first California was offered $2 billion dollars but after Harris investigated and took action, she helped to secure significant relief for the taxpayers including $20 billion in relief for homeowners, $300 million for the state pension system for investment losses $550 million from SunTrust Mortgage, $200 million from Citigroup, and another $500 million from Bank of America—all to address losses sustained during the mortgage crisis.

On June 26, 2013, Kamala Harris was in attendance in Washington DC when the California Supreme Court ruled Proposition 8- an amendment to the California Constitution that would strip same-sex couples of the legal rights that come with marriage- as unconstitutional. In celebration of the landmark decision, Kamala Harris performed wedding ceremonies at the State Capitol.  

[image error]Kamala Harris and Joe Biden

As Harris explained: “Whether we are fighting for transgender rights or for an end to racial bias, whether we are fighting against housing discrimination or insidious immigration laws, no matter who we are or how we look or how little it may seem we have in common, the truth is, in the battle for civil rights and economic justice, we are all the same.”

After her many successes as Attorney General, she ran for the U.S. Senate to keep “fighting for families feeling the burden of stagnant wages, soaring housing costs, and diminishing opportunity; for people imprisoned in a broken criminal justice system; for students exploited by predatory lenders and burdened by skyrocketing tuition; for victims of fraud and white-collar crime; for immigrant communities, for women, for older people.”

Once elected, she served on the Intelligence, Homeland Security, Budget, and Environment and Public Works committees asking tough questions and working for the people on issues of counterterrorism, securing our borders, the challenge of nuclear proliferation, as well as gathering intelligence while protecting civil liberties. She is concerned that America is ready to deal with cyber warfare and will have secure elections. She voted against John Kelly’s confirmation for Homeland Security Secretary as he “wasn’t prepared to keep the nation’s promises” especially on DACA and immigrant rights. Harris has co-sponsored bipartisan legislation in Congress—the DREAM Act—which gives these young people [DACA] a permanent path to citizenship. 

[image error]Kamala Harris

Harris wants all Americans to have access to affordable health care. She asks “Why are Americans paying so much more for the medicines we need? Because, unlike many other advanced countries, the U.S. government doesn’t negotiate prices on prescription drugs.” She focuses on solutions to help address the root of the problems. Whether it is the Affordable Care Act, the opioid crisis, or families who have been separated by immigration policies, Kamala Harris cares about helping Americans achieve a good life.

Kamala Harris has a vision of a united America: “For all of our differences, for all the battles, for all the fights, we are still one American family, and we should act like it. We have so much more in common than what separates us. We need to paint a picture of the future in which everyone can see themselves, and everyone is seen…a better future is possible for us all.”

[image error]



Thank you to Thrive Global for publishing my article about Kamala Harris.



[image error]

The post For The People: Kamala Harris appeared first on We Said Go Travel.