Women’s Voices

—  I’m looking out the window at the Chinatown skyline when Alessandra Lariu starts talking about the jungle. That’s where she grew up, a few years ago, when Porto Velho, Brazil, was barely a dot on the map. The closest big city north is Manaus, 900 klicks away. To the south, it’s La Paz, and that’s in Bolivia; you have to drive 29 hours through Peru to get there. In between, and east and west, you want green space? Perhaps her isolated youth is why Ale is driven to connect, both for a living (she’s a brand innovator) and as an avocation, as co-founder of SheSays, a global organization educating and empowering women, particularly about money and pay equality, which is our topic today. It may also be why after many years in London, she’s also at home in a jungle of a different sort, New York City.

—  When I was young, I had a hero. He played second base for the New York Mets; in Little League, I played the same position. My second hero was a baseball pitcher whose last name was pretty close to my first. My third hero was a guy named Dwight Gooden. Gooden, the best pitcher in the world, was an ideal role model—until his drug addiction took him down a rabbit hole. I replaced him with Cal Ripken, Jr., who, though not a Met, showed up to play baseball 2,632 times in a row, with aches and pains and who knows what else. That’s something you can really admire. But I haven’t had a childlike hero since he retired. As with most men, I’m pretty sure, it never occurred to me that maybe my hero could be a woman. Given my rationales for the three who preceded Ripken, maybe that wasn’t such a smart thing. Alessandra Lariu the Brazilian co-founder of SheSays, a global organization that educates and advocates for women creatives. We talked a year ago about money and pay equality; then, the operative question was: “Is the next #MeToo about #money?” A few days ago, we talked about politics and motherhood and pregnancy discrimination. I don’t know if Ale has a hero, if she has ever had heroes. But today, she is inspired. Change is incremental, but with people like Ale on the front lines, there are signs that our culture is finally coming around. Maybe she should be my next hero.