Leading with Love: The We The Change Community Response to the Coronavirus Crisis
We The Change, a Certified B Corp Women CEOs initiative, has pledged to work internationally with Mujeres B to strive toward a world that is richly regenerative and radically inclusive. All allies are welcome to sign the pledge and join us.
We are living through an unprecedented crisis. The B Corp community is a supportive global community, committed to using business as a force for good. Together, we will get through this.
As business owners, we fully recognize that running a business during challenging times is not easy. Yet, within our community, we have the expertise, commitment, and support to navigate these unsettling times and come through stronger.
In our response to the current crisis, We The Change is spearheading two projects to serve the B Corp community. We are:
- Organizing a series of free webinars on running your business during a time of crisis. We have an updated list of upcoming webinars available here.
- Collecting and organizing all the offers, tools, and resources available within and for the B Corp community.
The complete list is available here. If you have a service that can help our community during this crisis, please submit it using this form.
Leaving Our Comfort Zones
When Anna Colibri, CEO of Colibri Digital Marketing, was divorcing and launching a new business, a career coach told her she should get out of her comfort zone. She laughed and said, “What comfort zone?”
These are challenging, unsettling times. No one we talk with is in their comfort zone. Everyone is concerned about the coronavirus crisis and its effect on our professional and personal lives. Some of us are experiencing rapid downturns in business. Others are experiencing increased depression and anxiety as a result of social distancing and disrupted routines.
We all understand at a deep level that people we love may sicken or even die. We can see that some businesses are not going to pull through this crisis. We know that working women, people of color, poor people, and the homeless will be disproportionately affected.
The past few weeks have been exhausting in many ways, but they also have created opportunities for further connections and mutual support.
The B Corp Community Puts People First
The B Corp community has always put stakeholders first: employees, customers, suppliers, and the community all need to be considered and respected within our business operations.
Within the B Corp community, the coronavirus crisis has been met with a chorus of “What can we do to help?” It’s uplifting to be a part of a supportive community of wildly talented and generous individuals.
B Corps large and small have been sharing resources and offers, and supporting each other through these challenging times. Standout examples of B Corps pivoting and rising to meet the challenge include:
- Portland Garment Factory, a woman-owned B Corp apparel company that has transitioned from apparel manufacture to the manufacture of protective garments for health care workers.
- MIXT, which is providing salads to medical workers and offering substantial discounts to those who need them.
- HoneyBee, a company that provides financial support services to employees, is waiving the fees for the first three months to help get employers up and running as soon as possible.
Until we can go back to business as usual (whatever that will be in the post-coronavirus world), we have a unique opportunity to experiment with love, compassion, and generosity.
This crisis has compelled our community, like many others, to rise to the occasion and do what we need to do to come together and support each other. We are heartened by the ways in which we can support each other and those around us, and remain committed to supporting women’s voices and advancing our common cause to use business as a force for good.
We will get through this, together.
Respectfully submitted by B Corp Women CEOs and We The Change members Michelle Hirons of HigherRing, Anna Colibri of Colibri Digital Marketing, Kristy Wallace of Ellevate, Christina Marie Noel of Noel & Co., and Carolina Miranda of Cultivating Capital.
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
Leading with Love was originally published in B The Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
