Water for Peace: CreativeMornings Sacramento

The third Friday of the month means one thing at the Urban Hive, home of our Sacramento office: CreativeMornings!

CreativeMornings is a breakfast lecture series serving the creative community. Local chapters from cities around the world host monthly events to celebrate their city’s creative talent and open their space with like-minded individuals. The Sac chapter of this international event series features a rotating list of speakers, breakfast, and—of course—coffee. 

At today’s event, doors opened at 8:30 a.m. and attendees enjoyed breakfast burritos and fresh fruit from a local co-op and sipped on fresh local coffee. The main event began at 9:00 a.m., with an opening from CreativeMornings Sacramento host Rebecca Plumb. As always, she read the CreativeMornings Manifesto, which begins, “Everyone is creative,” and set the tone for the talk.

March’s theme, picked by the CreativeMornings Perth, Australia chapter, centered around water. Who better to speak to this than La Mission Por Vida Founder William Mendoza? Through his nonprofit organization, William works to bring clean water to developing countries and has impacted more than 1.5 million people globally.

William shared his story of addiction and how it led him to start the nonprofit. To William, “Water is hope, opportunity, progress, [and] education.” Through providing access to clean water, William believes he helps bring peace to communities.

The event wrapped up with Q+A from the audience. We left feeling inspired by William’s story and his work to improve the lives of people around the world. We’re proud to work with organizations and companies that share this same vision for social good—including fashion eCommerce site Olivela, which donates 20% of all its proceeds to support educating girls worldwide, and Cathay Pacific Airways, which was the first airline to invest in a biofuel company and has committed to reducing their net carbon emissions by 50% against 2005 levels by 2050.

Interested in learning more about CreativeMornings? Check out their website to find your local chapter, and maybe we’ll see you there!

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The credSac office closed. Check out our brand new office in SF.

Hear Us Roar: Happy International Women’s Day!

Stacey Boyd, CEO and Founder of Olivela | Milken Institute London Summit 2018

Joanne Chen, Partner, Foundation Capital | amoConf 2018

Caitlin Bartley, CEO, cred | SaaStr Annual 2019

Sarah McCrary, CEO, GasBuddy | Unacast Real World Talks 2018

Sree Menon, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Global Operations, Tophatter | TAP 2018

Rebecca Stone, Vice President of Marketing, LiveRamp | RampUp on the Road London 2018

Yamini Rangan, CCO, Dropbox | SaaStr Annual 2019

Happy International Women’s Day! Across the world, March 8 marks a global event for women and men to celebrate the “social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.”

Here at cred, we are proud to partner with a number of dynamic women speakers across industries to help share their stories, wisdom, and unique perspectives on what’s next in innovation and entrepreneurship. As a women-led company ourselves, cred recognizes the importance of having strong female leaders who are not afraid to rattle their industries and inspire movements for generations to come.

According to the 2018 Pew Research Center’s Data on Women Leaders study, only 4.8 percent of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies were held by women. We hope to see this number grow over time as we continue to work with outstanding female leaders to give them a platform to broadcast their voice. (Related: credTen: Top Ten Conferences in Female Entrepreneurship)

Today, we celebrate the amazing women we see on the stage, in our office, and around the world.

See below for a sample of some of our amazing women speakers.

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Know a female founder whose voice should be amplified? Send them our way hello@credpr.com.

Reflecting on Illuminate 2019: How to Empower the Modern Workplace

Last week, I attended Illuminate, a one-day people conference on a mission to make the manager-employee relationship better. Hosted by people management platform Reflektive, the event was filled with tactical takeaways to improve myself as a manager and contribute to the growth of cred’s culture and people.

Featuring speakers from Allbirds, Airbnb, Omada Health, AppAnnie, Pinterest, and 23andMe, Illuminate shined light on the employee journey and its expansion to include a company’s work environment, mission, values, culture, and wellness.

Omada Health CPO Jo Dennis and CEO Sean Duffy weighed the pros and cons of anonymous feedback before concluding their business is better off without it, opting for a transparent culture of feedback. Transparent feedback limits confusion, has ownership, and provides context. While not easy for anyone, giving constructive feedback does gets better with practice.

In addition to sessions discussing diversity and inclusion and coaching culture at scale, Illuminate offered attendees a chance to win a pair of Allbirds following the event. While I didn’t win the Allbirds giveaway, I walked away with a deeper look into what it takes to be a better manager and overall a better team.

More thoughts from the stage:

• Fairness is the foundation of feedback. Create an equal playing field by offering tools and resources that ensure everyone is speaking the same feedback language.

• Peer-to-peer feedback is just as important as manager-to-employee feedback.

• No one quits because they received too much praise from leadership. Top communication issues that prevent effective leadership include failure to recognize employee achievements, offer clear directions, and carve out time to meet with employees.

• People development and culture is a work in progress. It can be rewarding, challenging, messy and constantly has to be worked on.

• For more, here’s Reflektive’s official event recaps.

Interested in continuing your learning and fostering a culture of #nobadmanagers? Check out these four books that stood out and were recommended by speakers and other attendees. I’ve added them to my reading queue, what about you?

• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

• Bring Your Human to Work by Erica Keswin

Gathering Around Modern Campfires at TEDxSoMa

There’s nothing like sitting around a campfire sharing stories and creating conversation—but is it possible to recreate this warm and whimsical experience in a tech-obsessed city like San Francisco on a Tuesday night? TEDxSoMa thought so.

On January 15, about 700 attendees braved rainy weather to gather in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to receive inspiration from six hand-selected speakers, each with an idea worth spreading. The TEDx event theme? Modern Campfires. The TEDxSoMa website creatively elaborated on this theme of choice sharing, “The campfire has been a place for people to come together - a place to tell stories, learn from each other, and gain a sense of belonging and community.”

A handful of us from the cred team had the pleasure of volunteering at TEDxSoMa. We loved interacting with other San Franciscans passionate about attending a “modern campfire” to create community and connection.

Ideas Worth Spreading

After months of coaching and training, six speakers took the TEDx stage for a night of modern campfire conversation. Here’s a recap of TEDxSoMa’s 2019 speakers:

1. Juliana Delgado, an award-winning Colombian writer, spoke about the language hierarchy in the United States and how it limits a group’s access to opportunities and social acceptance.

   • “...staying up late to practice pronouncing words so the kids at school wouldn't make fun of me. I hated myself for not fitting in, not realizing that there was a hierarchy much bigger than me at play here. I felt I was the one who was wrong.”

2. Mazin Jamal, founder and director of Holistic Underground, spoke about masculinity in today's culture and how to redefine what it means to "be a man."

   • “When I was hopeless, I was useless to everyone, and I was making things worse. And that’s what happens, men feel useless and hopeless so they double down on the problem. And everyone pays the price-especially women and transgender people.”

3. fnnch, an artist who believes art is for everyone, spoke about how street art is art for the masses. He shared the importance of looking for canvases everywhere, taking back public spaces, and investigating your town's local regulations around public art.

   • “Public space is our space...our way to communicate with each other. To express ourselves. To be heard. To listen. To inspire each other. To comfort each other....And you do not need to be a professional artist to join in….”

4. Chief Sylvia Moir, a California native who serves as the Chief of Police in Tempe, Arizona, spoke about mindfulness.

   • “There was plenty of Resistance. To some it meant that by encouraging the practice of mindfulness, I was softening policing. The science and research suggested that building resilience to trauma and toxicity was hard work, and changing culture and climate is tough.“

5. Dr. Yoni Alkan, a professional cuddler, sexual educator, and consultant, spoke about the power of platonic touch.

   • “Rejection feels so searing to us, that we try to avoid hearing ‘No’ at all costs and stop asking. Rejection is hard, but I’d much rather have an honest ‘NO’ than a ‘YES’ you don’t mean.”

6. Bishop William Swing, the former Bishop of San Francisco and current President and Founding Trustee of United Religions Initiative (URI), spoke about unity within community.

   • “I thought: ‘If the world has a United Nations, then most likely the world needs a United Religions. Someone should do something about that.  Why not me?’ The question captured my heart.”

Besides the original content coming straight from the lips of these six  speakers, the audience enjoyed an intermission filled with a meditation session and  dance performance from Vancouver dance troupe TWObigsteps Collective. The dance titled “Veils” was influenced by W.E.B. Dubois' theory of “double consciousness.”

Takeaways

The original and carefully crafted TED talks from these speakers did not fall on deaf ears. There was a full house and the audience was extremely excited to be there. One cred team volunteer even took a photo for a man in front of the stage who he said that being there was "a dream come true."

While the speakers and topics were diverse, TEDxSoMa 2019 had the resounding theme of mindfulness as the common thread–the consistent theme about reframing how we think about our everyday lives.

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2018: A Year in Review

For cred, 2018 has been a year of winning. From January through December, we’ve achieved multiple milestones such as growing to a team of 20 people, opening an office in Sacramento, and ramping up our Events Management arm of the business. As we wrap up 2018, we’re excited to reflect on the year and highlight one win from each month.

January

We said hello to our new home at the brand new WeWork Montgomery Station in San Francisco’s Financial District. We love our new location, with easy access to BART and public transportation and endless lunch options.

February

The blog launched the first post of our credTen series, which highlights the top 10 events across different industries. These lists have become the most popular posts on our blog and we look forward to building out more in the months to come. A few of our favorites include our credTen for events in marketing, blockchain, female entrepreneurship, and design.

March

It was Pi Day (3.14) at cred and there was no shortage of pie at the office! Since the launch of our cred Culture Club, a group designed to plan events and sustain our strong company culture, we observe engaging holidays like Pi Day with a celebratory treat or activity in the office. To stay in the loop with our office culture (and office dogs), follow us on Instagram.

April

We continued to partner with Hamilton Families, a San Francisco-based organization on a mission to end family homelessness. Having volunteered at their kid’s carnival and wrapped Christmas gifts in previous years, our team endearingly refers to the organization as “Ham Fam.”  Throughout 2018, cred volunteered with Hamilton Families by participating at Friday night bingo nights and donating Christmas stockings.

May

cred turned 3! We took our birthday celebrations to Neyborly Union Square, a modern and chic art gallery here in San Francisco, and reflected on some of our major accomplishments, including confirming 1,800+ speaking opportunities for our clients, growing our team to 17, building a database of more than 7,500 events from scratch, and launching our first official internship program for summer 2018.

June

Our team had the pleasure of volunteering at Hustle Con, hosted at Oakland’s historic Paramount Theatre. Hustle Con is an annual event started in 2014 to answer the question: what does it mean to hustle? We’ve secured speaking opportunities at multiple events put on by The Hustle for our clients and love working with their team.

P.S. If you want to ramp up your speaking strategy, feel free to reach out to hello@credpr.com.

July

Our fearless CEO Caitlin Bartley spoke on a panel of female founders at the She Leads breakfast hosted by WeWork. Caitlin shared insight on how she started cred and provided practical tips for female founders.

August

We had our first cred Cupcake Wars in honor of Cupcake Day on August 19! Who knew there could be so many talented and competitive bakers (and cake lovers) on one team? With four judges and nine bakers, three winners were selected for best taste, best design, and best apron. We all enjoyed a week-long sugar rush due to endless homemade cupcakes, but agreed it was worth it.

Until next year, Cupcake Wars, until next year.

September

September was a productive and memorable month for our Events Management team. We put on two events in one week— plus three events packed into one day shortly after! Check out Caitlin’s recap on one of these events here.

Going into 2018, one major focus was to grow the Event Management side of the company and we did just that! We worked with multiple clients to coordinate events, from one-day summits to multiple-day conferences. The team planned and managed a total of 19 events in 2018 alone.

Interested to learn more about how we can help you with your event? Email us at events@credpr.com.

October

We reached our largest team size to date with 20 employees strong. One reason for this growth was launching our brand new office in Sacramento! We’re thrilled to have expanded outside of the Bay Area in 2018.

November

We put on our first international event in cred history! Our Events Management team flew across the pond for RampUp London, which attracted more than 300 attendees at the prestigious Savoy Hotel, the sister property to Fairmont San Francisco where RampUp SF is hosted each year.

December

We took to Livermore Valley for cred’s Holiday Party. To commemorate our incredible growth and success this year, our team spent an afternoon at Rubino Estates Winery for wine tasting, lunch, bocce ball, and a Secret Santa gift exchange.

Thanks for the memories, 2018! Looking forward to an epic 2019.