“It is okay, you can have your fears and be fearless at the same time!” [Interview]

Mentoring serves each of us regardless of origin, education, interests or age. The sooner we begin to shape a person’s understanding of himself/herself and to teach him/her acceptance, empathy, perseverance and assertiveness, the better. Working with adolescent girls is a real challenge that Mérida Miller, our interlocutor, is coping with perfectly.

During the interview we had a great pleasure to ask Mérida a couple of questions about mentoring, how important it is to be given a hand at a young age and how to become a fearless woman. On 8 March, during the Global Mentoring Walk organized by the Polish Professional Women in the Netherlands, we will have a great opportunity to hear an inspiring story of Mérida Miller who decided to quit her corporate job, move from the United States to Europe and start her own non-profit foundation – the Project Fearless. The project is dedicated to girls aged 9-14 who want to live the life by their own rules, with full control and consciousness. PPW: Mérida, what does the mentoring mean to you? What was your motivation to join us during the Global Mentoring Walk this year? Mérida: Literally, from the very beginning of the Project Fearless Magdalena Sedek, a member of PPW, has been such a supporter of us. I do not know how she found me, but in 2019 after one of the events we attended, she contacted me just to tell me what a great job I was doing. I must admit that those cheering words meant a lot to me. We started following and supporting each other. Magdalena asked me to join the Global Mentoring Walk organized by PPW in 2020 and I thought it was a great opportunity. Firstly, I wanted to find out more about the Polish Professional Women community and secondly, I believed that mentoring, an accessible mentoring, is really, really important to people of all ages and all backgrounds. In my corporate career I didn’t feel like I had a real mentor and I cannot avoid the feeling that it was a big miss for me. I used to feel very nervous back then. I heard from various people that I needed to find a mentor. But I never knew how to get one! I had no idea how to ask for one. I would be embarrassed just to walk up to somebody who I admired and say: Hi, would you be my mentor? I think the Global Mentoring Walk is such a great way to meet the right people. PPW: You mentioned that you used to work in a corporate world. How many years did you work at the office? Mérida: I did seven and half years at an international sports brand, very popular in the U.S. I worked there as a concept designer. PPW: Why did you decide to start your own non‑profit organization? Was it a little of a plot-twist to you? Mérida: It was a plot-twist, indeed! There were a couple of big reasons why I did it. One of the most crucial once was that I felt unhappy at my job. I had to really do some detail internal work to understand why I was feeling that way. I realized, that for me it was very important to be in an environment where I could cheer up and support people, where I could work with my hands and where I could create an impact. At the job that I was doing, none of those things were really happening and I thought that I had to find something else. The company itself was indeed really great but it just was not the job I saw myself in long term. At the same time, I was attending events like networking gatherings, interviews, workshops on how to be a better leader or on how to give a hand. All those events were amazing, and I was wondering why no one told me about them sooner. Why was I not given the support when I was younger? Why no one said that I could define success in my own terms without having to break the glass ceiling to get the support I needed. I realized I wanted to do just that for others, to help them see the possibilities. I resigned from my corporate job at the end of 2018 and since 2019 I am working on to the Project Fearless. This project is about empowering and shaping a new generation. PPW: I imagine that it wasn’t an easy decision to quit the corporate career after seven years and choose an alternative path in a non-profit organization. Mérida: It wasn’t. I think that when you quit the job, there is always a risk. My company was all that I have ever known. I was still finishing college when I got recruited for the company but at the same time, I knew, deep in my heart, that it was not what I was meant to do for all of my life. Once I realized that and I started following this thought, it was easy to take the step into the unknown and leave the corporate world. I was ready to start something new. PPW: Have you started the Project Fearless alone? Was there anybody supporting you in your decision or was it more of your own thing? Mérida: At the beginning it was only my creation. I did not have the co-founder. Until June 2019, I was the only one working on this project but now, I have an amazing team of volunteers who help me with anything from the social media, teaching the courses and many other tasks. Now, I have a pretty big team, but I am still the founder, full time on my own. PPW: Being a mentor, a teacher, a leader for the little girls, must be very challenging and bears big responsibility. Have you always seen yourself as a mentor? Mérida: It is great and inspiring. I constantly learn something new about myself and about the world. Every day, as I work with the girls, I discover more and more. The girls are so different from each other, inspiring and energetic. I also recognize some of my individual character traits in certain girls, in various personality types I observe during the classes. There is this one girl who is quite loud in the class, she seems to be confident. In the reality however, she is very insecure, but she manifests or masks her insecurity by being loud. Such observations make reflect on my own personality and analyze my own behavior and reactions, which is refreshing. It is instructive to work with girls who are in young age. I can see the impact we make on them very quickly and that is really inspiring. For instance, when we talk about the teamwork and the leadership one week, the next week we can already observe a difference in those girls’ behavior. PPW: And how about their parents? Do you experience gratitude from your pupils and their parents? Mérida: One of my favorite quotes from one of the parents was: I do not know what you do or how you do it, but it is working. It really cracks me up. I love that feedback! The parents are always so supportive, overall very happy with what they see; the increasing confidence in their daughters, how they make new friends, learn about themselves. PPW: Together with other strong, independent and caring women you are teaching very young girls how to spread wings, develop their talents and be brave to be who they want to be. But does it always go easy? Everybody is different and needs a personal approach. Mérida: Everything, everybody is different! We certainly see that girls need different type of attention and encouragement. Therefore, we work towards creating the atmosphere of teamwork and mutual support from the very beginning. We are not trying to be the parents to those girls, we are not coaching them and showing how they should or have to behave in certain situations. Instead, we ask them how they want to behave, how they want to be seen, respected and treated. The deal during the class is that if we fall or make a mistake, we do not laugh at each other. This rule comes from the girls participating in our classes. It helps them to open up and be sure that nobody will judge them for being themselves. On the other hand, we ask the girls not to be judgmental and to accept the others as they are. We appreciate that we cannot be friends with everyone we study or work with, but we believe we should try to be good and supportive to each other, try to get the best out of those around us. PPW: We are all aware of the gender gap. Do you think it should influence the skills or interests that the girls focus on developing when attending your courses? Mérida: There is definitely a progress being made across all age groups, trying to show more women in leadership, more opportunities for girls to discover new things in various fields of science and technology. We do not aim to influence the girls to choose any certain route to follow, it is not our purpose. I believe our purpose is to equip them with the tools that will help the girls to feel confident, no matter the career path they choose. Whatever happens, they need to know they are in control, they need to have the confidence and believe in themselves. In principal, we want to show the girls that they have countless opportunities to choose from and that they have the right to make their own choices. PPW: Would you consider yourself as a fearless woman? Mérida: Yes, I would although, sometimes I do not take a moment to appreciate all that I accomplished so far. Even you said to me during our conversation that it could be really risky and maybe scary to quit a job and start something completely different on your own. But it looks like it wasn’t scary enough for me (laugh). We all have different fears. My personal number one is disappointing people. We all define fear differently, we have other set of things that scare us. Remember, it is okay, you can have your fears and be fearless at the same time. PPW: Do you have any golden tips on how to become fearless? Let’s see, the golden tip about being fearless – that is a good question! Trust your intuition and be yourself. I know it might sound like a really hard thing to do, but I believe that if you just lead authentically and believe in yourself, the magic will happen and the people will notice and appreciate that very quickly. *** The Global Mentoring Walks convene established women leaders and emerging women leaders to walk together. As they walk, they discuss their personal and professional challenges and successes to establish a mentoring relationship, in which the established leader guides, advises and supports an emerging leader. These women are different, but they are guided by a shared belief: power expands the moment it is shared.