We’re working with Women’s Agenda to help counter a bad week for women in leadership. Join us in sending a note of encouragement to women across Australia to get ambitious, to stay positive and to keep pushing for change.

This is not the post we expected to be writing.

We expected to be posting about female leadership firsts, about smashed ceilings, about values, and about choosing tolerance and respect over fear and hate.

Things didn’t go the way we wanted. That much we all know. But if there’s one thing we know at Business Chicks, it’s that the ultimate test of character is how you respond to setbacks.

On Friday, at our final event with Sophia Amoruso, Business Chicks CEO Olivia Ruello took to the stage telling every single one of the the 900+ women in the room that now more than ever, we need to inspire women into leadership.

Sharing an email that she’d written to the Business Chicks team following Donald Trump’s win, Olivia said that while Wednesday was “not a good day for women” or for “building bridges not walls”, that it was important to remember that one man doesn’t rule the world.

“Young women and girls need to see women in ALL other areas of society right now,” she said. “We also need women across the globe to personally come into their own power, to stand up to bullies, to protect other women, to take a stand when and wherever they can.

“We want women to feel connected and supported and know that we BELIEVE in them as they step into and realise power.”

A couple of minutes after today’s event we made a plan with our friends over at Women’s Agenda to take these words and turn them into actions. It may be a while before we have the option of female President of the United States again, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move the needle elsewhere.

So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do what women do best and work together. We’re going drown out the negative rhetoric with stories of positivity and of women doing incredible things in all facets of society.

As Women’s Agenda wrote on their own site:

We decided to publish a series inviting readers and members to #StepUpAndSpeak. It’s an opportunity to share your little piece of encouragement on social media, and/or offer something a little more comprehensive with us over email that we can publish across our platforms. Perhaps, like Olivia, you’ve shared a note with your team (or with your children or mentee or someone else), that’d you like to share with women everywhere.

You can send a simple piece of advice and encouragement to girls and women, or share your own story of leadership, of lessons learnt or even your ambition for the future. It can be a sentence, a paragraph or something longer. Share with the team at Women’s Agenda or Business Chicks for publishing, or simply blast it on social media using the hashtag #StepUpAndSpeak. We’ll start publishing what we receive and see from Monday for the rest of the month of November.

In her concession speech this week, Hillary Clinton said: ‘This loss hurts but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it’

What Hilary showed us this week was that setbacks are a natural part of any journey – but that they don’t define us, nor do they stop us from doing what we do best.

So Business Chicks. Let’s Step Up. Let Speak. Let’s tell the stories that matter.

We can’t wait to hear what you come up with. #StepupandSpeak

Olivia is the CEO of Business Chicks.

 CONNECT WITH LIV HERE.