See It To Be It On The Dot

This month we have Erin Quick- CEO & Co-Founder of PairTree. She is the face of the adoption industry with her mission to disrupt the adoption system.


*I would love for you to go way back and tell us, what was your big dream when you were growing up? What did you think you were going to be? *


“I was convinced I was going to be an interior designer”, Erin replies. Erin says that she has always been left and right-brained. She loves the patterns, colors, and space, putting all of those elements together, and getting creative. She says when she got to college she learned that there were so many options that she didn’t even know existed.


Tell us about your career trajectory and how you ended up founding a company that's main focus is adoption.


Erin says she went to college and ended up dropping out her sophomore year and starting work in Seattle. She says, by luck, she ended up working in a marketing department and filling in for a co-worker while she was on maternity leave and ended up falling in love with marketing.


With intentions of going back to school, she got recruited into an ad agency and then got advice that she needed to go into brand strategy. She then got a job in brand strategy in San Francisco and later on moved to New York. She was there for about seven to eight years and then decided to move back to Seattle. There, no one was doing brand strategy the way she had been taught.


She then found a guy who knew everything about brand strategy and they founded a brand strategy firm in Seattle together and ran it all the way through 2019 when she then sold it to focus on PairTree.


What is the whole concept of PairTree? What is it and how did you get into it?


“The reason I got into it was because I went through it twice”, Erin says. She says one out of eight adults today are diagnosed with infertility and she tried everything to get pregnant. After spending three years trying and spending a fortune trying, and after her third miscarriage she and her husband decided to try the adoption route.


They thought that this route was going to be easier but then they realized it was three times as expensive, and took two years. They were in a lucky position and heard that you don’t have to use the conventional method to adopt and you can do it on your own. Expenses went down and so did the timeline.


They took full control and hired a social worker, a lawyer, and started to look for an expecting mom. Within weeks they met with a woman from Michigan and sooner or later her son was born and they flew back and picked him up. Three years later they did it again.


After going through it twice and having such great experiences, people started reaching out to them. They started helping other families in their spare time to teach them how to do what they did. She started looking into the industry and the market. With her brand background, she knew there was an opportunity for technology to make this industry more efficient and enjoyable. That was the seed for PairTree and the launching the first platform that has all the services a family would need for domestic private adoption.


What are the milestones in the adoption process and the services that PairTree offers?



Connecting people to a licensed social worker

Matching- like online dating with the main focus on personality matching

Legal- PairTree has curated a network with the best adoption attorneys in the U.S.

Support- most adoptive families concentrate on going through milestone three but, really after that is when it gets really hard. These families need a ton of support afterward so PairTree is launching this fourth milestone to help these families after the adoption process.



What is happening in the world right now such as Rode v.s. Wade, going to change the adoption industry?


Erin says, “It will for sure change the adoption industry”. She says if women now have three choices and it gets narrowed down to just two then the

May is here and we have another very special guest, who is actually a dear friend of Melinda’s, Jan Goss Jan is the founder of Civility Consulting, which is a consulting agency that focuses on corporate soul development and serves leaders through speaking, training and executive coaching to help create a profitable company culture. She is also the author of “Sex and Money!”, which is about speaking to your partner the way you would speak to your most important client.


Melinda starts off by asking Jan, “What was your big dream growing up, what did you think you would be when you were a little girl?” Jan responds that there were two things that she was torn between, one being a rockstar and the other being a nun.


People are always asking themselves if they are on the right path and thinking about what their life is going to be like, so Melinda really wanted to talk about Jan’s winding paths because she has done so much in her career. Jan says that she was a “late bloomer”, she has created four successful companies after the age of forty, and she is still blooming as she goes along. Jan says she was always fascinated with business, she has loved making money ever since she was a little girl, from sweeping sidewalks to doing any little work. Then, she would go to church and donate everything she had made. Having gone to college when she was young, and then going back later on in life, Jan studied International Business and then went to The Protocol School of Washington D.C. and graduated from there. Jan came back to Austin and had the vision to speak into the lives of professionals and teach them some best business practices. So, she started the Austin School of Protocol which then turned into Civility Consulting in 2012.


So, what draws Jan to work with women? She believes that all success comes from connecting. Whether that be connecting with yourself or a higher power or connecting with others but, she says, all success in life comes from some sort of connection and every connection begins with a first impression. She says the premise of Civility Consulting is that if we can focus on the first five seconds of that introduction then, you will make a really great impression and make a mark. She says “if we can, especially as women, pay attention to how we show up…and show up as who we really are, that's the key.”


Melinda asks if Jan could give three quick tips, what would they be? Jan says one of the skills she learned at The Protocol School of Washington that changed her life was, “act as if you belong.” She says the worst feeling is feeling like you don’t belong and the premise of this protocol is that when you go somewhere in life it is because on some level you were invited so, you can show up as if you belong. Jan says, “It’s an attitude, a thought process, a way we can prepare in advance to walk in and be like, you know what, I belong here”.


Jan has gone through some hardships and traumatic experiences in her personal life, so Melinda asks Jan how she dealt with those experiences and pushed through? Jan says one of the things she will forever be grateful for is the tools she has in her emotional and spiritual toolbox. Since she's been teaching people how to show up for themselves for years, it has now become a part of her. This is when she realized that all these tools and what she has been teaching, actually work. Jan says whether you are going through a divorce, mourning a death, or having financial problems, these tools work and that is what Civility Consulting teaches people. It is not just for professional reasons but also, can help you in your personal life.


Jan’s book, “Sex and Money!” which is about bedroom etiquette, was inspired by her career and how she would often be exposed to these women who would build multimillion-dollar businesses, but then their home life was falling apart. That is when Jan had the idea for her book. She says, “what if you spok

For this month’s episode, Melinda is bringing another incredible role model to the stage, Janet Phan. Janet is a TED speaker, author, and most importantly the founder of Thriving Elements- a non-profit for underserved girls in STEM.


Growing up, Janet’s mother worked as a cashier in dollar stores and goodwills and she remembers dreaming of being a cashier just like her mom. As she grew up, she realized there were other options for her. Janet’s parents were refugees from Vietnam so it was very difficult for them to navigate Janet through the American education system. This affected how Janet viewed the world, including who she could trust, who she would allow in her network, and who she saw as her role models. Janet says through her parents she learned to, "do good work and the people around you will see you and want to help you". She did so by going above and beyond, helping her school and her community. She says, "That has been a key part in how I've been successful, doing more than asked."


Meldina asks, "What was your breakout moment?", the time that Janet saw a whole other path and wanted to take charge. Janet says she remembers the moment very vividly. Leaving her family's house her senior year of high school due to conflict, she started working at KFC and Hollywood Video, trying to get in as many hours as possible. She said one night after work she went to go get gas and didn't have the money to pay for it. She says this was the turning point in her life. She realized then that she did not want to live paycheck to paycheck and this kicked her motivation into high gear. Janet then wrote a book about this experience called, "Boldly You". After holding her story in for so long she realized she needed to share and inspire others.


So what inspired Janet to start Thriving Elements and help underserved girls in STEM? Janet says it came from when she started traveling globally for a previous technology company she used to work for. She says through them she had the opportunity to enroll in business classes, something she was very grateful for. She says she wouldn't have gotten to where she is now if it wasn't for the mentors in her life that put time into her and took those risks for her. She says Thriving Elements started because when she was working and doing technology consulting around the globe she realized that she was often the only woman at the table and the only woman of color. This is why she wanted to help those girls that come from underserved backgrounds and put them on the playing field, like some of her mentors did for her, by providing opportunities and mentoring them.


But how does Thriving Elements overcome the hurdles and challenges of mentorship and how do they build long-lasting relationships with their clients? Janet says the problem with formal mentoring today is that it lacks that one on one connection so, they are not as impactful as they would like to be. The mentoring model Thriving Elements uses is built off the mentoring model that Janet built for herself. The way Thriving Elements works is as a mentee, you get matched with your mentor in High School, and the mentors stay with their mentee throughout college. In the early parts of your career, your mentor makes sure you get into the field you have been striving for. Janet says, there are three concepts to mentoring with Thriving Elements and the key concept is, "always follow up with your mentor". Sharing and following up with your mentor is important because they invest a lot of their time in you, so it is rewarding for them to hear all that you have accomplished with their help and guidance.


Thriving Elements started in 2016, and her roadmap has always been to expand globally. With people from all over the world asking Janet to bring Thriving Elements into their communities, she had built a network. Getting meets set up with people from all over the world was difficult due to a bad internet connection, and this was frustratin

Happy International Women's Month!


For this special episode, we chatted with Carolyn Childers, who is all about championing women. Carolyn is the founder and CEO of Chief, whose mission is to build a strong community of connection and support for executive women.


Carolyn didn't always know that her passion was to help women in the workforce, she says that she was on a completely different path at the beginning of her career. Her family owned a business and growing up, she had a front-row seat to the challenges that come with owning your own business. She said it felt way too hard for her and decided to go the corporate route. She found herself in a corporate job, and soon left and got into the startup world in New York City, she knew instantly she would never go back to traditional corporate. She loved the pace, energy, and ability to truly make a difference in the startup culture. The more she spent time in that space the more she realized that she could do it herself. She wanted to be an entrepreneur and not just the Senior Executive at other people's companies. She says, "I saw it, and I can be it."That is what ultimately led her on this journey to be the entrepreneur she is today.


As for how her career put her on the path to specifically empower women in the workplace, Carolyn says that she was working in finance and banking, both very male-dominated industries. During this time, she was only at a junior level and it was very telling for her to see just a few women executives in her company. As she became more senior and was included in the rooms where decisions were made, she saw how men were getting more opportunities than women. That is what fueled her to start her mission.


We all know that women are still overcoming challenges in the workplace and still trying to change the mindset of holding your cards tight because you might only have one shot to truly be heard before you get written off. However, Carolyn has an optimistic mindset about this. She says that in her experience, women have moved past this and are now in a mindset of abundance. Over the last ten years, there has been a shift in that mindset and that is partly why Chef is so successful. Chief is all about the collective, women coming together and supporting each other at a personal level with individual challenges but also as a whole to drive change.


Carolyn's inspiration for the mission of Chief came from a very personal place when she was trying to reach the Senior level in her career. She was tackling challenges, and was expected to know all the answers. She said the ugly truth in leadership is that sometimes, you don't know all the answers. She asked herself, how do I continue to invest in myself as a leader and find the resources in her community to overcome these challenges.? That is when she had the idea for Chief. Chief is a professional network focused on senior executive women, VP level and above. She says the number one thing that Chief provides is, the core groups. These are groups of ten women that come together monthly with an executive coach in the room. She says it has been phenomenal to see the impact that it has had on so many of their members. Chief started in New York and as of January 2022, they are officially international. With ten thousand members across the US and a waiting list of close to fifty thousand to join the community, they are constantly growing. This time has been the most challenging for women so seeing the community coming together is remarkable and rewarding.


Melinda asks Carolyn, how do people work their way up in a company without those connections? She says that one of the things that is important in the way that she created Chief was that it is truly meant to be a confidential place where women can come and open up about their challenges. She says even if you are building a community within your organization, you are still talking to coworkers. It is difficult to get that same authenticity and

This month, our See It To Be It podcast guest is another inspiring female leader, Tonita Webb, who is the CEO of Verity Credit Union. She tells us about her journey to becoming CEO in a male-dominated industry and the struggles she faced along the way being a BIPOC woman. But how did she get to be CEO of a credit union? Well, Tonita grew up in a single-parent household and her mom was sick with Lupus, so her responsibilities were to take care of her mom and her siblings at the same time. She has always dreamt of living in a different place while she was growing up, due to the trauma she experienced in her hometown along with the limited opportunities. She didn’t know where that place was but she knew it was not in her hometown. She always kept that possibility in front of her and when she got older and started school she found a liking for science and math. She said in her high school there was a big push for African Americans to become engineers. She joined an engineering group in Highschool and then it led to her going to college to study engineering. Looking back though, she does not think she was built to be an engineer. She says she is a people person and LOVES to help people achieve their goals and that is how she got into management, although being able to think like an engineer did help her to get into the business world.


When she got into college she did not want to be in a lot of debt, and the thought of debt just stressed her out. She asked herself, how could you finish school and not be in a ton of debt? The Air Force answered her question. She had the opportunity to go into the Air Force and come right back to Hampton University in Virginia to finish school, which she had every intention of doing. She said four months later she was stationed in Berlin, Germany, and was a police officer, laughingly she said, “and that was not in the plan”. She did that the whole time she was in the military. She ended up finishing school but not in the way she thought.


Fast forward four years, Tonita got married and had children. When she was in the Air Force, her heart would ache from missing her children, so she decided to get out of the military and got a night shift job at a bank. She then became interested in the training which is what introduced her to Human Resources. She loves working with people and that is what started her HR career. She then went to Florida and started working for the Department of Health with their HR department. Tonita says, “this is what helped me awaken a desire to help people''. Fast forward another year or two, she had another kid and her husband then decided to resign from the military after ten years. They went back to Seattle and had two more kids. With four kids now, she wanted to go back to work. She had three options of work: a bakery, credit union, and Seattle's supersonics. She said the credit union job just spoke to her because she could have a better opportunity to help people.


Tonita says that one of the things that drive her as a BIPOC woman is that she gets to change the system and be part of making that system more inclusive. She says the one thing she wants people to know, especially people in the BIPOC community, is that people make mistakes. No one is perfect, and you do not need to be. She says, “I learned what I know today by trial and error.” Tonita didn’t have great examples of how to plot a great financial future and she has made a lot of mistakes along the way, but she wants to be that example for the future generation. She saw firsthand her mom struggle with debt because of her illness, it was hard for her to work. She just knew that that was not the life she wanted for herself. She says that her mistakes are her greatest education because you just learn as you go. You can take ten steps forwards and five steps backward but all that matters is that you are moving forward.


Melinda then talks about how Tonita is a black woman in a male-dominated in

Eleanor Beaton, an incredible role model from Canada that is on a mission to empower female entrepreneurs. When Eleanor was a little girl, she had big dreams to become either a supermodel or an investment banker. This is because she grew up in the age of the biggest supermodels and always looked up to these glamorous, empowered, feminine women such as Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford. As for why she wanted to be an investment banker, she had an Aunt who was a really successful investment banker in London that was such an inspiration to her. These were her role models growing up and looking up to these women has paved the way to where she is now. After eventually eliminating the supermodel and investment banker career, she went into journalism and then translated that into a communications consulting business. In 2015, she created a new business that focuses on women leadership development.


Eleanor says she remembers when a news report came out one day that said, Naomi Campbell, a role model of Elenor since she was a young girl, wouldn’t get out of bed for less than ten thousand dollars a day. She said at that time she was “flabbergasted” to heat this because that seemed like an enormous amount of money, but then she realized that Naomi was owning her worth and recognizing her own value. Eleanor says when women share their stories, lead the way and inspire, it can make a difference to other women in the world. When that news report came out she said it was the best guidepost of how valuable it was to recognize your worth. She takes this advice into her business, Safimedia, whose mission is to double the number of female founders who sustainably scale past a million dollars in annual revenue.


In her business, Eleanor says that the one thing she sees over and over again is how do you scale a service business. She explains that most service businesses get to the first quarter million by hyper customization. She says that these types of businesses start to become like a prison because they are making money but they can’t get out of it. That is the most common issue she sees that people come to her for.


Melinda goes into the next topic by talking about how the scale of businesses today are skyrocketing. A million-dollar business seems like nothing today because businesses are growing so fast. She asks Eleanor how she frames that and what is the mindset she has and is it challenging to her? Eleanor responds with, “Absolutely”. She says running a bigger business is easier than a smaller business because you have a bigger team and Melinda agrees! Melinda says with running a small business she always gets trapped with thinking the bigger business is better just by their revenue but she then realizes that it is harder to run a smaller business. Eleanor says that when the business was small it was much harder and she even missed her kids growing up, but now the business is much bigger and she has more time. It is much simpler because they sell two things rather than a hundred. She says that you have to be okay with letting go of certain things and just focusing on a couple of things, and allow that to be enough. Eleanor says with men still being in the center of the business world and women being kind of off-centered that it can take a women’s mindset off track, thinking you are not enough and thinking you have to hustle to become successful and valuable. She says there's so much hustle for worthiness. She says that you just have to allow what you do to be enough and you don’t have to give people everything they want, choose a lane and stay in it and create a business that will provide by just doing a couple of things that you really excel at. She says that is a mindset shift that she had to go through and thinks that other women need to also.


Next, Melinda asks Eleanor if a million is still the number? If by 2030 will a million still be the barometer or is it going to keep getting higher and reach 3 milli