In the 1980s, I was horrified when I began learning about all the harmful plastics and chemicals found in traditional menstrual products. As a result, after a few years of research and planning, I founded a little company called Natracare in 1989 in order to offer women a safer, healthier option for their period hygiene.
The Journey of a Female Entrepreneur
Now, as a person who wastes little time pondering her personal “achievements,” it’s quite a leap for me to put into meaningful prose what my journey has been like in becoming identified as a successful entrepreneur.
It would appear that many would-be challengers for the title may be spurred on by the plethora of TV shows bulging with eager contestants searching for the elusive entrepreneur crown, where they’re generally hoping they will become that successful person who sets up a business, taking on financial risks in the hope of making lots of profit.
Breaking Barriers and Pioneering Change
When I started back in 1989, however, women were generally precluded from being described in such terms in business circles, circulating the myth that we belong below the glass ceiling and not on the trading floor!
And yet, I do consider myself to be acting under an alias since my intentions have always been that of a campaigner. The French interpretation of “entrepreneur,” as coined by the economist Jean-Baptiste Say, means “adventurer,” though I suspect not in the “go and take on the big corporations” sense of the word. I am most certainly more “artist” than “adventurer,” yet take them on I did. The enterprising businessWOman was always omitted from debates when I began my quest for change, but I would confidently add the term “future thinker” to describe myself and my 35 years of unwavering journey with Natracare.
I pioneered brand activism in the feminine hygiene industry—and I have the scars to prove it! Natracare evolved out of my own campaigns against the use of toxic chemicals, synthetics, and plastics as well as bringing to light their role in women’s health problems. My brand of activism has always been about empowering people to make the right choices for their bodies and creating better outcomes for ecology, and that requires both education and validation. At the same time, my work has helped create global standards for organic and natural menstrual products. This sort of change paves the way for others, which in turn, helps to create shifts within the industry. It’s work I am very proud of.
Championing Environmental and Corporate Responsibility
As someone who has produced and marketed “green” (to use this season’s terminology) period products for women for the past three decades, I understand the difficulties of getting the ecological message across to consumers who are battered every day by the noise of sleek aspirational lifestyle advertising. I believe that within all of us there is a basic urge to protect our environment; but for most, there has been a huge vacuum of information about what it is that we do and buy that is causing us to bring about the climate change that will make this planet hostile for mankind in the not-too-distant future. Recent climate disasters have resulted in focused minds, however, and people increasingly want to be able to make a difference in whatever way they believe they can.
After all, as the ice caps continue to melt, climate catastrophes cause massive populations to migrate away from the coasts and flood plains, crops fail, and deserts encroach on once-fertile plains, and we realize that we have created the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for ourselves. Making excuses for reasons not to choose a low-impact way of living is sociopathic.
As a lifelong environmentalist and a designer, I know that being entrepreneurial is also about future-thinking: Defining the problem, identifying the risks, and designing for change. This is what I did from the very start. Banks didn’t want to listen to me, but my tenacity and, frankly, my revolutionary environmental feminist thinking helped me mobilize. Today, we are clear that Green Business practice is scalable, sustainable, and profitable. The Corporate Social Responsibility of business does not need to be at the expense of profit, but philanthropy is surely at the heart of being kind to each other and to our only, singularly beautiful planet Earth.
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Corporate responsibility is an adjunct to environmental responsibility. Natracare is a company founded on these two principles, and our product development began with environmental concerns as a point of primary consideration. The next part of the equation was profitability as an achievable value over time. Being an entrepreneurial and competitive private business, my philosophy has held for 35 years without failure. Perhaps companies that go public should choose their shareholders more carefully, or better still, trade on a greener and more ethical stock market.
Also, while I have the soapbox for a few extra lines, let me stand on the fulcrum of the see-saw for a moment. Yes, I am the antithesis of the trendy unicorn company. I have been through the gambit of prejudices in my life—as a woman in higher education, as a woman in a design industry, as a woman in business, and as a working businesswoman with children—so we might as well address the big elephant sitting on my feet now: ageism. I have given half of my life to trying to affect change through my aspirations and achievements, and I had to earn my value. I am still campaigning, and my business continues to be successful because I stuck to the principles and objectives that now identify me as an entrepreneur. My age has been the marker of my survival of many things in my life’s journey, including cancer, but above all, my dogged determination to make Natracare the best company and brand ever created in the nefarious world of personal care. I will continue.
