Female Founders x European Innovation Council

The Challenge

Female Founders is a European market leader in driving gender diversity in tech and innovation. In collaboration with the European Innovation Council’s Women’s Leadership Program, they were putting together a weekend of workshop programs at the Impact Hub site in Torino, Italy, to serve the current cohort of women founders and CEOs leading social enterprises.

As part of their programming, they sought a workshop facilitator to lead a training session that focused on the power of storytelling and personal branding. They indicated that they would like participants to discover how to craft compelling narratives that resonate with their audience and develop a strong personal brand that effectively communicates their unique value and inspires others.

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Services Provided

Workshop Facilitation

Workshop Curriculum Development

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Approach (From Ruby’s Perspective) 

First and foremost, it was important for me to best understand how to best serve the audience by taking the time to learn more about their needs, their backgrounds, and previous experience in marketing and communications. By having an understanding of the audience’s needs, I was better able to design a workshop that suited their goals and met them at the level they were at. 

After receiving this context from the event organizers, I learned that many of the participants were uncomfortable about the idea of self-promotion, and may need a shift in mindset in order to encourage them to step into the marketing and communications roles that their businesses required from them. 

Together, we then decided that this wouldn’t just be a skills-only training, but rather, a workshop that incorporated elements of personal development to overcome this mindset barrier.

After all, the stories we tell first begin with the ones we tell ourselves. 

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Process

Given the context provided, I proceeded in building in a 90 minute workshop curriculum that included: 

• Icebreaker exercises that set the tone for a safe-space, and to foster trust and community building within the group from the start
• Options to share anonymously so those who are shy could still participate and contribute their responses without disclosing their identity or speaking publicly
• Interactive activities to promote a sense of play and fun, which generates creativity
• A series of writing prompts and exercises to get participants primed for the main deliverable of the workshop: a personal mission statement that anchors each participant’s personal brand story in a strong foundation rooted in their purpose and vision.
• We concluded by encouraging participants to share their personal mission statements- by the time the workshop ended, the previous exercises created a sense of safety and a non-judgemental environment where participants could feel comfortable sharing their thoughts to the group.

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Client Testimonial

“Ruby facilitated an amazing in-person workshop on Personal Branding and Storytelling for our kick-off event of the 6th cohort of the EIC Women Leadership Programme. She is a great speaker, and made the workshop interactive and its content directly applicable. After 1.5 hours, participants walked away with tangible outcomes, such as their personal mission statement. What's more, Ruby created a safe space for everyone to share openly. When asking participants to share their personal mission statements, it stood out that the ones who hadn't shared much in previous activities, suddenly felt comfortable and confident to share their responses with the group.” - Elisabeth van Holthe tot Echten, Senior Project Manager, Female Founders

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To learn more about Ruby’s workshop facilitation work, visit her on her personal website: https://www.rubyveridiano.com/organizations

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