This week looks a little different. Becky’s out sick, so we’re sharing a powerful conversation from Assigned Reading where Becky and Faith dive into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s essay and TED Talk We Should All Be Feminists.

It’s a wide-ranging and deeply personal discussion about feminism across cultures, the intersections of race and gender, and how we carry both the weight of oppression and the responsibility of shaping culture ourselves.

👉 Don’t miss our upcoming free event, The Weight We Carry on invisible labor, happening October 9, 2025. Sign up here: https://evt.to/eoieheisw

Discussed in this episode:
• How Adichie’s centering of Nigerian culture resonates with Afro-Caribbean experiences
• Why feminism often defaults to “white feminism” in the U.S.—and the harm in that invisibility
• Chimamanda’s 2017 comments on trans women, her clarification, and what it says about growth and accountability
• How women are held to perfectionist standards under white supremacy
• The challenge (and necessity) of contextualizing feminism through race, culture, and personal story
• Why “people shape culture” is both a call to action and a permission slip
• Owning our own stories of privilege and oppression—and how whiteness itself can be a prison
• Shame as one of the sharpest tools of oppression and how it maintains systems of power
• The many ways activism can look: rest, storytelling, parenting, teaching, healing, and beyond

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In this solo episode of Feminist Founders, Faith Clarke reflects on the invisible labor women carry, the stories that connect us, and the power of collective truth-telling. Drawing from Desmond Tutu’s teaching on Ubuntu—“a person is a person through other persons”—Faith invites listeners to consider how our common humanity can be honored through deep listening, shared storytelling, and co-creation of solutions.

Faith shares her background in qualitative research, her belief that human stories are data, and how the Feminist Founders community is engaging in collective storytelling to explore invisible labor. This episode is both a personal reflection and an invitation: to join a larger conversation, contribute your story, and help co-create liberatory solutions for founders and communities.

💡 Discussed in this episode:

• The wisdom of Ubuntu and how it calls us into shared humanity
• Why listening to stories is a spiritual practice
• How invisible labor impacts women’s health and lives
• The limitations of traditional research methods and the power of lived experience
• Why collective truth-telling is essential for creating solutions
• The Feminist Founders initiative to document and share a white paper on invisible labor

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What happens when you step away from everything you’ve built—not just for a week off, but for months of deep rest and reflection?

In this episode of Feminist Founders summer series on women’s invisible labor, Becky talks with Mai-kee Tsang, who took a two-month sabbatical after seven years of running her business. What started as a response to grief became a radical reimagining of work, worth, and identity.

Together, they explore:

• How grief and pet loss led Mai-kee to create space for healing
• Why sabbaticals are not just breaks, but tools for reclaiming agency and rest
• The “ego death” of stepping away from business identity and embracing the messy middle
• The guilt and fear many entrepreneurs feel when stepping back or walking away
• How invisible labor shapes women’s relationship to work and rest
• The importance of redefining success beyond productivity and business ownership
• Why giving yourself permission to “just be” is a feminist act

Mai-kee reminds us that walking away doesn’t erase the value of what you’ve built. It can be a form of liberation, a chance to listen to yourself again, and to reimagine what’s possible when you’re no longer defined by your work.

Mai-kee Tsang is a writer, mentor, and former Sustainable Visibility® strategist. After seven years of entrepreneurship, she took a sabbatical to grieve, heal, and reconnect with her identity outside of work. Today, she continues to hold space for community through her email letters, Cup of Catch-ups, and experiments in simply being. Sign up for Mai-kee’s email list

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