Summer Must Go…
Saying Goodbye to the Ocean SF Summer Interns
For the past four years, I’ve run a summer intern program for Ocean SF. I can’t remember exactly when this idea came to me, but it was in 2021 when I had both my daughters home from college due to COVID-19. I was also teaching leadership and management classes at UC Berkeley, and as part of my content, I focused on women in leadership. The statistics were astonishing, but not in a good way. One statistic stated that if a woman doesn’t find themselves in a leadership role in the first five years of her career, she never would.
In 2023, women held about 32% of management roles globally. This marked an increase from 29% in 2019, showing slow but steady progress.
As of 2023, only 8.8% of Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs, a historic high but still demonstrating the underrepresentation of women in top leadership.
Women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) make up less than 30% of the workforce and are even more underrepresented in leadership roles.
In the health sector, women comprise 70% of the global health workforce, yet they occupy only 25% of senior roles in the sector.
I was teaching leadership, but my sailing apparel company Ocean SF was going under due to the implosion of retail during COVID-19. All of the hard work I had put into finding investors, partnerships, and distribution channels had gone up in smoke overnight. I thought it would be a good idea to combine the two and at least begin to incubate women leaders. Being resourceful, I recruited my eldest daughter, Paris, who has strongly supported the brand since its inception. I tried to recruit my younger daughter, but she refused and could not be coaxed into spending her summer working for her mother under the direction of her sister. Paris, however, was enthusiastic and got to work. We found seven other interns to round out our team. I proceeded to teach the interns everything I taught in my classes at UC Berkeley. Paris was the project manager, and everyone learned to use project management tools. They alternated between leading their own projects and managing their own teams.
We had a ton of fun that first year, and we made good progress in building the company's foundation, and it has continued since. This past year, we had another large group of kids who dug in and made a significant impact. We had three pop-ups and have grown our social media by over 1000%. We also transitioned to a San Francisco lifestyle brand. We are now partneing with a Shop Locally a website for local brands in and around San Francisco. It will be another avenue for us to sell our products.
It must be noted that we have also had boys intern with us as women need advocates and allies.
Sadly, I had to say goodbye to my interns a few days ago. I have to say it wasn’t easy. Motherhood has been my most treasured role in life, and being able to connect and bond with young people is something that I love. Now that my children are launched and working in the corporate world, I have the next generation to help shepherd toward their professional lives. I shed a few tears because I will miss them, but we will stay in touch and continue our initiatives with monthly meetings and check-ins.
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