How I Converted my Fear of Speaking into Inspiration and Started a Community for Brilliant Women

When you are a woman, life is all about fighting the subtle biases.

And when you are a Hyper Sensitive Personality (HSP) with a truckload of confidence, wait till the world tests every ounce of it.

It could be your father cutting across to correct your pronunciation when you are explaining your deep learning project to relatives.

It‘s fighting back tears when your last company boss comments how your hands and voice shook while you were presenting to the clients, right in front of your juniors and she laughed it off with them.

Or you, biting your tongue in meetings after asking a question and be apologetic about it because how are you supposed to talk about anything you don’t know fully about?

Yet, public speaking was never a problem for me in school.

Seminars were my strong point as I loved teaching. I remember my principal encouraging me to give a thank you speech on the spot and me nailing it. All was well until I entered my twenties.

I learnt I pronounce a lot of words incorrectly, had an accent, spoke quite fast and my hands and voice shook when I did. All the “comments” were handed over to me over laughter, rude imitations and I was reminded of them on a regular basis. I am working on them as a feedback, but the scars remain deep.

I love talking. I love talking with my eyes shining, on topics like astronomy, astrology, painting or my latest idea for an article. My parents recall me holding a toy mike and delivering my maiden school speech at 7 years with my 3-year-old baby sister in rapt attention. As a volunteer, I enjoy teaching English, Science to children.

But when it comes to adults, I falter.

I would imagine what would be running in their minds while I was speaking. A little twitch from their end or change in voice would shut me off and send my inner-critic into a frenzy.When it came to voicing opinions in a formal setting, presenting my understanding of a technical subject to an audience that does not include my best friends, I realised I would rather jump off a bridge than take one more ridicule.

I would give anything in the world to save myself from looking stupid.

I would remain in the background, joking around, waiting for the speaker to falter and laugh with the crowd instead of pushing myself out of my on-mute prison. My fears was making me into one of those people who laughed at me.

This needed to stop.

On thing I knew for sure - I was not alone in this.

Then I started researching and found it was not one fear built from my past hurtings but a lot of other things outside my control.

It was how I grew up

It was instilled in me that educated women had to be humble. While humility is an admirable trait it used to silence them.

We were told that being too smart would drive men away and an extra degree can affect our marriage proposals. It was a society that encouraged girls to educate themselves but it was also a society that was scared of their knowledge and despised the sound of their voices.

Despite all this if a woman could find the courage to speak then society makes sure to bring all other unrelated factors like her marital status, looks, relationships, complexion and remind her that at the end of the day it’s not about her mind but everything else.

The Woman is a Woman’s Enemy and Other Lies We Learnt

We are fed myths like “A woman is another woman’s enemy”.

We are turned against each other even before we recognise it. It starts between sisters at home, relatives, best friends and neighbours. And we carry this pain to our next generations.

Next lies - When we are given the list of topics we are told women don’t have much idea about and also need not to.

This could be technology ( think cars, coding, working of absolutely any machines etc.), money and investing, law, accounting etc. We see women excelling in these fields as exceptions and look at them in awe (which is good) but the mindset rarely changes.

We let people decide what job or course is “easier” for women. I was told a professor job is good by my friend because he felt its safe and I could be back home by 6pm. He was in IT by the way.

And a best friend of mine was advised to take up doctor profession because she could become a gynaecologist (see, only women patients). The nerve!

She became an anaesthesiologist and is killing it.

I know instances of my girl friends telling me how any doubts with workings of a phone always goes to their brothers despite them telling how to resolve it. How certain men (unconsciously) avoid discussing bitcoin or stocks with them, but don’t think twice before asking for relationship advice. How at work they need to work extra to prove their credibility while their male counterparts don’t have to.

And all this was only from my world, growing up in the south of India and experiences in my life for the past 30 years.

Well, how are my other women coping up?

Turns out I was only touching the surface. For example,Imposter Syndrome was more prevalent in women compared to men. With companies rallying to promote inclusivity in workspace, conversations like this started. And it is an encouraging place to be in.

But what about women who are homemakers and looking for forums to learn and grow, what about college students and what about someone like my mother who is looking to restart her career?

There are enough courses out there but where do they start and keep growing their confidence by sharing their ideas, learnings?

I could see a common thread and the problem statement - brilliant women, enough resources, more than enough stereotypes.

Where do we start?

Could I do just something here, I wondered.

The Beginning

Sitting at the Cafe near my home, I was studying a course on Digital Tranformation where the instructor called Artifical Intelligence the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. I was excited to be in 2021 to witness this and wanted to share it with my best friend Vidya. Then it hit me.

1. What if there was a forum I could go and give a talk on this subject where I would not be judged but just have a fruitful discussion and learn. And talk - with my eyes sparkling.

Yes, there are some good meetup groups but they are focused on only one topic.

2. What if my girl besties whom I knew were extremely good in their domains talked about topics like medicine, sharemarket, technology, marketing and I could ask my stupidest questions to them without the fear of being laughted at.

3. When Imposter Syndrome is itself a deep subject, how about taking a micro first step where women have a supportive community to start getting comfortable embracing their intelligence, so that when they go into the real world, they already have a best case scenario practice.

4. I love Feynman technique. We learn the best when we teach. We start from the very basics of a topic and imagine we are teaching 8 year old children, take questions, identify our gaps and strengthen our understanding. It’s a win-win for the speaker and the listener!

I started jotted them down in a tiny notebook I carry with me.

Yes!

And what are my strengths that I can bring here?

I figured I love creativity - writing, designing, painting. There is another skill I was appreciated at work in my current company - my ability to collaborate with people. It’s because I love talking to people. Being in good company and intelligent conversations energises me.

I could bring people together.

I am blessed with a trusted network - the women in my life from school, college, workplace, friend of friends. It was time for my tribe to assemble and meet each other.

I felt like the day at high school I took my best friends to fight the bully for our rights to play cricket in the ground. We won.

I did not want to let my past scars with speaking stop me anymore - I also wanted to help anyone with same problem as me. We practice, support each other and grow our confidence to speak. Fear could become an inspiration.

That day, I started The Geeky Girls Club.

Honestly, I came up with this name in 10 minutes and was more worried if there was a group already existing in Instagram with this name. Luckily, there was none.

I opened Canva and designed the first poster and posted it on WhatsApp status, Instagram and Twitter where I had followers of 200+ each then.

I was flooded with questions. There were so many encouragements and enthusiasm that was infectious. The guys in my circle pitched in with taking it to their sisters and friends ( some were even angry for making it a women only group).

I excluded guys because this community is also to prove (for the 1000th time) and see for ourselves that women indeed support women.

Then, now and always.

So far we had met for 5 sessions with first two dedicated to walkthroughs and sharing our experiences. It was a huge eye opener for me.

We spoke about Machine Learning, AI, Natural Language Processing, Sentimental Analysis and Metaverse so far and had some pretty solid discussions.

I did face glitches with last minute reschedules and having to cancel a session due to emergencies but we are just getting started.

It‘s just been one month since I started the club, did I get 100 people in my meeting - not yet.

We started with 5 and clocked a 8 participants last weekend. The focus for one year is to build a strong community. I am promoting it on Instagram, Twitter but I know the best way is through good word of mouth.

Did I become the most confident speaker I ever know?

Far from it.

But I had my moment when I found how AI can write song lyrics. It was super inspirational what Maya Ackerman and team were doing at their Silicon Valley startup WaveAI.

I shared it with my team in the session I gave on “Natural Language Processing” to great excitement.

That day, I had taken a tiny step and it made all the difference. Creating these moments for every team member is what Geeky girls club is all about.

Closing Thoughts

My fear of speaking and the pain my past experiences left behind was holding me back.

I set out to change them. But tell you what, when the world saying “you have to face your fears”, it does not always mean “you have to face your fears alone”. We need people to succeed, to survive. And we have no idea how much stronger we get by supporting each other.

In this journey, we take our best strengths with us. We take with us people who stand by us. We practice.We learn.We become better. And slowly we overcome the fears by facing it and taking its power away.

And in the process we change the obsolete rules. We create new conversations.

That’s what inspires our geeky girls club members (we call ourselves girl besties).

For women to know that age, marital status, employment status, race, religion, country, background, qualification or anything is not an obstacle to gain knowledge and speak about it - definitely not their shivering hands or shaky voice.

Women should never dim their light for anyone.

The world needs their light more than ever.