As a company, our philanthropic branch, That Girl Goes Global (TG3) teamed up with the boys who founded Invisible Children to support their efforts in freeing the child soldiers in Uganda. We have three days to ensure that their worldwide awareness campaign is a success, including scheduling celebrities/ governmental officials to show up in every one of our 100 designated locations. I was flown to DC a few days ago to join the boys and lobby with Senators and Congressman on Capitol Hill. The life altering, surreal, exhausting yet exhilarating experience has gone something like this:
Day One: Fly into DC from Los Angeles (an 8-hour travel day with a two hour layover in Chicago). Sprint off the flight to meet the boys and several “people of influence” (aka celebs and high ranking DC power hitters for dinner and drinks). In between conversations, we take bathroom breaks to text, call, email people about the upcoming event. After a 14 hour day, we cab it home and walk into a foreign, dark apartment, where I exhaustively throw my body in my designated bed and fell asleep.
Day Two: Wake up with “The Crew” (aka six of us all crashing in one of the nicest apartment I’ve ever seen). The Crew consists of two of the founders: Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole. Two other, vital IC staff members Jedadiah Jenkis and Adam Finck as well as little Miss Kristen Bell, a beautiful, Hollywood starlet. Morning introductions and a Starbucks run later, we head to “The Hill” and then have meeting after meeting with Senators and Congressmen for nearly 8 hours straight. Immediately after our last meeting, we jet to a private screening of the boys’ documentary and rush off to yet another dinner requiring the rubbing of elbows with people far more important than we are. We cab it home again, almost all of us falling asleep in the car, and drag our bodies upstairs where the boys proceeded to work until 3:30am. K-Bell and I fall asleep around one, after literally soaking our feet in a hot bathtub (a requirement after being in high heels for a 16 hour day).
Day Three: Wake up, make the gang breakfast since yesterday we went most of the day without eating anything. The six of us slip into our church-going clothes, hop in a taxi, and head to the State department for another screening of the Invisible Children documentary. More governmental officials and are now cooped up in our luxury apartment (loaned to us by a friend) and are all on our computers and cell phones doing anything and everything to ensure that at least 150,000 people show up around the world tomorrow, to rally for our cause. Naturally, not stressful at all.
Highlights of the trip so far: Well, first, we’re just fighting to change the world, no big deal. Second, we actually had a meeting in the West Wing of the White House yesterday with one of Barack’s chief advisers (admittedly one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced). I’ve now witnessed the ability of normal boys to significantly sway the United States agenda first hand; I’ve waltzed with some of our country’s most influential people and candidly seen just what it takes to relentlessly pursue your passion. Not to mention I have watched “acquaintances” quickly blossom into magnificent friendships with the five people I have lived, eaten, slept, and worked with non-stop for the past several days.
Take Aways: What I’ve learned when it comes to making a difference, I don’t care how tired you get, I don’t care how many obstacles there are, or how long that dark tunnel appears… anything worth anything is worth everything. We’re on a count down, 13 hours, 8 minutes and 22 seconds before these boys try and pull off one of the most ambitious, awareness events I could possibly fathom.
As I look around the room before me, their heads down, mesmerized by their computers and last minute details, I sit here in awe of these boys. No sleep. No food. No breaks. No quitting. No excuses.
Tomorrow they will be rewarded for their hard work. Tomorrow will prove everything went right. Tomorrow will inspire millions more to get on board. But today is not tomorrow and today it’s go time. As my dad would say, “Finish strong.”
11
Feb
Designing for the White House
by Nalea J. Ko
0 Comments | Posted by thatgirl in 21st Century Bellist, All Dolled Up, Making Waves
When Deborah Mascia started her business, she probably never imagined her recycled textiles would one day make it to the White House. But seven years later, the Hawaiian-based Muumuu Heaven is crafting recycled clothing that will soon grace the backs of Barack and his family.
Mascia said the Obamas wanted to find a creative way to honor their grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, who recently died at the age of 86. Barack Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, took Dunham’s old muumuus (traditional Hawaiian dresses) to Muumuu Heaven to be reinvented into modern duds for the first family.
It is not the first time Mascia recycled a late relative’s clothes for family members, but it is the first time the order has come from the commander in chief.
“They’re the nicest customers ever,” said Mascia of the Obamas. Mascia co-owns Muumuu Heaven in Hawaii, a shop stocked with racks of recycled modern clothing made from old Hawaiian print materials.
The Obamas’ bill comes to about $75-$140 for each garment, but Mascia said the significance of clothing is priceless. One percent of every dollar goes to charities which help preserve coral reefs. She implements the elements of service and sustainability that President Obama stands for.
She added that the economy has made people think in a more resourceful fashion. “You can make beautiful things out of an alternative source.” This element of affordable resourcefulness has really taken off.
“Business has just grown so much. It’s like somebody didn’t tell us it’s a recession,” she said.
But times are tough for the rest of us, so the inventive Australia native suggests some ways to save a few bucks while remaining fashionable. One idea is to take clothing that can’t be parted with to a seamstress, who can reconstruct it into something fashionable. Another resourceful suggestion is to host clothing swap party. “If I’m having a fat day, I’ll give my friend my skinny jeans. And I’ll get her fat jeans,” she explained with a chuckle.
The downturn in the economy and heightened awareness of the state of the environment has fueled business at the shop. They’re getting plenty of media attention for their innovative business—they were recently featured in Lucky and Glamour magazines. But the most thrilling moment will come in May, when the harsh winter lets up and the Obamas have the opportunity to wear their Mascia’s recycled muumuus.
“I’m just so excited,” said Mascia. “I have full creative freedom. But I haven’t started. I haven’t taken a snip,” said Mascia, explaining that business has been too busy. The dressmaker plans on completing the pieces in May. We look forward to seeing them sported at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
photos by Eric Mascia
17
Oct
Leading Ladies: A Look at Washington’s First Wives Club
by Krista Simmons
0 Comments | Posted by thatgirl in Making Waves
The election is just around the corner and it means more than a new president. With that, we will have a new first lady. Read on to find out a bit about Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama.
The Rock behind Barack: Michelle Obama
Public Relations for the Obama/Biden campaign has done a masterful job of painting the Obama family portrait; the noble father beside a loving mother, and two toothy-grinned, beautiful daughters. They are an easily relatable, humble, working class bunch. The campaign has locked into pop culture, and branded the entire family, starting with Barack’s leading lady, and wife of 16 years, Michelle Obama.
She’s strong, well spoken, and sophisticated, and has an uncanny knack for style. After appearing on ABC’s The View, her $148 Ricco floral sundress sold out across the nation. And those gobstopper-sized pearls that she sports are sure to be one of fall’s must-have accessories. She’s forthright, she’s candid, and she’s (something our last few First Ladies have lacked) real.
But in the world of politics, you’ve got to watch your step, and your mouth. Along the campaign trail, she was quoted as saying that “for the first time in her adult life, she is
proud of her country.” The press, and the opposition, went ballistic. Other criticisms included Obama’s stumbling down steps with Stevie Wonder, being a bit too quick to speak, and not being blindly patriotic. But that doesn’t bother the 44-year-old Princeton grad.
She’s concerned first and foremost with the well-being of her hubby and children. Michelle Obama’s profile on barackobama.com states that if her husband hits the White House, she “will always make sure that our girls are healthy and grounded…then I want to help other families get the support they need, not just to survive, but to thrive.”
This leading lady has already taken steps to carry out her dream to help the rest of the nation achieve its best. She started roundtables at Fort Bragg for military wives whose husbands were serving in Iraq, where women could openly speak and begin to cope with the reality of having loved ones deployed abroad. She also has been involved with organizations such as Public Allies, which prepares youth to become public leaders. Obama was also an employee of the University of Chicago, where she established the first volunteer programs for students.
Michelle Obama grew up in a working class family on the South Side of Chicago, and her father, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, continued to work tirelessly regardless of the disease. Her mother stayed at home to raise her and her older brother, Craig. Perhaps the struggle has helped her flourish, and she stated in a Los Angeles Magazine interview that she reflects on her father’s courage and perseverance daily.
The self-proclaimed “humble, working class girl” has high hopes to “fight for the world as it should be” alongside the presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. And if it all falls through and they’re sent back to Chi-town, they’ll still have the solid rock of a foundation they were built upon.
Cindy McCain: The Maverick’s Top Gun
Poised, prim, and proper, Cindy McCain has the potential to bring the Brady Bunch back into the White House. The 53-year-old Chair of Hensley & Co, one of the largest distributors of Anheuser-Bush, is not only a wealthy heiress to the beer biz, but also a philanthropist, race car driver, and amateur pilot.
The former USC cheerleader and sorority girl got her undergraduate degree in Education, and her Masters in Special Education. For several years, she taught to Down syndrome children in Arizona, where she also owns a share of the American League baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Cindy met John McCain, almost 18 years her senior, at a military reception in Hawaii. “The Maverick” was captivated by the blonde beauty, and regardless of still being legally
married to his first wife, Carol, proposed to Cindy. The two have four children, the youngest of which, Bridget, is adopted from Mother Theresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh.
She’s also involved with Operation Smile and the HALO Trust, which removes landmines from war torn areas such as Cambodia and Vietnam. An activist and philanthropist, Cindy keeps her finger on the pulse of pressing human rights issues abroad, regardless of the stresses of campaigning for her husband’s presidency.
Cindy McCain also founded the American Volunteer Medical Team (AMVT) to help children in need of medical assistance abroad. However, she was caught stealing prescriptions of Vicodin and Percocet from AMVT. The addiction, a result of spinal surgery, was revealed at the time of the Keating Five loan scandal, which her husband John was involved in. Some say it was to diffuse the heat he would receive.
Although her past has been under intense scrutiny, Cindy McCain poses as an outstanding woman, who, in spite of her previous shortcomings, would make a genuine, philanthropic First Lady.