Friends On Friday Presents ~ "Kylie" & WomenCo!

There are some new ladies in town that we all must meet! They are the women of WomenCo!

WomenCo is a premier online community for female professionals within the United States of America. According to the site, it is a forum for getting up to date news and current affairs all while having the capability to network with professional, working women from across the North American continent.

In 2008, WomenCo joined with Monster Worldwide (Nasdaq: MNST) to accelerate growth and to improve the career and educational opportunities for its members. To learn more about Monster, visit monsterworldwide.com.

Kaamna Dhawan is the General Manager.


Her curriculum vitae is impressive! Born in Mumbai, India Kaamna moved to the United States to attend Smith College. After obtaining her Bachelors degree in Clinical Psychology, Kaamna went on to receive her Masters in Human Resources and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was hired into an HR Rotational Program at Sun Microsystems, and found herself moving out to the Bay Area to work in the Silicon Valley.

I was attracted to WomenCo after meeting "Kylie".




The most intriguing concept on WomenCo is that it is all encompassing! Where else can you learn about diversity issues, shoes and shop for a fashionable laptop cover for your new notebook!

Check this out! http://www.womenco.com/products/products/27-the-all-new-designer-laptop-cover

I love this!

Joining is free and it is an informative, inspiring gateway to the corporate world of women. Discussions about family, gender bias, attitudes and many other newsworthy items. Networking, support and job assistance! There is something for every woman.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Kylie who was kind enough to fill us in on the behind the scenes at WomenCo. She is an instrument from which we can all get together, support each other, while learning the latest from working gals for working gals and gals seeking careers and career opportunities! Thanks Kylie!

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Kylie, you are the web producer of a great new site called WomenCo. Tell us about your position. What does your position entail?
As the site’s main editor and content developer, I am usually met with a steady and ever-growing stream of activities to attend to: user correspondences, creation of our newsletters, updating of news articles, discussions, and videos, implementing and debugging new features, and larger-scale conceptual brainstorming. Lately, the main challenge has been to organize my time in such a way that the actual work I accomplish is as beneficial as possible.

The most important aspects of my work are : 1) Making sure our users experience insightful, fresh content as often as possible, 2) Helping users find what they are looking for on the site (and if what they want is not there, creating it), 3) working to expose WomenCo to users elsewhere on the internet, and 4) building valuable partnerships with other organizations and websites dedicated to women’s communities.

How was WomenCo born? Who does it aim to serve?
WomenCo is truly a brain-child of several San Francisco start up entrepreneurs who wanted to explore different ways of conceptualizing ‘community’ on the web. A lot of us were frustrated with the airbrushed, fluffy content we found on high-traffic sites designed for women (iVillage comes to mind). In a way, WomenCo was designed as a partial reaction against that type of site. But our target audience is women who are looking for empowerment through their jobs and careers, education, entrepreneurial opportunities, and – in a more general sense – their social lives as a whole. Oh, and we like to have fun, too.

How has this experience enriched your life?
I’m young, and although I’ve been fairly tech-savvy for 10 years or so, I’m quite new to the business world. Working on WomenCo has enriched my life by through introducing me to an entirely new modality of thinking: the continents of thought known as ‘business development’ and ‘marketing’.

Moreover, I’ve never interacted, psychologically speaking, with such a diverse and experienced group of women on a day-to-day basis before. This is probably responsible for the most radical of the many changes I’ve gone through since I began working on WomenCo. Having graduated from a small liberal arts college recently, I’ve had to scale back a little bit of my know-it-all tendencies and really listen to people more. What can I say, I’m a Taurus.

What I liked about WomenCo is that it is a networking tool, but it also features important discussion as to how to accomplish your professional goals, thought processes, but will also help you to get that perfect slip for your laptop/notebook or tell you an inpsiring story by a woman who could very well be your neighbor. The feeling is comfortable, the pages load easily, and it is inviting ~ what can we expect in the upcoming months?
One thing that I can promise is more interactivity. Specifically, you’ll see more intuitive ways to view the site’s information over the next few months. A better entertainment section, easier to read articles, and increased ability for members to share information with one another. Ideally, simply by inputting a little bit of information about yourself, WomenCo will be able to figure out what your interests are, and highlight all of the content we’ve got that relates interest. It might be a completely difference experience for two different users. The real trick to this approach would be to make it way, way easier for users to share content with one another.

Other than that, we’re thinking about adding a Blogging platform to the site. We’ve got some big changes coming, and I can’t wait to get feedback from our users.

What is WomenCo's sight set on for the long term?
WomenCo’s long-term plan is to become more of a developed, reliable resource for women who want insight into more specific careers, choices, and women’s issues. We’d like to develop our job resources to the extent where women could log on, supply some personal information, inquire about a career in a certain area, and immediately be put in touch with a network of potential employers, like-minded applicants, resume experts, etc. Idealistic, but an excellent goal, in my opinion.

And we know how to work towards that. For starters ,we’d like to begin giving some of our users more ownership over the site. For example, it would be great if we could feature a nutrition expert who gave advice to other WomenCo users, while gaining experience which would look really impressive on an application for a teaching position. That’s the ultimate goal we have for WomenCo – to make it feel essential for as many women as possible.

Can we check back periodically? We would love to keep posting on the news and excitement I am sure this site will be generating for years to come!
Check back frequently, if you want! The more, the merrier.

Oh, and one more thing I wanted to mention: we encourage men to check out our site, too. Our “Ask a Man” section has lots of questions we’d love to hear your input on. Just because we’re a resource geared towards Women’s issues doesn’t mean we don’t like to hear from the other sex every now and then!

You know I did notice that feature "Ask a Man". That is great! Thanks Kylie! It is a pleasure, hope to be chatting with you again soon!
It’s been a pleasure for me as well. Take care!
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Ladies, Kylie was kind enough to extend us her email, feel free to chat with her, send feedback or ask questions.

Kylie@womenco.com

Make it a good one!!