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Good Life Project

Broken Open: From Silicon Valley to Street Kids in India

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Today's guest is Eileen Flannigan, the Founder and Managing Director of Girls on Fire Leaders, a non-profit that provides young girls in developing nations with personal and community leadership skills through immersive travel, experiential self-learning, authentic self-expression, and global connectivity.

Eileen was a successful digital marketing strategist for large tech startups in Silicon Valley. But after two decades in this field, she began listening to the voice inside her that called her to make a bigger contribution to the world.

When she turned forty, Eileen went to India and gave herself two guidelines: she would go alone, and she would follow her heart completely. For nearly two months, she hung out with street kids and young girls in brothels. Her time there set her life on a transformational course that blossomed into Girls on Fire Leaders, which now empowers adolescent girls all around the world.

Don’t miss this inspiring and insightful look into the life and mind of an entrepreneur who left her familiar world to serve the world in a deeper way.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • Why you don’t need to be an extrovert to be a leader.
  • How her tendency as a kid to pay attention to the “underdog” manifested itself in surprising ways.
  • The tension she felt between not wanting to destroy the life she had created, but wanting to do something that made a bigger difference.
  • How Eileen literally followed her heart when she went to India.
  • The story of how Eileen became involved with Kiva, and its connection to eventually quitting her job.
  • The surprising insights Eileen gained about poverty through living and working with people in the slums.
  • Why it’s so hard for women trapped in poverty to escape from it.
  • Why people living under corrupt governments often don’t speak up for themselves.
  • How leading Girls on Fire has impacted Eileen personally.
  • How Eileen defines a “good life.”

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