#113: Beth Bengtson (When you find out you’re the best person for the top job)

“Your career is a journey. It’s rare to find a person for whom it’s a direct line,” says social entrepreneur, CEO and Founder of Working for Women (https://www.workingforwomen.org/), Beth Bengtson.  Indeed, Bengtson studied to be a photographer at the Fashion Institute of Technology and jumped into the early dot-com universe and even lived through the bust. After meeting her husband and starting a family, she “realized that business could be a force for social good” and took a position as VP of Social Responsibility—teaching that corporation “how to think about doing good and being a good citizen.” Laid off during the Great Recession, she decided to pursue the idea of social responsibility by creating W4W, a service that helps for-profit business invest resources in social initiatives that benefit women. Her leadership awakening happened when she was scouring the world for the perfect W4W CEO because “my definition of a leader is everything I wasn’t: charismatic, outgoing, with sales and business development,” she says. A coach to challenge her to lead.  And the rest, as they say, is her-story.