If you are fellow “wife”… that is, a member of A Band of Wives, this woman requires no introduction. And if you aren’t, read on, and learn about the lovely Leila Radan who is almost impossible to introduce due to her many, many talents. She is as smart and interesting as she is beautiful. And oh, what a creative writer! Women, I highly recommend you join ABOW, if not for the fabulous community, join A Band of Wives just to have a little Leila in your life!

Bio: Leila Radan had a hard time submitting a bio. Ask her to talk about any topic and she’ll give it a go. Her life experiences are easily shared. But ask her to tell you who she is and she is truly stumped. With a background in writing and acting, her unrequited passion, she somehow veered off into ashtanga yoga. She taught yoga for over a decade, whilst raising two kids and being quirkily married to her soul mate and later veered off into creating a jewelry line and somehow, through it all, became an unashamed shoe snob. Now, she’s the Chief Community Wife of a women’s networking group, A Band of Wives. She has no clue what the path that lies ahead holds for her but will be happy if she can simply flow and learn to “just be” better and better each day.

Peggy: Where were you born and where do you live now?

Leila: I was born in Tehran, Iran, am part Danish/part Iranian, was raised between Spain and the US and live in San Francisco, the only place I’ve ever felt I truly belong. 

Leila: Oh my goodness! First and foremost, you are too, too sweet with the love and the compliments. Thank you! But if Chris is lucky to have me then I am even luckier to have her! In my view, Chris is the heart and soul of ABOW and loving her is so easy that being a sincere cheerleader for ABOW just follows organically, you know?

As for how we met, well, I used to be an avid reader of her husband, Phil Bronstein’s, column. I admired his ROAR and was especially taken by a series of scathing, brilliantly written pieces that spoke to me and, well, good writing with an edge is a high for me so, of course, I just HAD to friend Phil on Facebook. He accepted my friend request and within a week of becoming online friends he’d posted a link to ABOW, asking his FB friends to check out this site his wife had created.

I was intrigued, checked it out, joined, was invited by Chris to vend my jewelry at the very first ABOW event ever, met her, was struck by her warmth and amazing spirit and that was it, I was hooked! 

As for being ABOW’s Chief Community Wife? What can I say? You KNOW you have a very unique thing going when business calls with your friend/wife/boss end with “I love you”! It’s a wild and beautiful job to have! I get to play online, plan fun events, meet amazing women from ALL walks of life, hang out with Chris (who is simply beyond a friend. She’s family to me), and this is work? NO complaints here. 

I am truly blessed and grateful beyond words. I think I have a hard time with compliments as to my “work” for ABOW because it doesn’t feel like work. If there’s a certain energy I put out there that speaks to wives it’s based on a love for the very concept of ABOW, which Chris lives and breathes, and so it follows that it’s rooted in my love for Chris, for the amazing friend she’s been to me and founded on a belief in her and what she’s created. I see my involvement and my work as an act of gratitude for getting to be a part of the inner sanctum of what, to me, is now a movement where women seek more for each other. We’re not joking when we say we want a new kind of sisterhood!

Leila: Hmm. I’m still working on taking myself seriously as any of those things. I tend to stumble on things in life. I’m not a model. I’m too short and old for that and I know that. But I sometimes play at being a model for talented designer friends and photographer friends. I have a passion for acting but it’s mostly been unfulfilled, which is why I play at being a model every once in a while. I started making jewelry when I had two children, instead of just one, to sit down and do homework with. I go stir crazy if I have to sit and have nothing to do. I feel restless. I needed to stay busy. My hands needed to do something. So I made jewelry.  

Leila: With my secret weapon, my husband! From day one he’s been SO hands on with the kids and a true partner in raising them. I don’t even cook now. At all. Which is fine because he is an amazing chef and he’s fully taken over. He practices acupuncture here in SF and we work our schedules around each other to make it work. For the most part, he drops the kids off at school in the morning and I pick them up in the afternoons. If I have ABOW events to go to we plan ahead and make it work. I’m an emotional Pisces so it behooves him to keep his “quirky” (crazy might be more appropriate a term) wife happy lest the emotions spill over into full fledged Piscean drama which, more often than not, will end up being aimed at him! He’s a wise man!  

We are also lucky that the children’s schools have extended care programs that allow them to stay on until 6pm. That gives me plenty of time to squeeze all my meetups, auditions, general play time and the like into my day and be able to be on homework and mom duty at night, when they’re home from school. We make it work.

Leila: I am an ashtanga yoga teacher and though I no longer teach, I practice daily. Ashtanga is my sanity. Even if I’m sick I need to make it onto my mat, if only for 5 or 10 minutes (though I practice, as a general rule, for an hour daily as my minimum). It is essential for me to connect to my breath and to ground myself via my practice. I also jog daily, at home, on an urban rebounder. I don’t like jogging on pavement and don’t always have the time to leave the house for exercise as it would be an extra element to factor into the day. So I jog for an hour, at home, whilst watching HGTV (I am HOOKED!) or Sex and the City and barking orders at the kids, should they be home and in need of bossing around. *wink, wink* 

Leila: No, not at all but I do realize that it’s because I am SO very blessed to be sheltered in this utopia that is our Bay Area bubble. In my head I am just me… a nutty San Franciscan called Leila of Iranian-Danish-Icelandic blood but with an Iranian-Danish-Spanish-American base. I can’t pick any one part of me as being an overall representative of who or what I am and I fit in in San Francisco, a city I call a perfect home to “fuzzy people” because I am fuzzy. I don’t need a definition. I get to just be.

I’ve had moments where I was probably discriminated against but it didn’t really hit me that it might be because I was a woman of color. I’d chuck it up to whomever was being an ass to their simply being, well, an asshole! I am NOT the sit-there-and-take-it kinda chick so I’d dish it right back and then some. I think the day that it really hit me that I may be seen as “different” by others was when I had an audition down in LA for “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Before I was told what the role I was auditioning for was, the sky was the limit. I wondered what kind of quirky woman I’d be auditioning for. And then my agent told me. An anti-semitic Palestinian. Huh. It added a bittersweet element to the whole experience. It was thrilling and yet, not.

Leila: I wrote this in 2006. I think it gives you an idea as to how I feel! No? 

Leila: Free. The first hurdle was freeing myself from my mother and her influence on me. The next chapter lies in freeing myself from my hold on myself. 

Leila: MILK!!!! I see SO many answer dark to this question. I tried, I really did, to like dark chocolate. I HATE it! I LOATHE dark chocolate! It has no soul, no sin! I want me some sin! I want my chocolate creamy, balanced just so, so that when I bite into it I surrender to it and KNOW that I can never quit it, like I vow I will. But I am picky. I don’t like the cheap crap. Don’t get me wrong though. I am NO connoisseur but I won’t do Milky Ways or Mars Bars or any such crap. 

I’ve become addicted to See’s Candies. It started with needing to buy a box of chocolates to gift someone. I was given a chocolate sample when I first stepped foot into the local See’s Candies store. I thought it was a fluke. I went back one more time, testing the waters, and lo and behold, another sample came my way! Ooh! So like a good Pavlovian dog I now shirk giftig people wine and opt for See’s Candies instead because, ahem, they give me treats. Oy! And today I got myself another sinful indulgence I LOVE: Toffee & Almonds in Milk Chocolate by Chocolove. I only know the name because I have it here with me. Otherwise it’d be “the yummy chocolate with the crunchy goodies in the yellow packaging from Whole Foods”. I’m just a bitch to chocolate. My kids bemoan this fact. I tend to eat theirs too. If you run into us in the chocolate aisle you’ll hear them say, “If we buy this we HAVE to hide it from Mami or else she will eat it all!” I need help.

Leila: I’m a 20-year vegetarian offended by the fact that a cow once charged at me in Maui. Bastard cow! Also, I don’t like my eyebrows touched, want SO BADLY to smack people who don’t chew properly, feel naked if I don’t wear my ostentatious jewelry and have a slight addiction to Jeffrey Campbell shoes. Slight. *chokes on her words*

• Tags
• A Band of Wives
• ABOW
• Leila Radan
• actress
• feminist
• jewelry designer
• model
• writer
• yoga
• San Francisco

Last Saturday I attended the 17th Annual Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival in San Francisco. What a picture-perfect day it was in the city that day! The sun and warm temps brought out big crowds to Ghirardelli Square…not that booths full of chocolate wasn’t enough of a reason to show up. :)

A little history: Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was founded in 1852 by Italian chocolatier Domenico Ghirardelli, and is the second oldest chocolate company in the United States. Ghirardelli is now a division of Lindt & Sprungli. 

The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is located in Ghirardelli Square, which is an official landmark of the City of San Francisco. Ghirardelli Square was originally built as a woolen mill in 1864. The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company moved in during the late 1890s. You’ve got to love a building named Cocoa (below)! There is also a Chocolate building and a Mustard building (because the company used to sell mustard…go figure).

Back to the festival… There were many, many booths handing out samples, and plenty of entertainment (including belly dancers, which my 7 year old found interesting). I didn’t purchase the $20 sampling ticket because I had my heart set on having one of Ghirardelli’s famous Ice Cream Sundaes, for old time’s sake.

I did have an ice cream sundae with chocolate chip ice cream, complete with whipped cream and cherry…but I was so excited to dig in, that I forgot to take a picture. So, here’s a photo of a bunch of other yummy confections that were sitting on the counter, awaiting delivery.

This is called The Earthquake…8 scoops of ice cream, 8 toppings. No, I did not order one!

While researching Ghirardelli, I learned this interesting very fact: around the year 1865, someone in the Ghirardelli Company made an important observation—by hanging a bag of chocolate in a warm room, the cocoa butter drips out, leaving a residue that can be processed into ground chocolate. This technique, called the Broma process, is now generally used in the manufacture of chocolate.

I took the above photo inside the Ghirardelli Ice Cream Shop, where they show how chocolate is made. If you’re ever in San Francisco, be sure to visit Ghirardelli Square, and have an ice cream sundae! The festival was fun…I’ll be going back next year.

• Tags
• chocolate
• san francisco
• Ghirardelli
• Ghirardelli Chocolate
• Ghirardelli Square

Marilyn: I’m not going to lie, I love my job. I love what I do for a living. I didn’t set out to be an Apple technician; it was all quite by accident. My first real job was in an advertising agency as a production artist back between 1995 and 2000. I would help people with their Mac issues in addition to doing my job. I was eventually told I wasn’t there to fix computers so I would sneak in before work and fix them. We worked with a Mac guy that would come in to fix the problems that were over my head. One day he asked me if I knew of anyone that was good with Macs as he was thinking of expanding and taking on an employee. I jumped at the chance. I trained with him for about 7 months before I made the jump and started with him in July of 2000.

Initially mac-fusion was just an Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider. We had a business-to-business focus and did AppleCare, warranty and out of warranty repairs out of a small office in Signal Hill. The first 6 years I worked here I juggled my days doing a mix of onsites and in-house hardware repairs. Eventually we expanded to hire more techs, enabling me to focus on just doing onsites. This year we opened a retail store in Seal Beach and now it’s a mix of onsites, repairs, working retail and finding the coolest Apple accessories to stock in our store. Oh, I guess I should mention that I’m also in charge of all the marketing, online advertising and social media. It’s safe to say that I’m a busy girl. 

Marilyn: I didn’t start out a business owner. It’s actually not something I ever wanted to be. I’m a certified worker bee and don’t always love all the headaches that come with owning a business. I started dating Kevin (yes, my boss…not something I recommend for any single mother to do) in 2004. I like to say he married me to secure his number one tech. We are a fantastic team and I like to think we run a fun workplace. 

Marilyn: There’s been so much talk on this lately. I’ve had more problems being a Mac tech than a woman tech. Sometimes you can tell they are surprised to see a woman show up but once you fix those problems they’ve been having for months, in a short amount of time they don’t care. I’ve only had two incidents that stand out. We had a husband and wife bring in their iMac and printer that they couldn’t get to print. They had spent hours and hours trying on their own and working with HP tech support. They bring it in and I reset the printing system and it prints. The guy looks at me and yells “I can’t believe it was fixed by a girl!”. It was all in good fun but his wife was mortified. So I put on his receipt “FIXED BY A GIRL”. I actually had someone on Twitter, who I was trying to help, get a bit too aggressive with me so I had to block him. It was pointed out to me by someone else that he made a disparaging tweet about me being a woman. Other than that I’ve been to many Apple training camps that were filled with hundreds of male techs and only a handful of women, with absolutely no issues. That’s not to say this behavior or attitude doesn’t exist; in my line of tech I haven’t felt it personally, though. 

I would like to mention that I am active in trying to encourage young girls to take this career path. I have done numerous career day talks for middle schools to try and not only get the word out there that this is an option, but show you can be a woman and a tech. I come across so many smart techie woman on Twitter that don’t feel this is a job they could do. There’s some pre-conceived notion that you have to know everything. In our company there are different types of techs. Some know servers and networking, some know hardware; I happen to know software well. All of these things came with time and experience. You don’t start at mac-fusion and go out onsite on your first day. It’s a learning process. I wish more people understood that. 

Marilyn: I actually thought I wanted to be in law enforcement. I was going on police ride-alongs and was very interested in forensics. The LA Riots scared me. I was living in Long Beach at the time, and seeing the very people that were there to protect you being attacked freaked me out. I’m not aggressive by nature so it wouldn’t have been a good fit. 

We had an Apple IIe when I was young. My dad would bring home reams of print-outs (the kind that were all attached and had the little holes on the sides) with line after line of code. You would type these codes in and then a little turtle would walk across the screen. Make one typo and nothing worked. The fascination ended quickly. I actually grew up with PCs in the house. I was constantly breaking them. Still to this day I have no idea what a System.ini file is or why they always went missing ;-) I was actually mostly PC until I went to work at the advertising agency. I self-taught myself the Mac (mostly by breaking the software and then having to fix it).

Marilyn: I count my first Apple product as the one I bought myself, a glorious Beige Power Macintosh G3 Minitower running OS 8. There was nothing mini about this bad boy. I think I was around 25 years old and it was the most expensive thing I had ever purchased. 

Marilyn: Since I deal with businesses primarily, I have a different view of cloud than most people. Most of my clients host their own email on a server that lives in their office. They have physical access to it. We also have a few clients that use a hosting company to host their email. Guess which ones we have more problems with? If there’s a problem with the server, or the server software, being able to access it and fix it is essential. Having to deal with a hosting company and different levels of techs can be time consuming, costly and increase downtime. I feel the same way about backups. Having a secondary or tertiary cloud backup is OK but it would never be my only backup. If I can’t touch the hard drive my backup lives on, I don’t own it. This is one of the reasons that my iPhone doesn’t back up to the cloud. If I need to restore my iPhone I want my data back on it in an hour, not twelve. 

Marilyn: I’m a mom, so I’m up when I need to be and down when I can ;) I used to be a night person, but these days it’s rare if I sleep in until 7am. I’m really trying to get around 8 hours a night. 

Marilyn: Since we opened the retail store this year, we are now open 7 days a week. This adds an extra set of challenges, though we just recently started taking the entire weekend off again. We have paying clients that rely on us so I don’t feel like I can ever fully disengage. Most Sundays we ride our bikes from Seal Beach down to Long Beach to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific and the movies down at the Pike in Long Beach. It’s a 8.5 mile bike ride for us there and then we take the Aqualink boat back to the Long Beach Marina and ride back to Seal. It’s always a fun day. The most challenging thing is finding a movie that can engage a 4 and 13 year old. 

Marilyn: Oh boy. I just had to get VERY organized. We just went Paleo (no dairy or grains) and it takes a ton of planning. All veggies, fruits and good meats. Also Soccer practice just started again, and both boys are playing this year! Luckily, since my main job is being an onsite tech, I have a little freedom with my schedule. I just need to watch emails and be equipped to do remote support if necessary. There are days when things happen, but I’m fortunate enough to have a mom and a mother-in-law that are local and can help me if needed. Not to mention my amazing husband; he’s a fantastic dad and stepdad. 

• Tags
• Apple
• Mac
• Marilyn Halpin
• chocolate
• success
• tech
• women in tech

Celia Graterol is a kick. I can say that because I know her in real life, and it’s true that she is a very funny, wild & crazy woman. When I asked Celia for an interview, I was thinking about the two businesses she owns; her impressive education; the fact that English is her second language, yet she has done very well in this country as a gay woman entrepreneur… I’d forgotten that she was once a Catholic nun, and I didn’t think she’d mention how she met Sally, her partner…but it’s all here, so keep reading! 

Bio: Celia Graterol, MPH, Founder & Principal of Graterol Consulting Group, has been conducting cutting-edge, web-based evaluations and strategic planning for more than 10 years using the Graterol Logic Map™ methodology. Celia assists non-profit organizations and funders with program and organizational development. She  conducts single or multi-site, multi-cultural, community-based evaluations, assessments, and facilitates strategic planning efforts using web-based technology combined with traditional methodologies to engage stakeholders, facilitate learning, and bring clarity throughout the process. 

Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, and after living for over 20 years in the Bay Area, Celia is bilingual English/Spanish and bi-cultural. Celia received her Computer Engineering BS degree in 1989 at the Simón Bolívar University, Caracas, Venezuela. In 2001 she received her MPH in Community Health Education at San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, with the Graduate Student Award for Distinguish Achievement. Celia resides in Marin County with her partner and wife Sally Kuhlman and her dog Poncho. She practices yoga several days a week and rides her mountain bike all over the trails in Marin where this exhilarating sport was born. 

Peggy: Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

Celia: I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela and lived there until I had my first child when I decided to emigrate because I did not want to raise my children in an unsafe country with such levels of political unrest. My home got broken in three times within the last year I lived there. I moved to the US, Marin County, 22 years ago and for the last 17 years I have lived in Tam Valley near the beautiful Headlands trails. Since I moved to Marin, I had two more wonderful children and got divorced when I fell in love with a sweet woman from Orange County who happened to be my former sister-in-law. But that is another story.

Peggy: Whoa…I guess that is another story! Maybe next time. OK, you have two different businesses. Please tell us about them.

Celia: My main business is Graterol Consulting Group. We assist non-profits and their funders with organizational development services including evaluation, strategic planning, and program design. 

My other business is Mountain Biking Marin. We offer mountain bike tours around the Bay Area and bike skills clinics for people who want to improve their riding. Most of our tour clients are visitors from Europe either here on business or vacation.

Celia: For most of my life I have been self-employed. I became an entrepreneur to have more choice in what I do. Working toward a fair system that offers equal opportunities to get ahead in life has been my passion for as long as I can remember. When I was 18, inspired by my interest in addressing social and health inequities, I became a nun to do social work in small villages in Venezuela. As an adult, my social justice values deepened when I immigrated to the US as I learned that being a “gay woman of color” means belonging to a second or even third class citizen group. Despite these challenges, I have had many successes. As I completed a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering in Venezuela, when I immigrated, I brought with me useful skills. Here, I earned a Master’s degree in Public Health. Both degrees combined with my experience as an evaluator allow me to integrate web-based technology into my research. 

Peggy: What were you going to be when you grew up?

Celia: I wanted to be a famous singer, an Olympic champion, the president of a country or the CEO of a corporation. I am the founder and president of Graterol Consulting Group so I am pretty close to one of my dreams.

Celia: Yes and no at the same time. It has been a challenge but it has also provided me opportunities to grow both professionally and personally. Learning another culture and language has been fascinating. I love how accepting the people are in Marin County and the Bay Area. One of the challenges is that I am always seen as different, even though I have lived my whole adult life here. Professionally, my accent is sometimes a barrier because people often make the assumption: if you don’t pronounce a word correctly you are not smart, despite the fact you speak two languages fluently. Also, the evaluation field is mostly dominated by Whites so it has been challenging for me to break in to this profession; I have to work harder to prove my credentials. However, being bi-lingual and bi-cultural have given me a foot in the door to obtain evaluation contracts concerning programs with minority populations because there is a belief that I can better relate to the communities involved thus be a better researcher. 

Celia: I am very proud of the evaluation methodology I developed, the LogicMap, used to integrate traditional research methods (site visit observations, surveys, focus groups, storytelling) with on-line tools (websites, photographs, databases, social media, bibliographic references). This methodology has built-in data collection and features for on-going program reporting and monitoring. The LogicMap facilitates affordable yet rigorous evaluations and effectively demonstrates program results on-line. This new evaluation tool increases learning opportunities for program officers, clients, and grantee staff about what works.

Celia: I was a morning person during my nun days when I had to wake up really early for meditation and mass service so I was also able to be on time to my college classes. Waking up around 4 am every day for about 2 years made me a night person when I quit being a nun. And I continued being a night person for many years until my partner and wife Sally started working early hours. So now I go to sleep early and wake up early to be on the same schedule as her. It works out nicely because I drop her at the bus stop on my way to early morning yoga and meditation.  Talking about closing circles in life!!! I probably won’t become a nun again as I am a bit old for that, but I am going back to my spiritual practice. And instead of mass I do yoga.

I get 6-8 hours of sleep a night.

Peggy: Is there something you do every day that helps you stay grounded?

Celia: I practice yoga about 5 days a week and mountain biking about 3 times a week.

Celia: The fastest way for me to get out of a funk is to get out in nature and do a technical, scary, adrenaline rushing mountain bike ride. In other words, I am an adrenaline junkie. 

Celia: Dark chocolate truffle or dark chocolate with salt. I also love Toblerone milk chocolate and I have a weakness for milk chocolate Hershey kisses dipped in espresso.

Peggy: You have 3 adult children. How did you balance motherhood and business when your kids were younger?

Celia: I wouldn’t have been able to work, get my masters degree in Public Health, and take care of three kids, without Sally; Sally has been the most nurturing parent for my kids, always making sure they had everything they needed and never expecting anything in return. Not only was she, and still is, another mom for the kids but she also helped me to be a more present and better mom. 

Peggy: Is there anything else you would like people to know about you?

Celia: I am very proud of my three wonderful children who are now all in college. My youngest one just left to NY and the other two left to LA. I am adjusting to the empty nest feeling. It is bittersweet. Thank you for interviewing me.

Peggy: Namaste, Celia. I am grateful for your time. 

Celia Graterol: graterolconsulting.com ~ mountainbikingmarin.com ~ Facebook ~ Twitter

• Tags
• LGBT
• Latina
• Venezuela
• chocolate
• entrepreneur
• mountainbiking
• success
• woman
• Sally Kuhlman

I had the honor of hosting the Success and Chocolate panel at the Commonwealth Club of California on July 16, 2012, thanks to my friend Cathy Curtis who runs their Bay Gourmet food program. It was a well-attended, fun event! SF Weekly even wrote an article about the evening.

We had four lovely, intelligent, and articulate women on the panel: (from left to right) Zohara Mapes with TCHO, Wendy Lieu with Socola Chocolatier, Kathy Wiley with Poco Dolce , and Ellin Purdom with Toffee Talk. They each brought samples of their delicious chocolates for the guests in the audience. And they donated a larger product towards a gift basket that was raffled off to a lucky winner. These ladies were fantastic, and once I got past the introductions, I had a great time asking them questions and chatting about chocolate and business.

I received many great questions from the audience (above), and I also came with my own list of questions. It was a fun challenge, weaving in the guests’ questions as they were handed to me! 

Here we are after the panel ended…all smiles! You can listen to the podcast here…please just ignore the introduction piece, where I got all tongue-tied! 

And here I am with the woman who made this all happen…Cathy Curtis of Curtis Financial Planning. I am grateful to Cathy for asking me to moderate the Success and Chocolate panel!

• Tags
• Bay Gourmet
• Commonwealth Club
• chocolate
• chocolatiers
• women