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
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• yoga
• San Francisco

I first met Christine Bronstein at her home last spring at an event she was hosting for A Band of Wives, the online network she founded, which I’d discovered thanks to an article in Marin Magazine. I was impressed with how warm, welcoming, and real Chris was the moment I met her. I loved this woman right away, and I’m sure you will, too.

Bio: Christine Bronstein is the founder of www.abandofwives.com a social network and information website for women. She was CEO of one of the few women run, venture backed health and fitness companies in the nation for 8 years and president of a child-welfare foundation for 3 years. She is a graduate of Columbia/UC-Berkeley executive MBA program and a member of the honor society Beta Gamma Sigma. Chris is married to Hearst/San Francisco Chronicle’s Editor-at-Large Phil Bronstein and mother of three.

Peggy: You’re the founder of www.abandofwives.com, a fabulous and super-successful social and information website for women. You also blog for Huffington Post, and you’re the mother of three young children. Previously, you were CEO of a health and fitness company, and president of a foundation. How have you achieved all of this? What makes you excel at what you do?

Christine: I have achieved all of these things with lots of support. Anyone who says that they achieve alone must have a terrible memory.

Also, I don’t necessarily see myself as excelling, but when I put my mind to something it is because I am passionate about it. And when I get passionate about something I’m like a racehorse with blinders on. 

But, when you are doing something you love, it doesn’t matter how successful it is. You just feel good doing it. I think that is true for the opposite as well. I have been in the situation where from an outside perspective it would seem that the company I was running was successful, but I didn’t love doing it and I was very unhappy. Achievement is actually very much an internal thing and it took me a long time to learn that; actually, I would say I’m still learning it.

Peggy: What prompted you to start A Band of Wives?

Christine: I had terrible post-partum with my daughter and I wanted a private place to communicate with my friends (I wasn’t on Facebook because it felt too public). One afternoon, I was standing in line at Whole Foods in Mill Valley reading a magazine and I read about Ning (the platform we use). I had a group of women and we all called each other wives. So, I went home and built A Band of Wives that afternoon and sent out invitations to my friends. 

Around that same time my husband had written a column called Wives have wives-and that is healthy. He got an amazing outpouring from women readers who loved this notion. So, although I built it for my group of friends, I had hoped that it would spread, but I couldn’t have imagined it growing as much as it has. 

And each member has something so inspirational to offer. Almost immediately ABOW started taking on a life of its own, so I can’t really take credit for its growth.

Peggy: Many people come up with great ideas, as you did with A Band of Wives, but then never execute them. You could still be sitting around talking about this great community for women you’d like to start…but instead you went ahead and did it! What is it about you? How did you get your idea off the ground?

Christine: I have had many ideas that haven’t gone off as smoothly, but I can say that I do try to put everything out there. If I get an idea, I do it. And I work hard at it. If it doesn’t work out, then I do the next thing (after a good cry in the shower). 

So, I think there is a lot of luck and timing involved with getting projects off the ground. A Band of Wives is a very needed presence in our hectic world. Women need community and a safe place to find and flex their voice.

Peggy: In your Huff Post Women article, “Can Estrogen Fuel Our Global Economy”, you talk about how you raised $4 million in venture capital when you were 24. Wow. Sounds like you were born with confidence and gumption. True? What were you like as a kid?

Christine: I was a tomboy when I was younger and then kind of a rebel. I moved out of my mom’s house at 15. By 16 I was living alone in an apartment that my father owned, but only visited once a month. I had to learn how to take charge of my life and I also learned how to build a community for myself out of friends and extended family.

When I raised my VC funding I had a great mentors, I worked 70 hours a week and I had an inflated, neophyte ego—all things that go over well in the VC world.  (Although I pretty quickly lost my inflated sense of self.)

Peggy: How do you balance work and motherhood…and still find time for yourself?

Christine: It is VERY hard. I have a lot of help, a very supportive husband and lots of wives. I have started doing less email on the weekends and although I am now constantly behind in my emails, I get fun, connected time with my family that keeps me going all week.

Peggy: Is there something you do every day that helps you stay focused/sane?

Christine: I try to do yoga once a week and I practice A Course in Miracles when I start to feel unbalanced.

Peggy: How do you get out of a funk?

Christine: Zoloft, chocolate and my wives. Women especially need to have time with one another. It boosts our oxytocin and is so important for our overall health.

Also, helping those in need always brings about a pretty quick change in perspective and a good dose of gratitude.

Peggy: Dark or milk chocolate?  

Christine: Both, but I feel like I’m being healthy when I eat dark chocolate. I like to think of it as a fruit.

Peggy: I love that…chocolate is a fruit!  Is there anything else you’d like people to know about you?

Christine: Aside from chocolate my favorite food is bacon.

Peggy: Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions, and for being so candid. I wish you much more success with A Band of Wives…I’m very proud to be a member!

Be sure to follow A Band of Wives on Twitter @abandofwives and Like them on Facebook.

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• A Band of Wives
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