Lady Project is not here to play dress-up.
In fact, its mission is as disarmingly simple as its moniker: to serve as both a resource and network led by women, for women, whomever they may be. Its rosters include non-binary folks to stay-at-home moms, fired-up post-grad entrepreneurs to new-in-town gals to empty-nesters with time to kill.
“Everyone has something to bring to the table,” Lady Project co-founder and CEO Sierra Barter says. No lilies gilded here. Come as you are.
Aforementioned roster aside, LP is not about collecting types of participants to check some hollow boxes, although representation certainly matters to this economic development group. Ultimately, LP was founded on the idea of fostering authentic connection between its members, which, ironically, was where the concept of the organization began in 2012. That was when Barter met its co-founder, Julie Sygiel, through their respective Providence-based businesses.
They soon bonded over their shared dissatisfaction with the decidedly masculine aura of local networking events, and their frustration that good women weren’t meeting one another organically. Much has since been written about the duo’s initial kismet; Sygiel famously quipped, “you’re my people,” when the two sat down to hash out their [initially] modest plans.
As passionate as they were about LP, it wasn’t until 56 people showed up to what they expected to be a small inaugural event at a local bar that they knew they had something big on their hands. “People were like, ‘I need this. This is what I’m looking for,’” Barter says.
The success of that initial event catalyzed the group's other myriad member offerings. There’s now the annual Lady Project Summit in Providence, with over 300 attendees; the aforementioned chapter meetings; group trips abroad, and a 3x3 speaking series, which gives three different women three minutes to speak on an issue of their choice. LP also runs a collective work space and its own blog, which Editor-in-Chief Brittanny Taylor helms.
Said blog is another opportunity for the group to practice what it preaches, and it’s become a space for visceral, vulnerable storytelling from women of all walks, a sort of meditation on the Project’s larger themes of inclusion, accessibility and acceptance.
“Right now, we are having articles submitted from transwomen, from non-binary [individuals],” Taylor says, explaining the blog’s June theme, which is focused on Pride Month. “I feel a lot of organizations have to say, ‘[we’re here] for the queer community, but are they actually here? As a real-life editor and as a black woman, I want all voices to be heard,” she adds. “It is important that we’re not saying it because we have to, but because it’s important.”
Her comments underscore the fact that LP’s straight-shooting attitude isn’t just mimicking the card-carrying GIRL POWER YAS KWEEN attitude that permeates today’s trendy take on womanhood, but instead paved the way for it. "One of the reasons we feel we were successful since day one is that we created a space for women before many other feminist and other networking groups launched," Barter says. LP’s early emphasis on genuine realness, as opposed to caricature, is an integral part of their ethos, an element that they say makes the group stand apart.
Those running Lady Project — namely, volunteers — also benefit from this “whole woman” perspective. Many have day jobs outside of their work with LP, Barter included. “It’s not [just] about being a hashtag girl boss,” she quips. “It’s about paying my bills, and there’s a level of transparency missing from hashtag girl boss lifestyle.”
The group's embrace of practicality extends to its members, too. Barter mentions their priciest event tickets hover around $30, and that the group doesn't have a dress code. Attending a LP event in gym clothes after barre or a kiddo drop-off is encouraged, no change necessary; just come, she says.
"I want all voices to be heard."
These attitudes are striking a chord, as the group has come a long way from a humble Tumblr blog. There's now 1,500 members in 18 chapters across the county, and in the last year alone the nonprofit has brought in between $100,000 to $150,000.
These facts amuse both Barter and her team. After all, this was just the brainchild of two women trying to casually fit a need by being themselves.
“There was a never a game plan,” Barter says. “People asked, ‘Do you have a business plan?’ I was like, … ‘no?’” She laughs. “If you told 25-year-old Sierra this is where the Lady Project would be today, I would not believe you."
Part of the secret to that success? Lady Project’s Providence headquarters. The close-knit nature of Rhode Island relationships, so robustly fostered in part due the state’s smaller size, meant that the group received early, positive attention from the press and the government, members of which came to LP events from the get-go.
“If the Lady Project existed in New York City, I don’t think the mayor would come to our events,” Barter says. “Here, he comes to every event … [and it] gives us a layer of legitimacy that we would not be able to get to in other cities,” she adds.
LP’s relationship with Providence and the state is one Barter intends to continually encourage. "We’re committed to keeping our headquarters in Rhode Island, as well as our annual Summit,” Barter tells me. She uses the event as a chance to show off the city to attendees, housing them in local hotels, employing female caterers from the area, and pointing guests towards cool networking spaces, like the Providence Athenaeum and Edgar Allen Poe's ghost.
“It’s really important to us, when people are coming from somewhere else, that they get a taste of Providence flavor — because that’s where we’ve been born and raised.”
It’s perhaps this loyalty to the city that built it that truly serves as a testament to the Lady Project’s unwavering focus on attendees being and embracing the women that they are. And in LP’s case? It’s a Providence lady.
