Renee Power launched a community-driven subscription box featuring a book a month & curated female owned products
Feminist Book Club is a community-driven subscription box that features a book of the month and curated products from woman-owned businesses. A portion of the revenue is donated to a new feminist organization each month so your dollars always do good in this world. Members suggest the books they’d like to receive, vote on those suggestions, then chat all month long in a secret online discussion group and “meet” at the end of each month via live video chat, occasionally joined by the authors themselves! More than just another subscription box, Feminist Book Club is comprehensive resistance delivered to your door in a one-of-a-kind collaged box created just for you by the founder herself.
Why do you think it's important for a platform like MAIA to exist?
Feminist Book Club is a business that showcases other woman-owned businesses. As such, MAIA has been incredibly helpful for finding those other businesses! Our founder has used the MAIA directory to reach out to potential collaborators. The content MAIA shares is perfect for sharing with our own audiences, especially statistics on the impact our money can make on gender equality if we were more conscious of who owns the businesses we support.
What did you want to do/be when you were a child? Did anything changed since then? Why? Why not?
As a child all the way into college, I could never narrow down what I wanted to be. I dabbled in biology, musical theatre, romance languages, education, journalism and more. But it was my first college gender studies course that planted the seed that quietly grew for years. I ended up majoring in gender studies and finished my M.A. and coursework towards a Ph.D. with this emphasis. Still I thought I’d be a professor and author. It wasn’t until I started to meet other woman entrepreneurs that I realized I was uniquely situated to create the Feminist Book Club and all my dabbling lead me here.
What is a good article or book you have read recently? Why did you like it so much? What’s one important lesson you learned?
The Feminist Book Club recently read This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins, a series of personal essays by a young black woman in Harlem who grew up in a white suburb of New Jersey. Jerkins leans on her Ivy League education in comparative literature to paint a nuanced picture of intersectionality in the modern world. Truthfully, this book was difficult to read and challenged many of my own assumptions about race, gender, and socioeconomic status, which is exactly what we need.
What do you think is the biggest obstacle for female founders? How can we overcome it?
Unfortunately, good business ideas are nothing without capital or investment. Many woman can’t afford to start a business. Those of us who do are often incredibly privileged with a safety net of family or partners to support us financially. If we’re in that position, we must never forget how fortunate we are to take this leap into entrepreneurship and we can pay it forward by investing in other women who don’t have the same background.
What are your short/long term goals?
In the short-term, I’d love to be able to replace my full-time income with this business. As for long-term goals, they’re lofty and I like them that way. I envision Feminist Book Club to be so much more than a subscription box and virtual community. I see local chapters and meetups, retreats, volunteer events, and countless opportunities to do feminism on the ground, not just talk about it.
Who is the one super successful person you look up to? Why them? Can you share their quote/ideology that inspires you the most?
I really admire Katrina Lake, the founder of Stitch Fix. Not only was she a pioneer in the subscription product business, she’s a trailblazer for women in tech. I had the honor of seeing her speak recently and I was inspired by her humility. She credits her success to surrounding herself with brilliant people who know more than she does. She’s the captain of the ship but it’s clear she has so much trust in and respect for her employees.