I find myself, in recent days, listening to an unusual amount of techno and dubstep; not because I’m particularly fond of either one, but rather, because I’m audibly reliving my memories of WeWork Summer Camp.

It’s true: I’m a grown woman suffering from summer camp withdrawal, and I’m not alone. Over 2,000 members of WeWork, an international coworking community, made their way to the Adirondacks last weekend for two days of watersports, live music and, among many other perks, a 24-hour open bar. Social media has been buzzing with the hashtags #wwcamp15 and #wwsc15, with images saturating Instagram of sunsets, kayaks, empty beer cans, and spinning DJs among a mountainous backdrop.

I’ll admit it:  At first, I absolutely did not want to attend Summer Camp. It didn’t matter that I’m a member of WeWork and a big fan of the community; I had no interest whatsoever in sharing a cabin with 25 strangers and taking part in what I thought would be a sleepless weekend full of startup kids of barely legal drinking age. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong.) It wasn’t until Lily, the manager of the WeWork location where my business is headquartered, talked me into it.

“Lily,” I told her, “I’m a crotchety old lady. I go to bed at 10. There’s no way this experience is going to be fun for me.”

“Trust me,” she said. “You won’t be sorry. You’ll make best friends. There’s something for everyone. Just go.”

And so I did, but not before begging and talking my friend Seamus into coming with me. We each shelled out $360 per ticket and, two months later, I found myself waiting to board a bus at 6:45 AM for a six-hour drive upstate, staring at the fully-packed suitcase, duffel bag and sleeping bag that I would be toting with me. “How the hell do I need this much crap for two days?” I wondered. “What the hell am I getting myself into?”

On the bus ride, my perspective began to shift. Being the Queen of Tiny Bladders, it wasn’t long before I needed to use the restroom and was greeted by several young men sitting in the bus’s rear, large handles of Jameson in tow.

“You have to take a drink to use the bathroom,” one of them told me.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Does it matter?”

I pondered the question. The last time I consumed alcohol at 8:30 AM was one St. Patrick’s Day in Boston at the age of 27.

“Okay,” I said. “Gimme.” Was this what Lily was talking about? I could feel myself making best friends already.

We finally arrived at the camp, where these young men, it turned out, were among the crowd of people with whom I’d be sharing a cabin; good thing I didn’t decline their liquid hospitality. We exchanged niceties and, after sweating out my 8:30 AM Jameson at a Bollywood dance class (Lily was right; there really was something for everyone!), I found Seamus and the acquaintances he had picked up on his bus ride. The new Six Friends, as I came to think of us, spent the evening on a large lakeside rock, sharing what would have normally been far too much personal information.

The next morning, I managed to make it to an outdoor yoga class: Yet another indication of Summer Camp’s something-for-everyone nature.

“The compassion in my heart is the same as that in yours,” our instructor said, concluding the session and prompting the “holy-shit” moment for me: The moment when I really understood how indicative the entire event was of the WeWork brand, and the resonation of its “Do What You Love” slogan. Summer Camp was a two-day focus of that. To my left, the all-day bloody mary and mimosa bar was opening. To my right, multiple tennis games were in progress. Several feet ahead, people were sunning themselves on a lakeside beach. Do What You Love, indeed, whether it’s your life’s work, or how you choose to spend a digital-free weekend.

That revelation lasted through the afternoon, when I met the Six Friends at the beach and, before spending an hour in a floating inflatable trampoline, I took some time to people-watch. This setting, unlike certain gym chains claiming to be so, was truly a judgement-free one. Everyone, no matter what shape or size, was letting it all hang out; no body-shaming, no cover-ups, and no one who cared. Normally, I wouldn’t even want to be seen in my own two-piece without a minimum of five preceding carb-free and circuit-training-fueled days. Stripping down to my bikini, it was completely uncharted emotional territory for me, as I not only sensed the palpable shortage of judgement, but also, began to feel a hint of – gasp! – confidence. Was that the cute community manager from one of WeWork’s lower Manhattan locations? Why, sure, I’ll go say hello.

The trend continued after sunset, when one of Summer Camp’s musical headliners, the Chainsmokers, took the stage, and such exuberant levels of dancing took place, that at least one of us would come away from the weekend with an injured rotator cuff. I wasn’t sure if each of us, the Six Friends – all close to 30 or older – were vacating our day-to-day personalities, or if we were reaching down to the mental depths of our respectively submerged desires to surrender our exterior shells of concerns.

During the show, I realized that, perhaps somewhere near the lake that afternoon, I had lost my own shell, when I bumped into one of my cabin-mates on his way back from the bar. “Are you having fun?” I asked him.

“Yeah!” he answered. “I’m rolling!”

“Nice,” I said, questioning my pending urge to make out with a 25-year-old, who would henceforth be referred to among the Six Friends as “The Target.” I went for a high-five instead.

The Six Friends, however, weren’t having it. Back in the cabin, around 3:30 the next morning, one of the Six, an Englishman named Johnny, nodded toward The Target and asked me, “Are you going to hit that?”

“Probably not,” I said, “mostly because I’m too tired to stand up.” Wrong answer. It didn’t take long for Johnny and Raquel, another cabin-mate, to physically pick me up, carry me across the room, and drop me at the way-too-young man’s feet.

The Target looked down at me. “What are you doing?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. I really didn’t. There I was, a 30-something business owner with an MBA, and yet, I found myself quite literally at the feet of a virtual embryo, in my glasses and sweatpants.

Throughout WeWork’s many locations, walls are emblazoned with various entrepreneurial anthems, including, “LET IT GO.” Before, I never really understood what that meant within a coworking context, but now, it made sense. “Don’t spend your days in misery,” I took it to mean. Don’t keep a job you hate. Plan for failure, but don’t fear it. Take off your stupid cover-up, shed your shell, even if temporarily, and silence all those judgemental voices. Go for it. Do what you love.

Sunday morning finally arrived and, not long after boarding the bus back to Manhattan, “3G” reappeared on my phone for the first time in two days.

“Let it go,” I thought to myself. “It’s okay. Let it go.”

I tapped out a text message to the person who, underneath it all, I had actually been thinking about all weekend: The real reason, I suspect, no making out with any age-inappropriate men took place.

“Holy shit.”

“What?” he wrote back.

“Summer Camp,” I responded. “I don’t have any other words to describe it. Just ‘holy shit’.”

Here’s to the shreds of dignity we’ve maintained. Here’s to our responsibilities, our daily realities, and our life’s work. Moreover, here’s to the occasions upon which we abandon them.

Say hey to Amanda on Twitter and Instagram

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Image: Amanda Zantal-Wiener

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At first glance, Foodstand appears to merely be an app: One where foodie Instagrammers can post without the backlash that so often comes with repeated photo updates of their lunch. In fact, Foodstand serves more as an incubator than it does as an abstract mobile platform, fostering New York area food startups with a mission to change the way the city eats.

It does so with several initiatives that only begin with its app. While admittedly Instagram-esque, it maintains an element of exclusivity. Only those within the food industry are invited to participate, be them chefs, food writers or foodie entrepreneurs. Foodstand exists, according to its website, “to reconnect with our food community” and “make it easier for everyone to help grow a better food system.” A regular celebration of that mission comes in the form of the Foodstand Spotlight Series: An event where food startups can pitch their business models and purposes to a panel of experts, as well as an audience of industry representatives.

Last Tuesday’s Foodstand Spotlight event featured four food startups looking to make major changes in the way New Yorkers eat and think about where their food comes from.

1. The Pixie and the Scout

Katy McNulty knows her way around a kitchen and holds strong tenets for the ingredients that belong in it. That credo remains a motivation behind The Pixie and The Scout, the catering company that she co-founded with her husband, offering “sustainable events” and “intelligent hospitality,” she says. Today, one of the company’s goals is to become a regular alternative to the cafeteria-like settings to which busy professionals commonly restrict themselves, and to earn status as a regional household name that is viewed, as McNulty puts it, like “a sustainable cafe in-house.”

The Pixie and the Scout’s price point is steep, with catered business lunches going roughly for the tune of $250 or more. However, the proof is in the sustainably-sourced contents of each meal. “To actually use…farms and farmers is difficult,” says McNulty. “[We’re] trying to make high-end catering…much more approachable.”

2. Eco-Farm on Wheels

It’s been proven time and time again: Good habits begin in childhood. Carol Lake, owner of the Ridgefield, Connecticut biodynamic Dancing Dog Farm, agrees. Her mission: If urban-dwelling kids can’t come to the farm, bring the farm to them. Armed with live rural animals (pigs, mostly), compost boxes, and buckets of dirt and worms, Lake and her team travel to New York City to teach children the fundamentals of food cultivation. The worms eat the apple core, then produce soil, and that soil is used to plant seeds that turn into fruits and vegetables. Eco-Farm on Wheels has already won a fairly big first client: The New York Public Library.

3. Mountain Morsels

Rebecca Scott is a one-woman shakeup of the snack industry’s landscape. Her company, Sustainable Snacks, produces Mountain Morsels: Five flavors of vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free energy bites, the ingredients for which Scott hand-slices, mixes and produces entirely on her own. Mountain Morsels’ naturally-named varieties (e.g., “Harper’s Ferry Cherry” and “Great Valley Ridge Raisin”) are presently available in 15 locations, with Scott looking to saturate the New York market and beyond.

4. Green Top Farms

Hydroponics are a friend to the urban farmer, allowing eco-friendly vegetables to be grown in non-conventional settings. That’s how Josh Lee, better known as “Farmer Josh,” came to launch Green Top Farms, a producer of microgreens that employs indoor seed trays to locally harvest and distribute sustainable produce. A North Carolina native, Lee gained his expertise in agriculture during the summers he spent working on area farms, today putting that knowledge toward both Green Top Farms and Nourish International, “a non-profit that fights poverty through student action,” according the the former’s website. Weekly microgreen subscriptions can be purchased from Green Top Farms for $20 each, affording four days  of 2.5-oz fresh salads.

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Harvest vegetables image via Shutterstock

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In ever-increasing numbers, women are starting fulfilling businesses that also impact communities.

Female-founded, women-run businesses are on the rise. The numbers of women rising to the corporate c-suite are slowly increasing, but women are redirecting their ambition, and most importantly, their creativity and drive, toward starting and nurturing companies that fulfill them. The reasons for women to strike out on their own range from millennials that burn out from corporate life and look for something more, to women who have hit the glass ceiling, to those, overwhelmingly, who want to be in control of their own future, define their own work/life balance, assert their independence and fulfill the need they see in their own and other communities.

Here are eight inspiring companies and their founders.

Drop the Chalk (Kickboard)

Founder Jennifer Schnidman Medbery studied computer science at Columbia, but joined Teach for America after graduation. While she was teaching, she realized how much time teachers spent recording data, and how little time they had to analyze and act on it. Kickboard allows teachers to enter student data, analyze trends and customize learning for students. Medbery piloted the software in several New Orleans schools and more schools are adopting the system by leaps and bounds.

Style Seat

Style Seat‘s business allure is its two-pronged approach: it boosts local businesses and taps the lucrative hair salon industry. CEO Melody McCloskey got the idea when she was looking for someone who specialized in cutting curly hair. Hair salons are extremely individualized local businesses, so when you move to a new town it’s hard to find a stylist other than through word of mouth. Hair salons are also slow to adopt online tools to grow their businesses, so Style Seat provides a unique set of options, including online profiles, price ranges, and stylist’s schedules so clients can see who is available in a certain timeframe. On the other side, stylists can track trends like which days they traditionally have fewer clients and then have the option to run a promotion. Growing local economies has been touted as one of the ways our society can recover from this slump, so Style Seat is imminently sustainable and infinitely scalable. Since its start in May 2011, hundreds of thousands of stylists and clients have found their matches.

Solar Sister

When Katherine Lucey was an energy executive, she noticed that the large-scale energy projects she was helping implement in Uganda, weren’t reaching the rural population. She conceived and started Solar Sister, an Avon-type business model where women can start their own businesses for a nominal fee, bringing solar lamps to homes and communities. Before solar lighting, many families spent the evening in the dark, or used unsafe and expensive kerosene lamps. Solar Sister is expanding its operations from Uganda into other communities in rural Africa.

Nom Nom Truck

The food truck industry is booming recently. Co-founders Jennifer Green and Misa Chien met as undergraduates at UCLA, and after graduation they took $25,000 of family money and life savings and rented their first Nom Nom truck. The pair launched their Vietnamese cuisine on the LA scene to a waiting Twitter following. An appearance on The Great Food Truck Race introduced their unique menu to the nation. Nom Nom uses healthy, local ingredients, and eco-friendly products while serving banh mi cuisine to more than 800 people a day in both LA and San Francisco.

Gianna 

Gianna Driver spent part of her childhood living in a women’s shelter with her Filipino mother. At 16, she was the first in her family to go to college (later attending Wharton) which led to a career in commercial insurance. She left the business world behind when she realized that she wanted to empower women like the ones she saw in the shelter growing up. Gianna employs women in India, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines to handcraft accessories and items for home decor. Gianna focuses on fair trade for the severely disadvantaged in rural villages or urban slums. First, she identifies a group that already produces a craft and constructs a business support system aimed at empowering the women and allowing them to achieve independence. Gianna works to preserve both the cultural heritage and the environment, using organic and recycled materials.

Code for America

“Fundamentally, it’s all about helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens.” Founder Jen Pahlka patterned Code for America after Teach for America, aiming to tackle municipal issues by recruiting the best and brightest coders to focus on specific city issues. Each year the organization accepts applications from both cities and web developers to participate. Teams are matched with cities and specific problems are identified and scoped. The projects run for 11 months, and the goal is to develop web applications that enable cities to engage their residents in ways that reduce administrative costs, move toward transparency and collaboration, and are shareable – which means that an application built for one city can be used by any other city. In a time when city government budgets are being slashed, yet communities need local government to implement important measures to help cities grow, Code for America can be instrumental in helping municipalities move forward.

Alabama Chanin

Yes, we love Natalie Chanin, but she belongs here due to her sustainable focus and benefit to her surrounding communities. Alabama Chanin crafts limited-edition, handmade products for individuals and the home, focusing on slow design and sustainability. Talented artisans from and around Florence, Alabama use new, organic and recycled materials to create unique items.

Women 2.0

Finally, we give a nod to Women 2.0, a new media company that supports and champions women-founded businesses. Founders Shaherose Charania and Angie Chang work to “Inform, inspire and educate a new generation of females that are entrepreneurial and successful.” The business incorporates a blog to give women a voice, events to bring female entrepreneurs together and “enables entrepreneurs with a network, resources and knowledge to take your startup from idea to launch.”

Images: Victor1558, Solar Sister, Alabama Chanin, ThinkPublic, Flavia Brandi, Jek in the box, Gianna, Trey Ratcliff, Tara Hunt

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