Just say Yes, And

It’s 2025! Yes, I’m aware it’s March and that I’m late to the new year party. I’ve spent the past couple months doing anything I can – hemming curtains, filing mail, scrubbing my oven – to avoid hearing the antics of the new administration. But that loud crashing sound from the tariffs shoving the stock market off a cliff was kind of hard to ignore.

Spring Forward, when this stupid time change eliminating an hour happens, was this weekend. As if we needed another reason to lose sleep. For us perimenopausal women, this is a particularly ferocious nemesis. And International Women’s Day was this weekend too – what a joke. Women! You get ONE DAY! Hooray! Celebrate you, ladies, you’re 50% of the population but less than 10% of the world’s leaders, 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs, 13% of the world’s Billionaires, 2% of venture capital funded entrepreneurs. And in some countries now including the US – you can’t decide what to do with your body, what to put on your body, or even if you can walk outside your house without a man. Oh, the joy of being a woman in 2025! Let’s celebrate for ONE DAY.

That enormous venture capital funding gender gap number is one that I have researched and studied and lobbied and mentored and coached and given talks and invested and yada yada yada for the past 20 years. And guess what? Nothing has changed. Back in 2000, the Y2K days, when I was an investor at the first women owned women focused VC fund in the country, women entrepreneurs were not getting funded. We tried to change that by being women investors who invested in women – back then 98% of VC investors were men. Women didn’t get much funding then, 25 years ago. And now? Nothing has changed! Diversity in investor decision-making roles is critical for change to happen – because of what I call “resonance.” I’ll write about this in another post as it’s the subject of my ‘sure to win a nobel prize’ work-in-progress magnum opus. More to come.

But now, with the new tariff toting, stock market shooting Trump Sheriff in town, we don’t talk about Diversity [sung to the tune of We Don’t Talk about Bruno…]. No No No. And we don’t dare say that we want equality, equal representation, or to feel included. That would not be good anymore in the US. This new administration is just not having it. And don’t you dare say Gay! Not even if it’s the name of the most famous plane from WW2 – they want to make sure that word is removed. Even though the administration loves free speech. Just not THAT free.

Every time you hear the latest news of what is happening in federal music, I dare you not to hear clown music. It somewhat helped the first time around in Trump 1.0. Every day, another clown act. Now the clown show has gotten a little eerie. Trump 2.0: Return of the Clowns! This time they’re weirder and meaner. Sequels are really never as good as the original. And just like most sequels, they have billionaire producer money behind them. While everyone associated with the sequel watches their money go down the drain.

Just don’t talk about Diversity. NO NO NO.