How a Domestic Abuse Survivor Built a Movement for Women

I am a survivor of domestic abuse.

When you go through these things in these challenges, you realize that there's not a lot of women that look like you in the room. There's a need to have a mentorship network in a place where women can go.

This is really about other women entrepreneurs, other women in success who have led their path showing other women in the way. Carolyn Grippo is a technology executive AI leader and the founder of Bet on Yourself.

Drawing from decades of leadership and technology and her own experience rebuilding her life through adversity, she empowers women to embrace opportunity, achieve financial independence and create lives on their own terms.

You do not do as a great of a job from the jump with young women with teaching them financial sadness.

But we need to be pushed to ask for more

ask for better salaries, ask to get that money from the VC. All the advice I was getting kind of sounded like either pausing or giving up and the women that are reaching out to me know that I pushed forward and they want to understand like, how did you not give up

like what kept you going and how do I do the same? (dramatic music) - It spans the globe. Like a super high school, get to the hell this? (indistinct)

Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. - It's not over, I'm telling how we're... - The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. - It's extremely awesome, though, right here.

- Oh, that is sensational. - Look, open, check up on what's the link you said. - It's the bottom of the planet.

- You can live your dreams.

- Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. And we are here at the quarterfinals of the World Cup. If you've been joining us throughout this journey here at the Miami Studios in Sunny Miami Beach.

And yeah, we got a special guest today. She's all pretty dressed in pink and looking wonderful for her shoot today, but yes, introduce yourself, where you from, and what's your business? - So my name is Carol Ann Grippo,

and I am from Cape A New Jersey. My business is right now. I work as a managing partner at an AI company. But I'm also the founder and CEO of Better On Yourself LLC, which is a woman empowerment organization

that teaches women to stop asking for permission and to bet on themselves. All right, whoa, so why did you get into this business of the women's business? I mean, that's a big thing.

Like stop asking for permission and betting on yourself. It seems like it's coming from a place somewhere. Let's know where's our comes from. - Yeah, everything comes from somewhere, right?

“And I think this one really came from my own journey.”

Right now, I really did not have what anyone would consider a straight line to success. I've seen a lot of success. I've had a lot of success. I've had a lot of great moments,

but along the way, I had a lot of struggles. I was in a very difficult marriage. I am a survivor of domestic abuse. I was a single mom for many, many years, and I'm also currently a survivor of endometriosis

stage four, which I know a lot of women right now are dealing with. And when you go through these things and these challenges, you realize that there's not a lot of women that look like you in the room.

You're looking for someone to light your runway. Someone to show you a path. Someone to look down the ladder and help you up a couple of rungs. And as a woman, I found that there was very many people

willing to do that. And so as I rose in my success and started to mentor other young people and people who are a make career

“having similar struggles, I think very few people”

have a straight line to the top. I realize that there's a need to have a mentorship network in a place where women can go. Not necessarily to get support. We're not talking about going to a shelter,

or emotional support or mental health support. This is really about other women entrepreneurs, other women in success who have led their path showing other women the way. Yeah, really the mind.

Yeah, because the entrepreneurial path for women, like when it comes to raising funds, right? Talking to VCs, the statistics. I mean, entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurship in general, the stats are very low.

But when it comes to raising funds, right, for your business, for women, it's like, you know, I believe it's like something like 85 or 90% of VC funds goes to white males, right? And then when it comes to women, CEOs and entrepreneurs,

they get less than 3% or something. I mean, it's hard.

“And I think there's a lot of reasons for that.”

And I don't want to go and get myself canceled, but I do feel we do not do as a great of a job from the jump with young women with teaching them, you know, financial savviness, you know, even from teaching them how to, you know,

How do I buy my house out from my ex-husband? What does that process look like? You know, how do you manage a checking account? What is financial freedom look like for them? You know, teaching them about investment,

teaching them about all different, you know, vehicles. They can do to make money. It doesn't just have to be get a job, work nine to five, put money in your 401(k) and wait until you're in your 60s and hope everything goes well.

- Yes. - So much they can do. - Ooh, I know. - Yeah, that was stuff.

- Yeah, that was like, oh man, never even my plan.

So many people are like, I would have retired 10 years ago, but the market, and I'm like, listening to this is like a 15-year-old, like, yeah, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm not doing that. - So yeah, yeah. - Find something else. And so I just feel that we need to do better by women in that area

and also teach women it's okay to ask for stuff. We're really taught to wait, right? For someone to offer something to us, it's just also just some way innate in us and some way work caregivers, we're very outward thinking,

but we need to be pushed to ask for more, ask for better salaries, ask to get that money from the VC, you know, put yourself out there, and I want to see us do a better job. - And so how many women do you work with and kind of what type of women come and find you?

- So right now it's mainly people from my own network we're really much in our infancy, but I was so excited today when I announced I was coming here to have these conversations.

I got a flood of women reaching out to me,

wanting to support my whole idea and wanting to support around yourself, which I was very excited about, but it's mainly women who are confused or struggling in some way, and they don't want to give up. I think that's where the breaking point is,

is where we need to insert ourselves, is okay, life punched me in the face, this happens to everyone, right? You don't punch in the face, something happened, and usually you get, you know, the slew of advice from people.

“Oh, you should find a job that's easier to manage,”

you know, your kids with, or you should move back in with your parents. - That's interesting. - Especially from the Filipino moms. - And Italian, it's like, and birds, so you're moving back in. No, I'm like, I was making good money, you know, already, we're not, not great money, but I was like at that point where

I needed to make more to sustain myself, but I didn't want to move back in with my parents and those ground, and all the advice I was getting, kind of sounded like, either pausing or giving up, and, you know, the women that are reaching out to me know that I pushed forward,

they know my story, they know my journey, and they want to understand, like, how did you not give up, like, what kept you going, and how do I do the same? And then, you know, you find other women just like you, and you're like, we need to connect these people.

- All right. - They need to talk. - And so you're a single mother of a son or a daughter. - I have both, so I have a 20-year-old son. And I was 16-year-old daughter, I can't believe they're that old. - I saw the new Italian mom and vice is like,

"Why don't you start a business?" And create an empire and do what you love, beyond up to. - Do flex. - Yeah.

“- Yeah, 100%. - Honestly, yeah, it's funny how that changes”

from the generations to generations. - That's right. And so Italian, my wife's Italian also. - Okay. - What part of Italy? - So Southern Italian, the Nepal's, and the Palzotano, and Ishqia, all the places you want to visit on vacation,

but places that are historically hard to be a local and work in, and make money, so people naturally immigrated to the United States. - Yeah. - My grandfather came here to us. - Seems like all of it, when you ask Italians, it seems like all of Italy is hard to make money.

- Yeah, I know, I don't know why my kids always have to,

every time we go for vacation, they're like, "Why did our grandfather ever leave here?" And one of the men who is driving us to the airport, actually explained to them what the economy is and why it's hard to make money there, and really opened my kids' eyes,

and I was, I almost wanted to hug him. I was like, "That was so great." - Yeah, I was like, "You talked to any Italian, they're like new, and then they go back to America." - Made money? - Yeah. - Come, vacation.

- Correct, correct. - And you also talked about AI, right? So we love to talk about AI here. - And everybody loves to talk about AI now. - I don't know, it's like, actually,

you get a little bit of that AI anxiety because all the new tools are coming at you. It's like this, it's like every week. It's like, "Oh, I just learned the last tool, "and now you got to upgrade."

- Oh, yeah. - Yeah, there's that AI anxiety because it's all coming so fast, right? - Absolutely. - But I'm gonna slow things down right now.

“Where are you, kind of, what are you working with AI right now?”

- So right now, I'm working at a very large company that can not name for proprietary reasons, but as a managing partner, and I'm working with their customers to really help do exactly what you said,

to help clear the clutter. You know, these large organizations, they are Fortune 100, Fortune 500 organizations. AI is testing infrastructure and organizational structures, more than I think we have ever seen

since the Industrial Revolution, truthfully. And, you know, companies need someone to come and light their path too, right? Show them the things they need to fix, get into shape, because let's be honest, AI sounds sexy,

Your data has to be good, your connectivity has to be good, your efficiencies have to be good, your security protocols, your structure, there's so much that goes into it. So my background is really in a lot of that building,

a lot for organizations in the background,

and so now I'm doing this for AI, which is amazing.

It's, everybody says to me, "With that on yourself, why aren't you just quitting your day job and focusing 100% in this week?" This is too cool, so we'll walk away from right now, it's just awesome book you found,

and you need to see the end. It's a good way to put it. Changing so much every day, I don't think anybody really knows how this is going to fit or where it's going to evolve in towards the site. - Well, that's the ending of that AI book.

It's like, does it, is it Terminator or is it? - Sound, I robot, right? But I think it's something that I'm very passionate about as well. I'm very lucky to finally have found a job that I truly love. - Yeah, that's great.

And it seems like, oh yeah, AI, just integrated AI, right? But there's just so much to integrating AI. It's not just the automatic, here's a prompt. Ooh, there's a company, right? Yeah, it's so fast.

“So it's really not, that's why I laugh when people think”

that it's just going to replace the world, and I'm like, we are so not there yet. - Yeah. - And there's a lot behind the scenes that a lot of us have to do. - So what's the number one thing that you're selling

or you're promoting in terms of businesses integrating AI? - Just human focus to AI. - Okay. - So really just understanding that AI is here, especially at least in the business world,

to assist human beings in becoming innovative again, allowing us to innovate, develop, think more critically, not get caught up, right now, life. - So I'm a business, how do I integrate what you just said? Because it still seems like very generic, right?

So I don't know the saying, like, I'm a company, like we just use chat, GPT, and we're just trying to like, integrate just surface level, right? We might have someone that watches YouTube videos, they're good at prompting, right?

But you know, I hear all this stuff about agents, and about chat bots, and about, you know, CMS systems or whatever, right? So yeah, like, what are the things that you would go to up? And then I give you a generic company, right? But what would you, how would you begin that conversation

of integrating what? - Oh, and I'm about to have this conversation on Monday.

It always starts with what problem are you trying to solve?

“- Yeah. - You have to have a mission statement.”

You have to have a purpose for the AI, who have to understand how it's going to fit into your culture. And what type of change management it's going to take? Because I will tell you change management is the hardest part. I sat through a cohort on AI with a lot of CEOs,

CFOs, CIOs, the number one thing everybody talks about is change management. How do you get people to bring this into their world? Use it in adopted or else it's just another tool that sits on the shelf. So you have to know what problem you're trying to solve. You have to design it to solve that problem,

and you have to have a clear path to integrate and handle the change management. And then you'll be successful. - Yeah, I'm using a lot of different, like one of the things that's I think is really cool

is like integrating it into all aspects of your business. Like you can go in and automate a whole entire team and just say, hey, give me the morning breakdown, right? And then it's like, they even have this things. We're like, the AI bots are surfing, right?

And then you call for a meeting. And then they all go to the board room on the beach, right? And then the marketing guy comes forward and he tells his update. And then the sales guy comes in, he tells his update. Like, I mean, it's getting crazy like that, right?

- Yeah. - So are you saying, hey, integrate into all different aspects? Are you using agents? - Yeah, I mean, we definitely trying to speak carefully. We definitely use agents and we promote the use of agents.

I would say that we're not in my organization using the digital workforce, 100% in that way, the digital workforce is really there to support the human, right? So how does it simplify us? How does it help you find the one email you really need to answer

in the 800 that you just got in the morning?

“How do you know what things you need to focus on in the day?”

Because you have a million priorities

and what things really need to take top billing because of what you have coming up in your calendar. - So basically, how to make your current employee team super AI enhanced when mega employee, I say. - So we can focus on solving the problems

in our customers, it's truly where it is right now. - Making their jobs easier and then growing our company. - Absolutely, and I think a lot of organizations have different speeds, some people are diving right in. And other organizations are taking a more measured approach.

And I would say that's more of the conservative end is to where I'm falling at this point. I think it needs to be intentional. I think it needs to be meaningful and I think it needs to be a good fit or people just get burned out.

and they're like, whoa, can't do it.

“This is like back up giving me another job to manage”

all these other tools now that I have to use. - Right on. - So yeah. - So how do people find you? - So if people can find me if you're looking to know more about but on yourself, of course you can find me

at Paris Girl 2357 on Instagram.

All of my content is out there. - Did you say at Paris Girl? - At Paris Girl 2357.

“- Okay. - It has to do with my I'm married to a French band”

and I got to tell you the right. - A shallion in front. - Oh yeah.

- So best cuisine is right.

Although I'm a big fan of you. - But two enemies also usually, you know. - I can get a little heated in my household sometimes. But we're very opinionated. And we joke that we're both very stubborn.

But yeah, it comes from that. And then the 2357 is some special dates in our life. So. - Okay. - That on yourselves, website is under construction a little bit, so we'll be releasing that shortly.

Probably in August time frame at Student Release. And I am on LinkedIn at Caroline Grippo.

“If you want to look me up professionally.”

- All right, and that's Grippo with two piece. - Two piece. - All right. - Well, I thank you for joining us here. It's in a pleasure talking to you. But yeah, you're about to hop into filming your episode.

- Okay. - And you're ready, right? - Let's go. - All right. May I ask them? Well, thank you guys out there for joining us as well. Yeah, women and power, you know, she's helping other women.

Kind of stop asking for permission, and just just grab it, grab life, grab opportunities, and just everything, right? And she'll probably help you into great AI as well. So, can't wait for your episode.

And yeah, enjoy the filming. - Awesome. Thank you so much. - All right, choose everyone. (upbeat music)