Team updates

🌸Draw the beauty of Busan city for solo female travellers!🌸

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NomadHer is the application for female globetrotters encouraging safe solo travel. Our mission is “Empowering Women Through Travel”.  NomadHer opens a new project to make a guidebook for solo female travellers. This time, Our destination is a Busan city, South Korea!

We are looking for a female illustrator who draws the beauty of Busan for solo female travellers! We are an app that has over 10,000 views per month. Go to participate in this Competition and spread your mazing work to female travelers from over 170 nationalities.

🌸Introduction of Competition

Subject

The illustration which shows the beauty of Busan city and attracts female solo traveller get interested to visit Busan city

• Apply period: 20. Oct ~ 20. Nov (1month)
• Anyone who is interested in this work is welcome.
• Host : NomadHer
• Winner announcement date:  21.Nov

🌸How to apply

• ✅ Draw 1 illustration about a place to show the beauty of Busan city and attracts female solo travellers get interested to visit Busan city. The image would be used for NomadHer App Splash Screen and Homepage to feature your work for 3 months.

• ✅ Upload your illustrations on your social media with the tag #nomadher #visitbusan #shecantravelanywhere #illustrationCompetition
• ✅ If possible, Feel free to share your illustration on NomadHer App #Home and feel free to write from where you got the inspiration for your illustration.
• ✅ Fill out the type form link (https://form.typeform.com/to/n6smyaQq)  and submit your illustration!
• Only to Winners, We will contact and request below the 4 sizes of images. so on the process of applying, Applicants just upload 1 photo.
• : 375 × 812 / 750 × 1624 / 1125 × 2436 /1920 x 1080 (.png file)

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🌸Criteria for selection

• This Competition is for encouraging a solo female traveller. female illustrator can apply.

• The illustration which shows the beauty of Busan city and attracts to make female solo traveller get interested to visit Busan city

• If you upload your illustration on NomadHer app #Home and receive Like from app users, Your work will get more chance of being picked.

🌸Reward

👑First winner (1) : 500 USD + NomadHer App Online Exhibition

👑Second winner (1) : 300 USD + NomadHer App Online Exhibition

👑Third Winner (1) : 200 USD + NomadHer App Online Exhibition

To winners, NomadHer will contact directly to receive the file, and please keep in mind that the size and type of illustration can be requested to edit if it is needed after submitting the file. when you apply this event, we consider you agree with this.

🌸About copyright

When illustrators receive a reward from NomadHer for their illustration work, it regards as NomadHer has copyright for the illustration. Therefore NomadHer use, remake the illustration as uploading its social network service, homepage, application, guidebook, press release, goods, poster, and other material related to NomadHer’s future business The illustration should be original content and the submitted one is not returned. Submitted illustrations don’t violate others’ copyright. After being rewarded, if a legal issue occurs, the illustrator is legally responsible. the person who submits their illustration is regarded as agreeing on this. According to an illustration that is not selected, we will discard it. If you have more questions, please contact to NomadHer Team,  aloha@nomadher.com

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“It has been a rough year” might just be the understatement of the decade, but girl, it has been a rough year!

As you probably know, the NomadHer app was launched in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. That means that our community was growing online, but we couldn’t meet face to face. It was driving us CRAZY.

In July, we finally managed to do a small gathering with other girls from NomadHer in Paris. Oh, we were so happy. We met at the Hoxton Hotel for a drink. It was a beautiful evening shared with some really cool people, all with different stories and dreams, but bound together by our love of traveling and our desire to connect. The vibe was relaxed, joyful, supportive. It felt like exhaling after holding your breath for too long. Ahhh. Such a relief.

We wanted more.

In 2020, the Female Globetrotter Festival had to happen online (thanks Covid), but this year, with restrictions lessening and vaccination advancing, we wanted to create an offline event to engage a bigger part of the community, and meet face to face after so long. And so it began, the planning for the 2021 Female Globetrotter Festival… OFFLINE, hell yeah.

Our community had been growing in size but also in variety, and Covid left exposed the huge amount of privilege and inequality that still governs our world. It was clearer than ever that we needed to provide a space for everybody to shine and tell their stories. We decided that this year’s theme for the festival would be Diversity and Inclusion.

So how did we choose our lovely panelists? As we said before: our community is very diverse already. All we had to do was reach out! We started going through our NomadHer app and read profiles, see who would be around and could bring interesting stories. We also looked around Station F, the startup incubator where NomadHer is based. There are so many inspiring projects and women in there! That’s how we found Monia, from Jua&Co, for example, or Negar, from Colourful Zone.

Then it was promotion stage. We promoted the event on every platform we could think of… several times: our app, Slack, Facebook, Instagram, even the toilets at Station F suffered from our vandalism when we put stickers on the stall doors. Station F staff were not happy about it. But we got the message across. Mission accomplished.

The last week before the festival was very hectic but probably the most fun of all! We sank deep into planning mode and started coming up with colourful ideas and details. The team went to a stationary store and came back with stickers of all colours and sizes, pens, stamps, garlands, bubble blowers, candies… the whole shebang.

We put together the presentations, the schedule, the layout at the venue. There is so much more to plan than meets the eye for an event like this!

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In the end, it all paid off and the festival went just as planned (except for the heavy rain, of course, we did NOT plan for that).

To recap, the festival consisted of:

• Art exhibition / Pop-up stores: Alejandra Torres; Jua&Co; The Label M
• Start-up booths: NomadHer; Hey Travel Mate
• Talkshow with entrepreneurs - DISCUSSION: Diversity in the workplace: Monia (Jua&Co), Negar Yaghoobi (Colorful Zone), April Wiser (Foto Femme United), Alejandra Torres (Alejandraw), Sarah (Hey Travel Mate).
• Talkshow with travelers - DISCUSSION: Why should every woman travel solo at least once in her life: Julianna, Jeanine, Eva.
• Drinks, music, and dancing until 10pm

Voilà! 🥳

If you were there, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you weren't there, we hope to see you next year!

Take care NomadHers, keep traveling and dreaming 🌸

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P.S. 👋

Not so fast, the FGF 2021 Edition doesn’t end here!

We still have a few online events in store for you:

• Sexual Harassment Series: a set of live conversations with different organisations that fight for public safety for women. The events are posted on our App, and we will tell you more on our IG soon, so stay tuned ;)
• Airbnb contest: Would you like to get free accommodation with the NomadHer team in the French countryside? Yes, you read that right. During September, the NomadHer team will be based in a cute-as-hell Airbnb property in the Burgundy countryside, and we want to invite some of you to join us! We can teach you some tools to work remotely, and, of course, organize short weekend trips to nearby areas. Are you in? More info coming soon in all our media channels.

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Aloha NomadHers !

This is Irina, new member of the NomadHer team to write to you!

This week I joined NomadHer, currently based in Paris, in the Station F offices. I brought you with me during my first day on our Instagram @nomad_her, I'm back today with a little retrospection on this first week.

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Station F, what is it?

Station F is an incubator, that is to say a structure that helps new companies to develop, to make the dreams of entrepreneurs come true!

The building is an old train station, where 3500 people work - no need to tell you that it is really impressive!  The atmosphere is also quite special: you can feel the hundreds of brains innovating… or maybe I'm extrapolating, but there's a je ne sais quoi, like Start-Up Nation vibes. Also, everything is well thought out in Station F, from the hologram at the entrance to the lunch breaks with eco-friendly vending machines; kind of futuristic !  

Adaptation

Beyond the discovery of Station F, these first days at NomadHer have been a bit... how can I put it: overwhelming?  I had to learn all the new tools - whereas I had personally gone as far as using Word - and I still prefer to write my to-do lists in a notebook (old school, I know). Being an intern in a start-up goes hand in hand with learning a lot about the entrepreneurial world, which is fascinating:  marketing, networking, the "very concrete" side of business. Everything you don't learn in class (a bit sad)!

And English... phew! I’m French but we communicate in English in NomadHer team, Station F being also a rather international environment. Let me tell you: it's so different to work in a second language all day. I’m haunted by all the mistakes I make when speaking English continuously. Then, of course, it takes a lot of energy to switch from one language to another all day long. Sometimes I have trouble expressing my ideas, I don't put the s in the third person, I forget my irregular verbs: the nightmare of any English teacher.

Station F: that much international?

International, but not diverse. At first, I was very amused to see the "cliché" of the entrepreneur: young white man, in his twenties, still wearing a shirt but with sneakers. In a serious-casual mode (out of business school and ready to conquer the world!)

But beyond the cliché, there is the reality of a severe lack of diversity - and this marked me from day one. Few women, and even fewer colored women. It's a shame, especially in an entrepreneurial environment where I think you learn to come up with new ideas regardless of your education and background.

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During my onboarding, it has been said that Station F had a rate of “45% of female-founded companies”. By researching a little you will find that this figure applies to 5 programs out of 30, being L’Oréal or ADNxIFM basically beauty and fashion fields. What about the 25 other?

According to Sista and Boston Consulting group, 4% of the start-ups created in 2020 were made by women.

That being said, I could write entire articles on the mechanisms of under-representation, so I won't go into details. It's just unfortunate to make this observation when NomadHer is such a cosmopolitan team, and considering how useful it is to open up to other cultures, and how important it is to avoid the "entre-soi", meaning a homogenous vision and opinion !  

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What's next?

One thing I'd like to take further is to try to meet new people, to see how these hot brains work. It's really inspiring to be confronted with all kinds of ideas, but again it's about getting out of your comfort zone and reaching out to others more and more.  

Pushing myself and not judging me (so easy to write, less to do!)

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Just a week ago, there was a chance to present NomadHer in front of a renowned IT company manager in South Korea, and he asked me this question

“If the religion, ethnicity and the language of your team member are all different, doesn’t it work as a barrier for a startup? Considering that a startup needs to make a visible output, doesn’t diversity deter your success?”

Why Diversity matters so much? Like what he said, why cannot we just construct a team with the same origin, ethnicity, nationality, religion and also who speak the same languages? If we identify our members, won’t it accelerate the company growth speed?

“Diversity is the key factor for a startup which wishes to go international. This is not like a “conditional phrase” which is “good to have” but not “necessarily to have.” This is not a conditional phrase which you can say “If, later our company grows bigger, we might…”

Because,
The more diverse team we are, the more effectively we can work in a broadened spectrum.  Because, diversity should be at the core DNA of the team, not what we can put. or pursue in the later stage of the team building.

There were several occasions that I thought that diversity is so important during the team-building process.

For our first Pajama Party hosted in 3 different languages (Korean, Arabic & English), our team members Soo, Jason, Oumaima and Hyo gathered together for brainstorming, Jason drew a picture of a girl with a glass of “wine” and chilling out, and then Oumaima came up with an opinion like this.

“This girl is holding a glass of wine. But there are many Muslims out there who do not drink alcohol at all, or generally people who do not enjoy drinking alcohol. I do not think this would be an appropriate photo for those who do not drink alcohol. Why don’t we draw an extra picture with a girl drinking orange juice? “

After that meeting, our team changed the design photo into a girl holding a glass of orange juice instead of wine, and this might not have been possible if the NomadHer team did not consist of team members from different religion with different beliefs.

Also at once, we held a meeting for International Women’s Day together. We drew different types of women travelling in different forms with a wheelchair, travelling in a bicycle, travelling within a backpack. and then the feedback we got was

“There are different stands of beauty and why did we only draw the skinny girl?”

“Why don’t we show that a girl with a wheelchair can only travel?”

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Since then, we drew different types of women travelling, as a girl in a wheelchair, who is curvy, and also a woman over 60 years old.

After seeing the final illustration, one NomadHer member told us

“Since I was young, I was always relying on a wheelchair and I was lacking confidence in myself. Thank you so much NomadHer for giving me big support and confidence that I can travel freely. This shows that anyone can travel.”

If NomadHer consisted of members coming from the same background, same ethnicity, religion and culture - can we discuss and come up with these different opinions and ideas?

Thanks to Oumaima who is a Muslim, we got to know the custom called “Ramadan” where you need to fast during a month, as we are working with Vinay from India, we got to know how diverse languages and customs we have even within India, as we are working with Jason and Soo who are living with their lovely dog and cats, we got to know the importance of the “animal right” and we know the “vegetarianism” thanks to Hyo who do not eat red meat.

The world-renowned company Uber had huge issues as their company working culture was focused on white male team members. Trevi was directly designated as it was a huge issue how the company could not handle the sexual harassment and the racial discrimination. If you want to think and act big,  the diversity should start with the start and this is not like a toppings of ice cream that can be put later.

Again,

For those who are asking why “diversity’ is so important for a startup which need to accelerate and make fast decision within a short time.

“Because if you believe that this company consists of over thousands of team members, and strongly believe that this can impact to over billions of people, there is no doubt that diverse team can elevate the company. Because diversity is the core DNA and the seed to grow the company not what we need when we are grown.
Because thanks to these diverse opinions and ideas,

The company can grow more and more.

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Dear NomadHers ❤️,
Welcome to Oumaima’s thoughts.

It’s been a while since I talked to you girls, things have been hectic lately, “so many things to do” as Hyo always says! 😂

If you’ve been following us lately and checked my previous journal entry, you’d know that I’m on my 3rd month interning at NomadHer.
I’m pretty amazed by my growth, it’s only been 3 months but I’ve seen and acknowledged some major changes in my way of thinking and seeing myself.
And I’m so happy that I chose to do this internship. My team is supportive and I’m in an environment where I keep pushing myself to accomplish new things every day.

So, What’s Up?

• Some of you might know me closely, others will know me as Camera Girl.
  Well, this Camera Girl had the opportunity to talk live to over 60 students and jumped on it.
  Who would’ve thought? Certainly not me.
  But I did it, and wasn’t nervous in the slightest. It was a one hour discussion about my move  to France, why I chose to study in France, how I got my internship and how I coped with being in a different country far away from my family,
  I was happy when it was done, because that experience represented something I never thought I would have one day the nerve to do.

• I found out I really liked product design. I had the chance to join our UX meetings for NomadHer App, and let me tell you, it is not easy!
  We have all these ideas that we need to implement to guarantee a better user experience journey for you NomadHers.
  These sessions take long hours of work, at least 3h per day.
  On a funnier note, Hyo and I come up with these crazy fun ideas, we pitch them to Jason and he always tells us “I can try”, even when he knows that it won’t work or look look pretty, and it’s fine, we move on, but when it sticks, OMG we get so excited, you would’ve thought we won the lottery from our squeals. 😂

• Writing emails to journalists is sooo time consuming, we had to send emails in French & English and of course we had to personalize them so they won’t look like spam.
  I was afraid half the time to mess up and swap names, I kept checking and double checking every time.

• I got surprisingly better at content creation & design, I was so bad at it but Canva had my back.

• I had the chance to participate in several webinars through Station F, so that was helpful, I learned a lot.

• We’re now making guidebooks for solo female travelers, so far we’ve published Paris & Morocco, next ones will be Seoul and New York.
  It’s been fun working on them and finding general information and tips that will help our NomadHers in their future travels.

• Finally, I met some amazing women through our NomadHer events. Reading their stories and talking to them inspires me everyday.

Personally, I think working at a startup is fun and it is certainly a learning experience, you get to wear many hats and work and learn several things, your days are not repetitive and every day is a New Adventure!

That’s all for this journal entry. Until next month!

Xoxo.
Oumaima

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Dear NomadHers ❤️,

My name is Oumaima and I am Happy ✨!

As you may know, I got accepted for a 6 months internship at NomadHer. Being passionate about Travel and majoring in Tourism, I jumped on the chance to apply for the internship position after our professor told us about it.

At NomadHer, it’s all about creating a community where women can inspire, encourage and support each other, and last week marked my one-month “anniversary” of being part of the team.

And let me tell you, it’s going WONDERFULLY!

I'm not saying this because my team members are gonna read this 😂. It’s genuinely how I feel.

At first, I was a little apprehensive about meeting the team, I did not know anyone except Hyo, who I’ve talked to twice and now I can happily say that they welcomed me with open arms.

As a somewhat introverted person, I usually don’t make that first step to talk to people, but with you NomadHers, I do it gladly.

I love talking to you, organizing new events to make you smile and improve your day and what I love most of all is being a part of building NomadHer Community, where women gather to talk about not only their travel stories but their LIFE in general. Their hopes and dreams and the difficulties they faced; All for one GOAL: Support and encourage other NomadHers : #ifICanDoitYouCan

With NomadHer, I'm not afraid or ashamed of saying “I DON’T KNOW” how to do this or that.

Every day is a new adventure, new things to do and learn.

Being a marketing intern, I asked Hyo if I could also shadow her in order to learn about the business side of things, and she was happy to do so. So far, this is a list of what I learned this past month:

• I’ve learned to work efficiently within a team. Our brainstorming sessions (both for marketing and product development) are the highlight of my week. I seriously never thought about how much energy and work goes into creating just one simple function within an app. For example, just to add the “Reply” function within a comment takes took a brainstorming session first to decide the format, then Jason, our designer had to sketch a few designs for it, and then we had to take it up to Vinay, our developer to see if we could do it and how to implement it.

• I had the chance to prepare a pitch and see how startups present their ideas to investors. This month, Hyo had to pitch NomadHer to Welcome City Lab, an incubator in the tourism industry, so she had to talk about our business model, our DAU/MAU, our retention rate, how do we differentiate ourselves from competitors…

• I’ve learned how to use a number of digital tools such as Slack for communicating with the whole team as some work remotely. We use Miro in our brainstorming sessions and Notion for content creation. iMovie to edit videos, Mailchimp to write and send Newsletters...

• I’ve learned how marketing strategies are implemented.

• I’ve had the chance to create digital content and organize events.

But what I’m most proud of this month, is getting out of my comfort zone and trying out new things that I’m not comfortable with.

And what I was most miserable about this month was Paris’s cold weather, I literally froze, I could’ve turned into an icicle!

That’s all for this journal entry. Until next month!

Xoxo.

Oumaima

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Aloha NomadHers,

Do you know What happened on our first online picnic of the year?

If you have been following us lately, you know that we organized an event where we shared our first experiences Out of Our #comfortzone.

And guess what?

February 3rd 2021 is a date worth saving and commemorating in our calendars.

Do you know why?

It’s because strong brave beautiful women shared their heartwarming stories, coming from all over the world, South Korea, Morocco, USA, Sweden, Ukraine and France.

We all had one thing in common: We made that first step out of their comfort zone and they want to inspire others to do so.

We talked about the struggles we faced and the hurdles we overcame. Like traveling solo for the first time to another country where we do not speak the language, overcoming public transportation fears, talking in front of the camera, or expressing ourselves through our bodies.

These brave women showed us that although the first step may be the hardest, what follows is discovering a world full of possibilities.

What really got to all of us and warmed our hearts was the kindness of support we all had for each other, you could see the love and support pouring out of everyone present.

We Talked, we Laughed, we Cried, we BONDED.

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That’s how you know that you found your people. That’s when you realize that you are part of a community where you can be heard and have women backing you up and cheering you on every step of the way.

Stepping out of our comfort zone isn’t always easy, but with enough willingness, courage and support.

YOU CAN DO IT!

We applaud you, we congratulate you and we thank you for your courage.

Your stories inspired us and will continue inspiring others.

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The Virtual Female Globetrotter Festival is an annual event hosted by Nomadher, its purpose is to reignite our love for travel and bring our community together.

If you couldn’t participate in our videoconferences on September 25 and 26 of 2020, no worries, we made a little recap just for you.

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For its second Edition, the festival had to adapt and was held online due to Covid-19 restrictions. However, it could not hold us back from impacting our wish to rekindle our love for travel and bring our community together in these difficult times.

What was on the program?

• A Speaker sessions in 4 different languages (Spanish, Korean, French, English)
• An Art/Photo Exhibition,
• Startup Booths,
• A Live Yoga Session,
• A DJ party and networking sessions.

The french session welcomed 4 panelists:

Cam Linh Huynh - Photographer

"The goal of my project is to give a new perspective on asian women other than the one people  have."

Tiana Bl - Graphic designer and founder of Afrogarden

"[...] so that I can go to Africa to draw my inspiration from its richness for my boxes".

Lisa Billiard - Founder of CagoleNomades

"Our goal is to make practical and comfortable  clothes in a stylish way so that they represent the values of today's younger women..."

Claire Siegert - Co- Founder of Businettes

"[....] We focus on solo female entrepreneurs..."

The theme of the talk was about “How traveling can help change lives”

Interviewed by Hyo, CEO and founder of Nomadher, these young entrepreneurs told us their different travel stories and the source of their inspiration for their work.

During their exchange, the word "Prejudices" came up each time, they exposed through their stories, the prejudices they had to face in their personal and professional lives.

Lisa Brillard explained where she got the idea for the name of her startup and the reason behind it.

"Cagole refers to a stereotype of some women from the south of France... basically these are bothersome girls. So I told myself these women represent my culture, they don't care what people think of them, they are determined, authentic, they bother because they take up space in public areas[ ...] I had to reappropriate this word  [ ...] today to be a nomad cagole is to be committed".

Today these women are fighting to reduce and eradicate prejudices about women through their various projects.

"I chose to put the spotlight on women in urban art [...] my project aims to create a space for them and their projects".

Cam Linh Huynh

"Businettes is a digital platform designed to motivate women and support them in their entrepreneurship journey".

Claire Siegert

"The goal is to make people travel through my art but also by putting in the spotlight black women and the African continent."

Tiana Bl

Finally, to answer the question on the theme of the conference, the speakers all agreed that solo traveling has changed their perception of life, for them, traveling enabled them to gain in maturity, courage and self-confidence.

Traveling solo is a taste of freedom and independence.