Linda Alepin is the Founding Director of the Global Women's Leadership Network. During the second NetSquared Conference (N2Y2) in May 2007, 21 projects that use the Web for social impact presented their work and received feedback and support from the NetSquared community. The Global Women's Leadership Network was one of the Featured Projects.

Below is a transcript of an interview last month with Linda for the NetSquared Podcast. You can hear GWLN's 5-minute pitch at the NetSquared Conference here and learn more about their work on the GWLN web site.

Linda Alepin: I'm Linda Alepin, the Founding Director of the Global Women's Leadership Network. We are dedicated to igniting a new future for humanity by liberating women leaders around the world. We do that through capacity building activities, such as education, and also building a network of support between leaders from many countries. We have built programs here in the United States for 55 women, so far, from 21 countries, mostly from the developing world--such countries as Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya, etcetera.

The future for our organization really does lie more on the network side, in terms of, first of all, taking our training in country, and we are launching that this year in Turkey, and secondly, building a vibrant "Web 2.0" network that will allow our members to communicate with each other.

Britt Bravo: Where did the idea for the web-based aspect of the Global Women's Leadership Network come from?

LA: Well, if I go back to the origins of the Global Women's Leadership Network, it was 1997 when I really first saw the opportunity to bring women from all over the world together, teach them about leadership, and then, most importantly, to hold them together as they went back to their communities, through the Internet.

And of course, in 1997, the Internet was in a pretty primitive state of development. We have been using Yahoo! Groups in order to hold our various classes together, and it's become rather awkward, because the 2005 graduates don't really talk to the 2006 graduates or the 2007 graduates. And of course, as we go to many countries, it's going to be very important that we have a vehicle for women to communicate.

Ultimately, we want to reach into the villages--as a matter of fact, to reach, through cellular technologies, into some of the most remote parts of the world and provide leadership, information and support to women in eastern Turkey or in the foothills of Nepal or in places like that. So, as we thought about NetSquared and a project that we would want to launch, we began to identify that this was really what we wanted to do, number one, and number two, that technologies existed that we could do it with.

When we came to the Conference, we thought we'd have to do it ourselves. I am absolutely thrilled to say that, through our participation at NetSquared, that actually, we've found that, at least for our pilot project, that the technologies exist. We were glad to see WiserEarth there; they first gave us the idea that maybe we could use someone else as a platform. And we've been approached since then by PulseWire. And I think we've decided that PulseWire will be the way that we roll out our initial pilot and our first worldwide network for Global Women's Leadership.

BB: Can you give an example, or tell a story of how the Web-based aspect of the Global Women's Leadership Network has or will create positive change?

LA: Let's use a project from 2005 by Patricia Rain. She now runs an organization called the Tropical Farmers Network. So, Patricia saw a need, particularly in the area of vanilla.

She owned a company, and she's "The Vanilla Queen." But she saw a real need to network all the tropical farmers across the world into a network so they could have information on better ways to grow vanilla, the markets for vanilla, which have fluctuated substantially--as a matter of fact, the use of vanilla is declining substantially as artificial substitutes become available. So, information about markets is very, very important to them.

So, she started this Tropical Farmers Network, which is a Yahoo! Group itself. And I can see where it may want to migrate to something more advanced. But she became part of our Network, and she, therefore, had other people come to our course who are helping her to build the network in Uganda, and in Mexico. She reached across to many other people that she knew as she encountered people around the world.

So we were able, if you will, to find other women who wanted this kind of leadership training and to pull them in, because of Patricia and because of our Yahoo! Group. And we've been supporting her. We've now come up with a project, among her Tropical Farmers Network and ourselves, to do, when we get funding--cross our fingers--a PBS special about women's leadership and tropical farmers around the world, and how those two things mix together.

BB: If the Web-based aspect of the Network was built out more, how do you see that benefiting someone like her?

LA: Well, there are going to be several different parts to the Web presence. Obviously, peer-to-peer types of communication will be very important. Let's say that there's a best practice around something in the vanilla community, but it could also apply to other types of farming in Kenya. So, Patricia might post that to our network and basically go from the Tropical Farmers Network to the much larger African women farmers working throughout Kenya, Uganda, etc. So, I see this as a terrific bridge, if you will, of best practices, from one arena to the next.

The second aspect is that we will actually, over time, create Web-based training modules. My startup in 1997 that got me started on all this Internet stuff was a framework to store educational modules, and so it's like deja vu all over again. But to take some of our training and to actually put it out as free and see leadership training available to many people worldwide, or to take some of our graduates and have them do that.

I saw Alma Cota de Yanez of Nogales, Mexico talk to a group of Mexican immigrants here in the United States in Spanish, and her message was, I think, very heartfelt and very clear. She basically said, "Start where you are, " basically saying, "You've got talents. Don't keep focusing on what you don't have. Start where you are." And I would see things like that, in multiple languages, being made available as small educational seminars across this Web-based platform that we're launching.

BB: What's the next step for the Web-based aspect of the network? What are its goals and challenges?

LA: Well, the next step is for PulseWire to get its beta test ready. We're still on Yahoo! Groups, and we're patiently waiting for them to get their beta test ready. And then what we're going to do, our pilot will be a private network on PulseWire, consisting of the 55 graduates of our program, our faculty, staff, and our advisory board, and a few other selected people around the world.

So, we will be learning how to use this effectively and what kinds of things we really want to do for a period of about four or five months, using PulseWire and using our network. And I, quite frankly, don't know what will come out of that. We have some ideas as to the thematic areas that we want, because our graduates cross things like health, as well as women and children, education, technology, on and on.

So, there's a number of thematic areas that we will begin conversations, if you will, out of this new platform once it's available. And then, towards the end of that pilot, we will be assessing where we want to go next.

BB: What was the positive impact for the Global Women's Leadership Network of going to the NetSquared Conference?

LA: First of all, I think you made us think about where we really wanted to go, which, is the beginning, just even starting in your own mind thinking, "Wow! So, new technologies. What could we do? Where could we go?" That was, I think, a real benefit of having to structure the responses to your questions, just in the application, and then certainly once selected, in putting together our presentation. So that's the first step.

Secondly, was just the exposure to other technologies. And I'm not just talking about PulseWire--other technologies and other approaches. I remember NABUUR. I think that NABUUR's influence on best practices sharing added another piece, if you will, to what we thought that we could do. So, the exposure to other people that are doing leading-edge things. And I had somebody walk up to me and say, "Gee, that part of your presentation is only six months away, " when I thought it was five years away. So it was really amazing, exposure-wise.

Your idea of a business adviser, and I forget the name that you used for the other adviser that you assigned to us, but those were valuable resources. And in fact, Loretta Donovan is now on our Board of Directors because of her interest in us and, after meeting her, our interest in having her available on a longer-term basis. So yes, I think that there were numerous benefits to Global Women's Leadership Network through being part of NetSquared.

BB: How can listeners help to move your work forward?

LA: Well, we are definitely not technical people. And while we have found PulseWire as a platform, we could still use--I don't even know what to exactly call them--but I think technical advisers of all sorts. Whether it be in terms of content moderation or it be in terms of the best use of this kind of platform, I would really welcome that kind of support.

We are always open for financial support, of course. We would be open to technical contributions for the women who are in the other countries. Many of them do not have ready access to computers and technology, so if we had better technology on the other end of this, it would be a great boon to the pilot as well as, ultimately, as we roll this out. And in general, if people really want to volunteer with us and help to grow this Network, we would love to have them.

BB: Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the Global Women's Leadership Network?

LA: Well, I would just say what I think is amazing is the impact that education of women leaders can have--in other words, the whole idea of really sparking their passion for whatever they're doing.

We had a young woman with us, this time from Rwanda, and she's going back. And what she has pledged is that, by the end of next year, there will be 8,000 more girls going to school than before she came. So they devised a project that they will execute on. So, the leverage, if you will: one woman leader and 8,000 more girls in school. I think that that's the kind of leverage that people are really looking for, in terms of addressing some of our planet's most urgent issues.