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Accept cookies and close this message.What drives Peek.com co-founder and CEO Ruzwana Bashir? A thirst for travel that never tires. Watch as she speaks on everything from the trip that sparked her start-up to the way women take risks as entrepreneurs in today’s tech landscape.
Read the video transcript for: Flying out of your comfort zone
Tiffany Shlain is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and has been called “one of the women shaping the 21st Century” by Newsweek. Her newest film, "50/50: Rethinking the Past, Present, and Future of Women + Power," premiered globally on Refinery29 and will act as a centerpiece for 50/50 Day on May 10, 2017. Tiffany’s outlook on travel in that it's an engine for inspiration, creativity and insight.
Headshot photo credit: Laurie Levenfeld
Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain has travelled the world over aboard British Airways to connect audiences with social issues like gender balance. Watch how her global prowess translates in London.
Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain and Executive Creative Director of Refinery29, Piera Luisa Gelardi first collaborated to help the world gain perspective on gender balance. British Airways brought them back together to show how else they’re contributing to today’s network of incredible women in business.
Steph Korey and Jen Rubio are the co-founders of Away, a brand seeking to make travel more seamless. Like the label’s collection of carry-ons and checked bags, the duo embraces this simple, sleek ethos both in business as well as in-flight. What’s more, their complementary skill sets continue to prove that a journey is best taken together.
What do Steph Korey and Jen Rubio bring on every business trip? British Airways asked the co-founders of Away to unpack their philosophy on travel.
Piera Gelardi is Executive Creative Director and co-founder of the award-winning digital media company, Refinery29. She leads a growing team of creatives who bring the brand to life online and IRL through diverse, original content, storytelling, and experiences meant to empower and inspire women. She and her team have won numerous awards and honors including CLIO Image, Webby's, Digiday Publishing, and spots on both Inc 500 and Fast Company's lists of most innovative companies. Piera was recently honored as one of Ad Age's 50 Most Creative People of the year.
In 2014, Piera co-authored Refinery29's first book, the New York Times best seller, Style Stalking. She is also a frequent public speaker, a jury member for the CLIO Image Awards, the Webby Awards, and the Art Director’s Club, and holds a seat on the AIGA/NY Board of Directors.
Prior to the launch of Refinery29, Piera was Photo Director at CITY magazine, which won an ASME for Best Photography as well as numerous SPD awards under her direction. When she's not burning the midnight oil at Refinery29, she's breaking it down on the dance floor, gallery hopping, religiously sending snail mail, or indulging her love of adventures in far-flung places. Piera lives in Brooklyn.
When Piera Luisa Gelardi, co-founder and Executive Creative Director of Refinery29, travels for business, she’s sure to do so in style. Follow her from wheels-up with British Airways to downtime in London’s Shoreditch.
For these three British Airways women, passion has always been paramount. Pilot Kat Woodruffe shares her story with engineers Eleanor Levitt and Tsungi Maruta and others show how they navigate today’s gender gap.
How do the women of British Airways fly through the glass ceiling? Watch how our pilots are navigating the gender gap.
It’s a question that’s often met with responses ranging from firemen to astronauts or ballerinas. But for Kat Woodruffe, the answer has always remained the same. She spent her childhood always looking up—to the skies and to her father, David Woodruffe, a British Airways pilot.
“My dad was my inspiration to become a pilot,” says Kat. “I grew up watching him put on his uniform and flying around the world.”
Today, the global ratio of female to male pilots is around 32:1. At British Airways, we proudly support the highest proportion of female pilots of any UK airline. Thanks to encouraging dads like David and driven women like Kat, that number is always growing. In fact, the father-daughter pilots have a good idea as to who will be the next member of their flight crew.
“Flying is definitely in the Woodruffe DNA,” Kat goes on, “I’d love to get to fly with my own daughter, Poppy.”
In the past few years, the visibility of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has been increasing. But there’s still work to be done. That’s where the female leaders at British Airways come in.
“I believe it’s important for girls and young women to speak to women already working in STEM areas to learn from their experiences and to show them it’s a realistic option for them, as much as it is for boys,” says Lauren Stacey, a British Airways Team Leader.
Among those who seek to set an example for rising women in STEM are British Airways’ Eleanor Leavitt, a Graduate Engineer, and Tsungi Maruta, an Engineer. On their shared passion for promoting diversity in the field, Leavitt acknowledged, “I definitely see this as being a marathon, not a sprint.”
Still, Maruta goes to work each day ready to inspire others, offering this key advice, “Keep pushing. Believe in yourself and go for it. Dream, believe, achieve.”
