Coleen “Coco” Gabhart on LinkedIn: I once felt like such an imposter at a job that I wore fake glasses… (2024)

Just 15% of patents are assigned to women. Why?I've heard lots of speculations about the reason, from women's historic lack of access to education, to "women just don't want to get patents as much as men do". After attending the U.S. Small Business Administration SBIR/STTR Roadshow yesterday where I saw this statistic playing out in real time, I have some thoughts about it. The inventions of women are not taken as seriously. Sara Blakely invented Spanx and was historically laughed out the door by male manufacturers and lawyers, people she had to partner with in order to obtain her patent and get her product into the market. Joy Mangano (JOY MANGANO FOUNDATION) created the Wonder Mop, yet despite runaway success, people still discouraged her from developing her second blockbuster product, the Huggable Hanger. As you know, I am developing a product that will primarily be used by women and children. The other female inventor that I met yesterday was inventing- you guessed it- a product for primarily women. The best innovation comes from people who have experienced the problem that the innovation solves. We talk about this a lot, but what we don't talk about is why some people's problems don't get solved because the people experiencing the problem are not in the positions to open the gates for the solution. We don't just need more female inventors. I have a hunch that women have plenty of ideas, but to get them taken seriously, patented and taken to market, we need more women (and more diversity in general) in the fields of patent law, manufacturing, and venture capital, among others. I still hope for a future where I can walk up to a woman at an event for inventors and expect her to be an inventor. What about you?#innovation #entrepreneurship #inventor #womeninstem

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ChatGPT thinks that the only thing parents and babies can do together is take strolls in nature, make music using household items, and snuggle. Do you think it's right or wrong?While we could all use a walk through nature on occasion, using ChatGPT to help me brainstorm baby activities for the Sensiboo app has made it abundantly clear that we have a societal bias that says that what is best for babies is generally boring for caregivers. We can see this in today's baby products; for example, a phone holder so we can scroll TikTok while we feed our baby a bottle, or walkers that restrain babies while caregivers do chores. The existence of these products infers that doing what is best for babies, engaging with them, is a necessary evil but is inherently boring and should be avoided. Sensiboo is going to turn that bias on its head. What is best for babies is to be closely connected with caregivers who feel truly delighted to be connecting with them. And we believe that the best way to feel true delight is to enjoy what you are doing.That's why we model our activities after things that adults enjoy, like a pool party or a movie night. We aim to make caring for a baby more fun than anything else you could be doing, and optimizing infant development is the icing on the cake! #chatgpt #artificialintelligence #sensiboo #childdevelopment #technologydevelopment

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I know, it's a hot take, but it's something I feel pretty strongly about. Sensiboo will never take photos of children to market our products. We are deliberately building our brand using images of mother and baby animals and other feel-good images that don't require using the likeness of real babies. When absolutely necessary, we create images of babies using AI or use pre-existing stock photos. It's difficult to take this approach. Babies are so cute, and they can definitely sell products! But my conscience tells me that this is the right path.

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If "success is stumbling from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm", then today I'm succeeding. Sensiboo lost a pitch competition today because we are too advanced (one product in the market and a high-tech product in development). The judges felt that the $1000 prize would go further with a lifestyle business, and frankly, I agree. With that being said, as a social enterprise, we don't qualify for most grants and venture capital, so that funding would have been much appreciated. Funded with >$25,000 of my own savings so far, I'm sure you can imagine how I feel as I look down the parallel path of Sensiboo's runway and every cent I've ever saved since I was 18. I founded Sensiboo for no other reason than that I wanted to help today's babies avoid the suffering I have experienced as an adult because I didn't experience healthy socioemotional development as a baby. Little did I know, starting a business to help people would be a lot more difficult than starting a business purely for profit. I wouldn't have stuck with it as long as I have if I didn't believe that this is my life's work, but with a mission like this, it's easy for failures to turn into a bitterness against humanity. I'm choosing to not let that happen. For me today, "no loss of enthusiasm" simply means that I will not be swayed from my conviction that enabling the assessment and optimization of socioemotional development in babies is going to change the future of the world.

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Three things I learned about pitching by giving an elevator pitch in my non-native language:1. Language matters: if you are using words that the listener doesn't understand, you aren't going to capture and maintain their interest. 2. A picture is worth a thousand words: I didn't bring any of my products to my Spanish class, but I wish I had. A picture- or even better, a physical prototype or product- gets the point across when words may fail.3. Emotions are universal: Although I felt entirely inadequate when trying to describe Sensiboo in Spanish, my conversation partners were interested because they could tell that I am excited by the subject. They followed up with me after the class when we were allowed to speak English again, and it turns out that there are several potential collaborators in the class with me. We won't always have the right words, but we can always try to have the right attitude. P.S. I highly recommend learning a second language, especially as an adult!

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One side effect of spending part of my childhood in North Carolina is an immediate craving for Bojangles every time I return the southeastern US.While satisfying that craving today, I noticed this interesting sign, hung above a cabinet marked “employees only”. It says “Thank you for allowing us to clean your table”.Putting the clues together, I came to realize that this cabinet is meant to be closed, and the sign is meant to tell customers that they don’t need to clean their own table, the restaurant staff will do it for them.It seems that a uniquely high level of service is an important value for corporate Bojangles, but it seems that the employees of this particular restaurant don’t feel the same way, since the cabinet was left open, and customers (including me) were disposing of their trash and returning their own trays.I can’t blame the employees; after all, big fast food chains have trained us all (mostly) to clean up after ourselves, and it saves the employees time and effort to let customers do what they already expect to have to do.Actually, this makes me think about the struggle of conveying corporate values from leadership, to employees, to the customer. It’s all good and well to put a sign up, but it’s quite another to convince the average employee to change their behavior, to do something that’s more difficult than the default because they believe that it’s the right thing to do.How do you think this can be accomplished? Can you think of companies who do this well?

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"Why didn't you answer when I called?" My manager pinged me. In a panic, I checked my phone. I had left my home work station for ten minutes to go for a walk, and on the screen of my work-provided cell phone, I had one missed call from my manager, five minutes ago.I felt the tears begin to slip from my eyes as my manager followed up with "Can you talk now?" "Sure." I replied. What she didn't know was that I didn't have a place to live, and I was about to lose my partner, too. I had tried to move in to an apartment a few days before, but it was in such bad condition that it would ultimately be condemned. In the meantime, I was staying with my partner, and it wasn't going well.This partner and I had a toxic on again, off again relationship that my therapist had gently been working with me to step away from for the past year. In fact, I had gone for a walk to call my therapist, in an effort to work up the courage to tell my partner that it wasn't going to work out between us.Instead of sharing this with my manager, when she called I said "I'm sorry, I didn't see your call." She responded "You need to have your work phone on you at all times. I need to be able to reach you whenever I need you. We're having a fire drill, and I need you to step in and fix things." I asked ChatGPT how to finish this post, because I honestly don't know what the inspiring takeaway was from this experience. AI wanted me to say that I learned that open communication and honesty is the best policy, but the truth is, openly communicating and being yourself is not rewarded in the workplaces that I've encountered. All I can say is, as a team member and a leader today, I do my best to trust the people on my team. I remember why I chose them to join me in the first place, because they are valuable to my team, but more importantly, because they are special and unique in their own right. And if they don't answer their phone, if they are slow to respond to an email, if they aren't progressing- I want to check in on them, to make sure that they are okay as a person, not just as a resource for me to use. We'll see how it goes!#genz #worklifebalance #mentalhealth #workingfromhome

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Smartphones are seriously detrimental to human development- full stop. When kids use smartphones as their brains are developing, they are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, but did you know that the negative effects start sooner than we think?Researchers who study attachment theory, a developmental factor that has been linked to a whole host of lifelong outcomes (and serves as the basis of Sensiboo), have found that smartphone use by parents is correlated with the likelihood that a baby (age 0-1) will develop insecure attachment, which means that they are less likely to be happy and healthy throughout their life.

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I don’t know if everything’s bigger in Texas, but my hair certainly is…On International Women’s Day there is no place I’d rather be than at SXSW. I’ve already met several fellow female founders as well as many other talented women. It’s very empowering to be reminded that women can do anything they put their minds to.If you are also here at SXSW, I would love to connect!

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