Debriefing of Our Orgasmic Leadership Event (yes, you read that right).

By: Alyssa Tenore

Last night the Montclair State University’s Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship in partnership with Health Promotion ran an event focusing on Women’s Sexual Health. The title of the event, “Orgasmic Leadership” peaked many student’s interests as they were not used to seeing titles containing sexual language. Our guest speaker for the night was Rachel Braun Scherl, co-founder of SPARK Solutions for Growth and author of “Orgasmic Leadership: Profiting from the Coming Surge in Women’s Sexual Health.”

This event was interesting for students because some of the topics brought up are considered to be taboo to talk about amongst friends, family or the people in your community. Rachel started by telling the audience that she refers to herself as a “vagipreneur,” and at that moment you could pan the room of students and see the excited looks on their faces to listen to what she had to say.

It was interesting to hear Rachel’s struggling journey to get her product (a product similar to viagra made specifically for women) to shelves. She spoke about being a woman in the industry and how that was a struggle in itself, but also how she was able to be taken seriously with an “out there” product. It took time, but Rachel eventually was able to come up with how to break into the industry and receive support for her product. This event was very inspirational for young women to hear as they are preparing to get into their own careers and building the confidence to do so.

Rachel brought along with her guests, Amy Buckalter (founder and CEO of Pulse) and Dr. Alyssa Dweck (gynecologist and author). Both were essential to the conversation about how to be okay with talking about women’s sexual health, why it is important to have these discussions and why there is a need for the types of products they sell.

Amy spoke about her products on lovemypulse.com which consist of a new revolutionary product with patented technology invented to dramatically improve the delivery of “goops” – lotions, gels, creams, oils, lubricants, and other liquid or fluid consistencies within the health and beauty space.

We heard directly from students that they enjoyed having Dr. Dweck there to immediately provide positive medical feedback for the ingredients that were going into Amy’s and Rachel’s products. The conversation really brought awareness to the harmful ingredients found in some women’s sexual health products and what to look out for. From a business perspective, it was a great opportunity to learn about how to handle situations or topics in which not everyone may be on board or ready to talk about, but how we are making strides each and every day and can overcome the taboo talk and turn it into a serious conversation.

Alyssa Tenore is a current MBA student at Montclair State University working in the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship. Alyssa received her Bachelors Degree in marketing from Montclair State University.