Feminine Intelligence Shaping our Future, with Karen Downes

Women RISE

Sep 17 2023 • 36 mins

Imagine a world where feminine principles guide our leadership, infusing qualities such as intuition, empathy, and deep listening into its core. This has been Karen Downes' singular focus throughout her extensive 30+ year career. Her journey began in the realm of health and wellness, gradually evolving into her passionate commitment to founding FemmeQ, an organization dedicated to exploring how we might create transformational and systemic change to address today’s multiple crisis, through the application of feminine intelligence.

In our discussion, we stress the importance of liberating the notion of feminine principles from the confines of gender, asserting that men too, play a pivotal role in shaping a world that embraces these fundamental values. We highlight the necessity for intergenerational and cross-disciplinary collaborations to catalyze systemic change, paving the way for "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."

As we conclude our conversation, Karen provides a sneak peek into the amazing program she has curated for the upcoming FemmeQ International Summit in Strasbourg.

Attention: This is NOT an event  just for women.  It is  for All genders and Early Bird pricing is still available on the website.

About Karen Downes:

Social entrepreneur, Transformation SME, Author
Co-Founder and Director FemmeQ,
Founder The Flourish Initiative, Member of Catalyst 2030,
Co-Chair Bounce Beyond.

Over the span of her 35-year career, Karen has founded and launched successful start-ups, supported social change initiatives to transform entrenched cultural norms, developed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world.   She is a healer above all else.  At the beginning of her career, she trained in five alternative healthcare disciplines, building a multi-million-dollar Aromatherapy company from kitchen tabletop to global business success story, her mission was to ‘return natural healing modalities to the healers; women’.  Whilst building her business and empowering women across Australasia,  she committed to eradicating inequalities at a global scale, joining the Hunger Project, as an investor and activist.  For years she travelled to India and Bangladesh to end the subjugation and marginalization of women which had been identified as fundamental to ending the chronic persistence of hunger.  It was here she learned that without the inclusion of women as equal partners, a village will remain impoverished, that the feminine is critical to building a flourishing community.  She is a trained facilitator of Joanna Macy’s work -  ‘The Work that Reconnects’ – how to move from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining future.

Upon moving to London in 2003, she began to advise business leaders, designed and led transformational leadership programmes around the world.  In 2015 in response to the overwhelming statistics on the progress of women and gender justice, Karen co-founded the global movement, FemmeQ: Feminine Intelligence.  The first of 5 subsequent International Summits was launched in Berlin i

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