_Last I left you I was headed on the path to big-wave surfer-dom with a brilliant idea in the works, about to be disowned by my parents. Thank you for all the positive feedback and words of support you sent my way.  And thank you for still being my friend. Really.  It means a lot to my once sad and pathetic, soul.  Now, back to the story at hand.   
 
At some point I decided to put my big wave aspirations aside not because it wasn’t what was in my heart, but because I did not want to contribute to my mother getting more grey hairs.  Instead, I decided to go in the opposite direction.  What would that be, you ask? Longboarding.  Longboarding is a classic style of surfing where you use a bigger board on smaller waves (mostly).  It’s like a dance as the surfer walks up and down the board.  It’s not as treacherous as dropping down a 50 foot wave, but has its own set of technical challenges.  Oh boy, does it.    

Everytime I had watched longboarding, it always reminded me of a dance.  I spent the past 15 years training in North Indian classical dance, so I guess the dancer in me couldn’t help but wonder what types of connections there were between Indian dancing and surfing – both aesthetically and technically.  I wanted to explore this.  I also figured getting in on the competitive circuit for small wave riding could be a fun alternative challenge to the near death experiences of charging big waves. I’d still charge the medium sized surf for fun but dancing on water would be it for me!

_I didn’t even own a longboard, so that just gives you an idea of where I was starting from.  I decided to find a coach to help work with me on this newly refined delusion of a dream.  I started working with a pro who spent most of his life short-boarding, and eventually transitioned into longboarding later in life. So he could understand, at some level, my challenges.  And let’s face it, after I shared my ideas with him, I’m pretty sure he also thought I was challenged.  I would spend a lot of time talking to him about some of my competitive surf ideas - everything from my thoughts on infusing dance into longboarding to my girlish aspirations of one day being the great brown hope of surfing for my community. 

One day, my coach sent me an article.  It was about a surf competition in India and it boasted a fascinating mention – India’s first female surfer. The combination of those three words together was more than intriguing.  The only other female surfer of Indian descent I knew of was my friend Camille here in California and she was a rare anomaly at that.  I started doing some research and found more interesting discoveries.  A group of girls in the Gaza Strip were taking on surfing. China had a first female surfer. A young girl in Malaysia became their country’s first sponsored female surfer.  I was having a hard enough time piecing my surf aspirations together here in California, land of the global surfing empire. And here were these women and girls in countries with such limited surfing infrastructure, making waves of change in their communities and learning to surf under such interesting and oftentimes, challenging, circumstances.  It was more than fascinating; it was literally, history in the making.  

_I began to think that if these renegade women and girls were taking these types of risks and figuring out how to surf in their communities, that they might in fact be real trailblazers for change. So I decided I’d go on a journey to find, support and share the stories of the first female surfers from around the world.  In doing so I would also share my own crazy journey of my pursuit to go pro.  I’d be a certified surf explorer, storyteller come competitor extraordinaire!   I fittingly named this idea Brown Girl SurfTM, in honor of the first female surfers who were brown girls from Polynesia (and possibly the Seychelles).
 
I decided to get in touch with the Big Kahuna of female surfing research - Dr. Krista Comer from Rice University.  Krista spent the past decade studying female surfers and surf subculture partly as a way to study globalization and its impact on women in surfing communities. She ended up coming onto the project as well.   I continued to share the idea with other key activists, including ocean scientist Dr. Wallace 'J.' Nichols.  He too was interested in partnering on this project for his BLUEMiND work on the relationship of the ocean's impact on the brain.  (more on that to come!) I also got in touch with India’s first female surfer (Facebook is amazing) and and told her about our plans.   Soon, a Brown Girl Surf TM community of supporters started to form around this project.

The proceeds of the T-shirts would support our journeys and would also be used to support the first female surfers we’d discover along the way.  I felt that the purpose of the project was in the journeys themselves.  So rather than defining right away how exactly we’d connect and support these women and girls, we’d meet them first, share their stories and then support their ideas and desires for change in their communities based on what we discovered. 
 
  Alas, Brown Girl SurfTM is finally unveiled!   Behold! A mermaid!

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__ Thank you to all those who helped me in the process to give birth to Brown Girl Surf TM.  You know who you are and  you are so friggin' awesome!  I believe so strongly in this idea and that it will have profound social and scientific research implications for women and girls, the surfing world, the ocean, conservation, our brain and our spirits. It also makes a pretty cool T-shirt line too!   Now, I want to personally invite you to hop on board with me for the journey ahead!  It’s sure to be a sick ride!
 
 
Signing off from Oakland, CA
Farhana

_Where in the World is Farhana?: Knocked Down for the Count

I don’t even know how to begin.  So I’ll begin at the date of closure.  On December 21, 2011, we closed the organization I started after 11 years, C.E.O. Women. 
 
Close?  How?  Why?  I know - you and a hundred others asked the same question.  Well, here is an abridged version of what went down.  Q4 of 2011 was an “everything that could have gone wrong went wrong” sorta quarter.  If I had to describe that period of time with one word, it would be “miserable.”  The bottom line was the organization just didn’t have the financial strength to continue in this very difficult economy nor the institutional strength to withstand a leadership transition.  We found ourselves with no cash due to a number of factors, no line of credit, a resignation of a key executive leader on the eve of our annual event, and delays in processing our government funding among other things.  By the end I had lost count of how many of my personal paychecks were withheld. To top it off, in the midst of pure organizational mayhem, I got clonked on the eyebrow by my surfboard a day before Thanksgiving.  Yep - a big ASS shiner just for turkey day.  I honestly didn't think the blow was that big of deal.  I mean, I have been through my share of injuries.  Nevertheless, not only was I feeling the emotional bruises from having to put to rest what was a great non-profit, I also looked like the poster child for 1-800-stop-surfboard-abuse.  Check it out.

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As this storm of events turned into what felt like a category 5 hurricane, I did what any unpaid founder enduring 3 months of financial crisis with no money, no executive director, and a head injury would do – I drove to my favorite surf break and cried....for most of the weekend actually except when I was in the water – too focused and calm to cry then.   After two days of intermittent sobbing I actually started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. I mean, I was bummed, but those of you who know me know I ain’t no crier. And closure wasn’t the end of the world.  Truthfully, I knew there probably was a better way to do the work we had been doing all these years and this was the opportunity for that shift to happen. I loved managing crisis too.   Still, the tears flowed.  I decided enough was enough, and got myself to the doctor.  After explaining to her my symptoms of intermittent crying, nausea and deep sleeps, doc was like “ummm….you had a concussion.”  Apparently the blow occurred in the left upper orbital side of my head – the part of the brain that controls emotions…..hence the monsoon of crying from all the various stressors of the past 3 months.  They were also worried I had broken my upper left orbital bone as well so I was sent for a bunch of x-rays.  Luckily, I didn’t break the bone, but I don’t think I fully recovered from the concussion until weeks later.

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With a fuzzy head, the incredible staff of C.E.O. Women and I spent all of December dismantling the organization – from calling all 200-something of our institutional and individual funders, to negotiating with our bank, to figuring out where the fax machine and fridge would go.    The tears flowed daily, almost regularly.  My surf coach reminded me that the cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.  So that was my mantra.  I made sure I surfed as much as I could and thanked God for that.   
 
By the third week in December there were no staff left but craploads still to do.   I got sick from the stress and managed to fracture my tooth in the meantime.  So between the bank negotiations, figuring out what the hell to do with the fridge, raising $20,000 to close cleanly, I frantically rushed to my doctors for last minute health appointments before my insurance expired. I was totally losing. In fact, I felt like a big loser.
 
I didn’t think I’d make it out of bed for the last three days so I ended up calling on my buddy, Jane Leu, an incredible entrepreneur and Founder of the non-profit Upwardly Global.  She spent the last 2 days with me closing down the organization.  Having also built a national non-profit on her own back, she was one of the few who could understand, at a visceral level, what it was like to be the last one standing to shut down the very thing you had killed yourself to create for so many years. She was sad.  I was sad.  It was sad.  Together, we were sad.
 

_Jane and I wrapped up all the remaining pieces (well, what we could do with two people) and closed C.E.O. Women on the evening of the 21st. 
 
Looking back, this wasn’t the story of a 3-year-old start-up that had recklessly burned through quick cash, due to poor planning and execution or a flawed business model.   It was one of the successful, non-profits built on sheer frugality and on years of hard work that just couldn’t make it.  A year ago I had announced to my board my future plans to eventually transition out of C.E.O. Women by February 2012, understanding the organization needed fresh, new leadership, and hoped to move onto my next venture.  I had hoped for a graceful departure, to send out the token “thank you for 11 wonderful years” sorta e-mail, celebrated with a party, drank lots of wine, given a “goodbye it has been so wonderful” sorta-speech.  Instead, I went out with all the grace of a giant water buffalo. 
 
And so I was faced with the big question - who would I be now that I wasn’t the revered “Founder of C.E.O. Women?”  I actually spent the past year doing a lot of soul searching figuring this out. I based my next steps on the simplest thing possible – what I knew to be true about myself.  I loved to surf.  I loved to dance. I loved to travel.  I loved to write. I loved inspiring others with stories.  I wanted to see more opportunities for women and girls to achieve their dreams.  I felt there were still so many barriers for them to overcome all over the world. I was more than ready to shed the identity of C.E.O. Women from me.  I didn’t want to start another non-profit – too much fundraising. I didn’t want to work for someone else – not enough freedom.  So after 11 years of helping other women start their own ventures, I decided I wanted to start my own. I realized I had to walk the walk and officially enter the fellowship of C.E.O. Women entrepreneurship-dom. 
 
During this time, my surfer buddy Kevin lent me this surf book on Laird Hamilton’s training regiments which ignited in me A Bend it Like Beckham-style infatuation with the big wave surfer. Armed with this book as if it were my Bible, I thought my first idea was brilliant! It was to become a sponsored, competitive surfer – the first in my community!  (I’m sure this is just the impact Laird hoped to have after publishing that book).

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I was stoked. I started to dream of being a renegade brown girl swooping down big waves in the ocean on a big gun (a surfboard used for big waves).  I told my dad last August about my brilliant entrepreneurial idea to go pro and that I would train, run the sand dunes of Ocean Beach to build my endurance, tie a rock to me at the bottom of the ocean and sprint, join a gym, find a coach, find sponsors, and then be on my merry way. Well, this picture pretty much sums up just how enthusiastic he was about the idea:

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Ummmmm. Let’s just say he wasn’t too gung ho. Luckily though, a little Photoshop does wonders to tales, so I fixed that issue right away. (SHUT UP!....It’s my story anyway).  For the purpose of this story, let’s just pretend he was a little more enthusiastic about my idea to go pro. 
 

_Anyways, a girl can dream, right?  Let’s just say my dreams were in full force, or maybe my surfboard did hit me REALLY hard.  Either way, the inspiration I had taken from seeing off all our final graduates in the last weeks of C.E.O. Women, and the challenges and struggles they were overcoming in their own lives inspired me to go after the unthinkable.  It also sent my entrepreneurial brain into full swing with all sorts of plans and concepts of how I could structure the next phase of life’s adventures.  I began synthesizing more thoughts on surfing, women and girls’ empowerment, traveling and writing, and laid the foundation of an even better idea – one that wouldn’t necessarily result in death at 30 feet either. (Quite the opposite, actually.  But more on that soon!)  In the meantime, I did take to the water, and started tackling Ocean Beach on those overhead and a half days on my big board just for fun – some of the most exhilarating surf sessions ever. 
 
I would love to continue telling you what exactly the idea evolved into but I’m afraid I must end this part of my tale here and save that for Part II (don't worry.  there are only 2 parts to this story).  And if you don’t wish to be on this list, no offense at all.  You can certainly unsubscribe at the bottom. It was just easier for me to use this e-mailing program to communicate with you vs. doing it through my gmail.  For now, welcome readers (old and new) to Where in the World is Farhana?: Life after C.E.O. Women.   To be continued….
 
Thanks for reading!

Signing off from Oakland, CA,
 
Farhana