Julie Smolyansky is an American businesswoman. She is the CEO of Illinois-based dairy company Lifeway Foods.
It is all of our jobs to make sure that women's rights are human rights, and that they do have a place at the table, and we all push toward equality. The leadership numbers for women in business really haven't changed since I began as CEO. There are only 21 female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies, there is only 17 to 19 percent of female representatives in Congress, there are only eight female governors.
I didn't take a single business class. I learned on the job.
I have an opportunity to give a voice to those who have no voice. Even though film production wasn't a bucket list item for my life, what I have been passionate about is creating change and impacting society - especially bringing conversations forward on formerly taboo subjects.
What is exciting today is that with technology filmmaking has been democratized, and so many more people have access to making a film.
During the mourning period after my father passed, his friends and colleagues were saying there was no way the business would survive. There was no way that a 27-year-old woman could run a company. I was so pissed that this was a conversation during a mourning period, and that a woman who was educated and working at a high level at the company wasn't considered for leadership. This was my father's life work, something I was completely connected to, and I knew I could take the reins.
In the documentary space, the biggest and most obvious difference is that in those films you're not in it for a financial gain. It's a piece of collaboration and artistic expression, that pushes change and self expression, in the sense that everyone has a story.
Men realize that they have work to do, to pull up women and take ownership on where we are as a society, and that they have work to do to help their female relatives and friends - to give a voice to women, not in a patriarchal way, but in a supportive way. It is all of our jobs to make sure that women's rights are human rights, and that they do have a place at the table, and we all push toward equality.
I do think film can change culture, in a way that reading a story in the New York Times does not.
We have to shine a bright light on horrific moments in society if we're going to create a better world for our children.
There's a leadership gap in the modern business world. Young professionals need to step up to the challenge.
I've been a social justice advocate all my life, becoming an activist for women and human rights even in high school, and found ways to weave it in to my later for-profit career. The first film I got involved in was Christy Turlington's "No Woman, No Cry" , which was about the impact of maternal health around the world. It brought this important issue to light, and even though I wasn't in a credit position, I helped her find ways to screen it.
It is still harder all around for women to get funding in business and film. There are only a very small group of female unicorns who have the power to tell stories on film. We need to have the courage to push back. . . all the effort is the work of bravery.