bSmart Guide is an online networking and mentorship community for ambitious women who want to connect with other like-minded women and help empower each other moving forward in their careers. Young or experienced women can sign up to become mentors or to look for mentorship. bSmart’s vision is “a world where women have access to the best resources, tools, and people they need to make smart decisions with their finances, fashion, wellness, beauty, relationships, career, lifestyle, and technology to fulfill their dreams.”
bSmart’s vision and mission were created by Meagan Hooper, a graduate of Wake Forest University with a theater degree. After college, Hooper started as an Administrative Assistant for the founder of a premier hedge fund on Wall Street before being promoted to Chief Operating Officer for the firm. She became self-taught in the world of finance and her tenacity eventually garnered her the position of Director of Operations for a global wealth management firm.
Her time in finance showed her how few women there were working in this industry, prompting her to create bSmart. She left the world of finance to take on bSmart as a full-time job and use the skills she had learned to help other women grow and flourish in their careers. “The reason I feel so empowered and passionate about helping women accomplish their goals is that I’m a very unlikely person to have had the college experience that I’ve had and the professional experience that I’ve had,” says Hooper, in an interview by a fellow alumna of Wake Forest University.
As a bSmart social media intern, my work was primarily focused on creating more engagement within the online community and setting existing members up with mentors. I also managed the company’s official Tumblr page (which I still keep up with today) and wrote pitch letters to many editors and magazines for national coverage of bSmart.
I moved to New York temporarily for the summer and went to work Mondays through Fridays from 10-5 in Meagan’s home office on the Upper East Side. Along with two other on-location interns, we were enthusiastically greeted by Stella, the adorable pug, when we arrived each morning.
We would start off by having a morning meeting, where we would all discuss what our tasks and goals were to complete for the upcoming day. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, we would have an hour-long video chat with some of the remote interns to talk about our progress in engaging the online community and what marketing steps we would continue to take for bSmart to grow.
One of my favorite parts of the internship became our weekly trips to J.P. Morgan, where we met with a fellow bSmart board member to discuss growth tactics and changes to the website. Having the opportunity to work for Meagan taught me a lot about how easy it is for us to limit ourselves and stick with a safe plan for the future, instead of actively working hard to achieve our goals.
An analogy she often used with us over the summer was this idea of us being contained in a glass jar. To reach our fullest potential, we have to push past the lid and break the glass ceiling that’s preventing us from accomplishing our dreams.
Join the bSmart community today to start learning how to push past your internal limitations, and start networking with fellow ambitious women!
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