Who We Are

Our Story

There was once a girl who wanted to stand up for herself, for others she loved, for her community. She wanted to change the world. What she received in return was…

…no support. “You can’t do it!”

…insults. “Is your husband okay with this?”

…disrespect. “No. I think what you’re actually saying is…”

…less pay. “But you’re not as knowledgeable as him”

…profiling. “You must be the diversity hire!”

…isolation. “Sorry you had to miss that, we could not move it to when you were available.”

…gender bias. “But how will you balance serving and taking care of your kids?”

…racism. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from?”

…sexual harassment. “Oh come on! I was just playing.”

…sexual assault. “You were asking for it.”

…domestic violence. “You can’t tell anyone, it’ll ruin your career.”

…intimidation. “We know where you and your family live.”

…death threats. “I’m going to find you and kill you.”

…yet for every woman who persevered, there were others who had to step away. Both choices required immense courage and deserved respect. All of their stories mattered. Their experiences illuminated the path for others.

It probably sounds all too familiar, huh? Well, it’s familiar to us, and we’re tired of it. Tired of hearing it in our lives, hearing it in the lives of other women around us, and hearing it in the experiences women in office bravely share.

We are tired of being tired. So we decided to take action to change the story.

We aren’t all the public figure types, but we are empaths (geeky empaths, to be precise). We’re the ones who stand on the sidelines cheering you on and building solutions for your problems, so you can run, serve, and stay in office and focus on serving your constituents, instead of defending your right to be there.

So we took a good, hard look at the landscape of support for women like us in politics.

On one hand, we see so much amazing work to understand problems and barriers that women in office face, and amazing policy recommendations from movement work. On the other hand, we see research centers and academic institutions producing amazing, reliable, and insightful data.

That said, policy and legislation move at their own pace, and academic research digs deep, but takes time. We saw a need for something in the middle, something more immediate, something more actionable, something to bridge the gap by doing amazing, reliable, solutions-focused, and creative research that generates innovative, out-of-the-box ideas for development.

That is how Ghosh Innovation Lab was born.

To all women who run for office: We salute you for standing up and serving our communities. We salute you for being so badass and facing all the things in that story, and more. You inspire us.

That’s why we are working to build something to support, understand, inform, equip, and empower you – so more badass girl power can be rightfully included in our democracy!

[Fun fact: Our logo {g} is a code symbol that essentially means “including g” for girl power.]