Danielle Paulo
Keeping snacks light
Q & A with Dena K Martines
Who Is Dena K Martines?
I’m a Generation X woman, co-founder and COO of GenXWoman, a media company for Gen X women by Gen X women. I’m also a Career Transformation Coach and founder of a boutique recruitment firm. I am what some call a multi-passionate entrepreneur but I define myself as someone living her life purpose through some of its many possible expressions. I’m also a doggie mom to my spunkie mutt, Baxter, and a self-proclaimed citizen of the world.
How did your entrepreneurial journey come about?
After nearly two decades as a corporate executive, I went through a personal transformation that led to a total overhaul of my professional life. After years of feeling stuck and unhappy at work despite a successful career, I had finally found my calling; my life’s purpose!
However, with that discovery came the realization that the career path I had pursued for all these years would not allow me the space or opportunity to fully live out my purpose.
So I had to make a choice: Stay in my comfort zone knowing that I will never find fulfillment at work or pivot completely and essentially start over in my forties. I chose the latter.
How did you start GenXwoman?
During a girls’ night out, Megan Fox, a friend and now biz partner, and I were commiserating over the lack of representation of our version of midlife (we didn’t call it that then!) on and offline.
As 40-something, single, and childfree women with successful careers, we felt completely left out of the discussion and totally disconnected from the prevailing narrative of who a woman in her 40s should be or should do. We were also shocked at the negativity and doom mentality surrounding this topic. We believed (and still do) that we can “have it all”, we had big dreams and felt at the prime of our lives but the media was telling us that we should think and feel otherwise.
As we dug deeper, we realized that the negative narrative was not just around women our age but included an entire generation. And so it became clear that the space of inspiration and upliftment that we had envisioned for ourselves and other women like us could possibly benefit an entire generation of women, Generation X.
Nine months after that first conversation, we launched IGenXWoman.com.
Get to know Dena at www.denakmartines.com
