Podcasting, Coaching & Immigrant Women

[00:00:00] Paula: Hi everyone. I am Paula Okonneh, the podcaster on Chatting with the Experts. In 2014, I decided to launch a podcast primarily because I was always fascinated with the story behind the business. I wanted to showcase local business owners, national business owners and international business owners….. I did this through my podcast, Chatting with the Experts.
[00:00:36] Paula: What a lot of people didn’t know was that I was petrified of public speaking, but through podcasting, through interviewing my amazing guests, I found it easier and easier and more comfortable to do public speaking. And so fast-forward to 2020 when the pandemic hit something changed!
[00:01:04] Paula: I’d always felt within me that I wanted to niche. I’d always felt that I wanted to speak with women, women like me. Women from Africa and the Caribbean who had migrated to the Western world, the Western world of Europe or the UK, or had moved to Canada or Australia or even the US. I felt that these women had stories that should be highlighted. These were mainly professional women, women who had journeyed from their country to these countries that I had mentioned.
[00:01:51] Paula: I felt that many a times that there was an assumption that when one had an accent, that English was a second language. And though that may be the case sometimes, it’s not always the case. And so I wanted to showcase these stories of women, just like me. Essentially what I was doing was trying to debunk this myth that English definitely was not their first language.
[00:02:26] Paula: More importantly. I wanted to use my podcast to showcase women succeeding against all odds. So from these stories, I’ve strived to bring about visibility. And create awareness about these women. I’ve also birthed encouragement while at the same time, building a community of women from all parts of the Caribbean and all parts of Africa who want to highlight the importance of achieving success through hard work, through perseverance …success, through hard work and perseverance.
[00:03:11] Paula: Success through comradery – all with a destination in mind. And because their journey is my journey. I have also branched out into another part of podcasting. I call that the subset of podcasting or one of the subsets of podcasting and that is podcasts coaching, where I teach people and mainly women. How to create their own successful podcasts, where they too can showcase their voice with their own audience.
[00:03:47] Paula: And so Paula Okonneh, that’s me, of Chatting with the Experts.. I feel that my mission is to give back and enable the world to hear the remarkable stories of successful podcasterd – especially women podcasters, where they too can show case their purpose and their mission and change the world one podcast at a time.