Episode 027
Celeste Mergens
What happens when you realize your “upper limit” is the only thing stopping you from reaching millions? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with Celeste Mergens, the founder of Days for Girls International. Celeste shares the soul-stirring story of how witnessing menstrual inequity and sexual exploitation in Kenya led her to build an organization that has now reached 2.8 million women on six continents.
Celeste reveals the hard-won lessons of her eight-year journey to the million-dollar mark, including why she had to “free herself from the desk” to allow the organization to thrive. If you’ve ever felt like fear was holding your steering wheel, Celeste’s advice on “buckling up your lizard brain” will help you stay curious and resilient in the face of any challenge.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-How to “fail forward” and use every loss as fuel for your next big leap.
-The “Lizard Brain” strategy: How to recognize and bypass your automatic negative biases.
-Why money should be viewed as a “flowing resource” rather than something to hoard.
-The power of asking “What if?” with a positive framework to blast away fear barriers.
"Now the upper limit is gone. Bring it on because I want to be partnered with everyone I can to be the change we need to be in this world."
Alice Tang: Welcome. Celeste, Mergens, ,the, the founder of Days for Girls, and I have this new friend for over two years and her story about how she’s helping the girls, with things that later on she’s gonna share with you is noble.
So, Celeste, without further ado, would you tell us who you are and the organization you have founded?
Celeste Mergens: Yes, I’m the founder of Days for Girls International and we help women and girls have access to menstrual care products and education, and that sounds like something we don’t wanna talk about and [00:01:00] certainly something small, but it turns out that it’s global.
The issue of not having what we need, they’re actually over 500 million estimated women who lack what they need to care for their periods. Imagine lost opportunity. Dignity Health, not being able to go to work school. And today, thankfully, days for Girls has reached over 2.8 million women and girls on six continents, which shows how global the need is.
Alice Tang: Very good. So,, I recall when we first talk on the phone, or through the Zoom meeting, can’t remember which one is first. You’ve shared with me very touching story when you were in Kenya. Would you share with us a little bit about that? And that probably is the determinant factor that you have to fix it.
Celeste Mergens: That absolutely was. It was one of those aha moments that you don’t see coming. Certainly my first, degree that I approached was electrical engineering. I wanted to be a scientist or an engineer. I wanted to maybe [00:02:00] be a writer. I wanted to be lots of things, but global expert and the sex administration was never on that list.
And what happened was I was doing sustainable development in a community in Kenya with a friends foundation and. Was invited to see a health clinic near the slums of Kibera and to see later his orphanage that he supported. When I arrived at first, I didn’t want to go. I was afraid it would break my heart, but I believe in saying yes.
Of course, the children captured me and I was smitten and had to help bring sustainable solutions there too. Fast forward a year and a half later, violence because of an. Election that was so close, it sparked violence. Half a million people were displaced and now we were getting calls that they were up to a reported 1400 kids at a really crowded space.
And I tried to imagine that even being possible. We sent the support we could and then later learned. That the girls were sitting on pieces of cardboard for days for menstrual care, even before [00:03:00] the expansion of number of girls missing school, not even able to take care of their personal needs, they sat on pieces of cardboard.
I was stunned. At that realization , and knew that we had to do something. So we were able to raise money for basic needs and also for, single use products. But I knew what happens next month. If you’re thinking about, decisions with finances and you have to choose between food and a pad, food’s gonna win anywhere in the world.
Fuel for the gas tanks, you can go to the next interview is going to win. So how do you have product that will last month after month, we made the first washable product, volunteers rallied, and we made 500 kits for 500 girls in just three weeks. So when I was to return again, and we brought. The products, but importantly with Days for Girls, the education as well.
What is a period, why should we not be [00:04:00] ashamed of it? Is it real that we, without periods there would be no people and that it’s a basic biological function as sign of being a healthy woman. We got to talk about all those things and that they matter. For all we knew, they were the next Nobel Peace Prize winning Wangari , who’s a leader in their country at the time.
So imagine after hearing the cheers, after watching them hug their kids and dance with their kids, and the cheers were still echoing off the ceiling. 250 girls coming in at a time, and the first girls came and said, thank you so much, because before you came we had to let them use us if we wanted to leave the room and go to class.
And I was hoping that didn’t mean what I feared it meant. But they soon confirmed that they were being sexually exploited in exchange for a single disposable pad. And that for me was the moment days for girls was born.
Alice Tang: What a wonderful story, and more important what I. Wonderful gift [00:05:00] that you’re giving to these women.
Now you touch 2.8 million women and keep going. You started, Days for girls , on November 1st, 2008. And I heard it took you eight years to get to your million.
Celeste Mergens: It did. And I think honestly, part of the problem for not reaching that sooner, honestly, was a mindset.
I thought we had to do this ourself. I focused on programs and organization and inviting people, which is powerful. It’s powerful to invite people to join you in what you’re doing and to do it in a way that is inclusive of their skills, inclusive of their wisdom, and invite everybody to rally together.
That’s powerful. We were raising primarily grassroots funding, although I did have someone, I think O Magazine was 2015 and then 2016 we had a million, but it was also the momentum of more and more people learning about it and more and more volunteers [00:06:00] talking about it. Imagine we had complete strangers.
That people would talk to about periods. That’s a miracle in and of itself , and it was phenomenal to watch that happen. It still is. But one day I had applied for accounting group who occasionally did pro bono work for nonprofits, and I filled out all the information. He called me and said, okay, let’s go over this, where are your donations from? Mostly grassroots. What’s an example of Family Foundation report or support? $50,000 check came in just a couple days ago and he said, unsolicited, and I said yes. And he said, that never happens. And he hung up on me.
, we always focused on the stories, on the positive stories that we were seeing and the impact , and making it about the power of we. The power of look what we can do together, and the strong stories of local leaders. Someone who had to sit in a chair and be slapped by a teacher because she didn’t wanna stand up and show a menstrual stain, becoming the leader in [00:07:00] her own community to rally for menstrual equity.
Be a days girls enterprise leader. We wanted to lean into the dignity and strength of that, and by sharing that and calling out everyone’s role as stakeholders, it grew and grew.
Alice Tang: Wow, it took eight years to the point and just now, one comment, hit me.
[00:07:22] You said, you thought that, you have to do it by yourself, do it on your own.
And that’s why, , it took eight years. So in other words, probably you implied it could come sooner,, is a change of mindset. So would like to talk a little bit more about that mindset.
Celeste Mergens: Absolutely. So I was told once by someone from BlackRock, I was presenting to him and some of the executives and he slammed the table and said, tell me you are never behind a desk because all you should be doing is out talking people like me, cuz I want my checkbook right now.
So tell me you are never behind a desk. That was probably [00:08:00] 2013. How many years do you think it took me to get out from behind the desk? I just felt like I had to help. I felt like we couldn’t hire help as much. I wanted to make a tiny, budget for overhead, and so I didn’t free myself from that desk.
Volunteers were doing the majority. Up until that point, we were reaching a lot of people and we were doing a lot, and if I given myself permission to step out of that desk and to go full on and focusing on fundraising and challenge. Dollars, not just hands to help. We would’ve gotten there sooner and honestly reached more girls sooner.
And my mindset was, we got this by bootstraps. Our first big donor, amazing dear friends of mine, Robin, Debbie Young, and they were with doTERRA. He heard about this same experience happened. He finished hearing me talking. He puts his arms out. What’s up?
With that says we’ve gotta do [00:09:00] more and I’m gonna talk to everyone. Pretty soon a check came from them for $75,000. My mind was how do we thank them enough? This is embarrassing but true. I literally called the local high school to see if they would have their marching band do like a celebration and carry Thank you banners.
We could video that and put it on social media. I was like, oh my word. So flash. Forward and we were actually, very good at crowdfunding with competitions like we went toe to toe in the Revlon Challenge with people like diabetes One, really big organizations because of the crowd we had the power of volunteers and all of our stakeholders and. I one day talked with someone. She called back and said, we’ve decided to give a hundred thousand dollars. I literally screamed in her ear
You have this upper limit. We all do , until we [00:10:00] decide to blast it away, and I recognize that my upper limit had to go where we couldn’t reach more girls. So it had to go no more dime by dime, no more building the small tools we needed to build Red Cross big.
Meaning the resources and tools , and platforms. And the next time we had a challenge, we were in second place. The stakes were high. Someone called and said, we literally have 15 minutes left. A woman called, I think from Tennessee, and she said, I want to donate $10,000.
If someone else, matches just 10,000, we could win this thing. So it’s not even our core team. This is someone that just outta the blue calls in. I am in an emergency situation with grandchildren. I’m standing there pushing a stroller and the only person I could think of was my husband, Don.
So I pick up the phone and say, Don, I have a proposal for you. He said, , let me see if I’ve got this straight.
And we rallied in the last few [00:11:00] seconds. Flew past and won the challenge, and over and over again. I witnessed the ingenuity of people we knew, challenged them. The ingenuity when you say, what if we did this , and their first response was often, we can’t do that. You’ve gotta be kidding, but over and over, what if and what could you do?
And I do to make that happen. And sometimes they call you and say, I’m in for a hundred thousand. Sometimes they call you while you’re pushing a stroller and say, I’ll come in for 10. And sometimes it’s about sharing your vision and it’s about getting out of your own way. And thankfully, I have a tremendous mission in every girl everywhere that blasts away fear barriers. I just also needed to erase my upper limit, and thankfully the mission keeps pushing me to do just that.
Alice Tang: Amazing, You are so cool because you are familiar with the question I’m gonna ask.
First it really take us eight
[00:12:00] years to get to the million, and then it is group efforts. So when we talk about the bias, actually the bias is your own. Belief system you have to believe you can. You have to believe that, you don’t just count on the hands of the volunteers, but have to count on the pockets..
And just believe people will , open their pockets. And then the last piece you just mentioned is the what if. So lately I learned something from Tony Burgess. He’s a writer from uk. He said a lot of people would say, what if I fell? What if people hate me? What if I look like an idiot? What if, but flip that and ask, what if I look terrific? What if everybody loved my idea? What if I am excellent and take away the what if; so minus the what if I am terrific. I am excellent people like me because [00:13:00] past experience that support that. That is how we counter the limiting beliefs. I mean within group work, but more importantly, when you got, 10 minutes to get to your level to beat somebody else, you need to make something happen.
Celeste Mergens: Exactly. It was remarkable. And even the people in the committee the team were all cheering. They said the entire room was cheering to watch it go.
Where there are great difficulties, great possibilities happen. And actually see another thing about this moment that you’re talking about, and that is that actually our brain is working hard for us all the time, even when we’re not trying, and I call it the lizard brain.
That part of our brain, the amygdala, that’s fight or flight, it always defaults to negative. Unless you do what you just said, Alice, and you say, I am in positive frameworks. It takes you to the negative. It’s automatic that it’s just looking out for you. It is just trying to keep you [00:14:00] safe. We need to say thank you amygdala.
I call it lizard brain cuz it scurries us under a rock at every shadow and so that feeling of fear, my friend Jen Gottley says, fear is gonna come along for the ride. So tell it to buckle up in the passenger seat.
No touching the steering wheel. Not even the radio, but come along because we’re going to go and really if we just recognize we have that part of our brain, that’s going to assume the worst. It just is. And so we can question that. We can open back a moment. If someone sees us and they wave, they look right at us, we wave at them, and they ignore us and walk on.
Then that negative bias will say, if it’s a team member, great. They’re mad at me. My boss is mad at me, my supporter is mad at me. When in truth, they might be thinking about a report that’s coming up and just didn’t really even see you. But we assume, and if we can do what you just said, be curious. She’s not usually like that. I hope she’s okay. I’ll be sure to check in [00:15:00] later and stay curious. Then, even if they are mad at you, you’re going to come to the encounter with a better mindset, a way better state, and the outcome will be better.
Would you say 80% of the time, the assumption we make is wrong. It just got drug over to negative bias. So why not be curious and assume the best?
Alice Tang: You hit, the nail on the top of the head. In general, if I’m at the average Alice pace mindset, I would think people who would not wave back to me, thinking negatively about me.
But we are human being. There is a day when you’re overwhelmed. There is a day when you’re beaten up, there’s those days, and your mind. Is telling you, well, Celeste is mad at me.
So the best thing I like your suggestion is to check in, Celeste. I hope everything’s okay. And you’re gonna tell me that it’s not okay because that report is supposed to be on my desk.
It’s late, then I have a chance to [00:16:00] know what’s going on. Right. Maybe I just space out, maybe I have too much going on
Celeste Mergens: absolutely. You’re so right and you’re so good at that. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so good at follow-up and staying in communication and staying connected.
You set such a good example. I’ll never forget the time you said how you schedule, I believe it’s Tuesdays to do your connection and you choose and you schedule for follow-up. I hope it’s okay to share that. I have never forgotten that I include that in my practices ever since it’s masterful.
Alice Tang: Oh, great.
. So,, what is the big, one piece of good advice or very bad advice that made a very big impact to you?
Celeste Mergens: I’d say give up. I had people from the very beginning with days for girls Say it didn’t mattered. Didn’t matter at all. I had one guy say, people would schedule me to do a speaking address and then cancel it.
When they heard what we were going to talk about. One guy came into the early office of Days for Girls and said, [00:17:00] I just had to come in because. I’m looking around and I wanna know how did a ragtag group of housewives pull off this kind of impact?
Alice Tang: Oh my God,
Celeste Mergens: Do you believe that he said that?
And then he continued to say his offer for me. And of course I was able to identify, this is not someone I want to work with, because he didn’t even see us. He came in with a lens that was speaking of bias, and people saying, just give up. It doesn’t matter. You should do it a different way.
I don’t know about you, but that’s my secret sauce. You know, go ahead, tell me. Something can’t happen. And if I can already see it, look out!
Alice Tang: I haven’t received a big challenge like you building your organization, but I can tell you in my, , most difficult time in my life, people said, you’re not gonna make it.
And I just use that as an insurance policy. I’m gonna prove that you’re gonna be wrong. Even with my last breath even, I’m crawling. I’m gonna get there, I’ll crawl
[00:18:00] there. When you hit to a million, how does it make you feel? At the time?
How did you feel and what did you do?
Celeste Mergens: We have something that we do whenever a big donation comes in. I have just a year ago stepped down from my day-to-day CEO position and shown that the organization could still thrive with resilience. So I’m not ringing the bell anymore, but this is what we did when a very large, I still get to celebrate with them though, , when a very large donation came in that it actually didn’t even have to be very large, but something advanced with days for girls, some big new milestone happened.
Then we would do this. We would use a school bell to symbolize a school bell of, all those that could stay in school now, all those that could go to work now. , and just really picture the people being reached and the communities being reached. And, , that is our celebration. And I feel like personally, it’s just so [00:19:00] important to call your mountains a level achievers.
Don’t need to be driven to accomplish something. But what we do sometimes, at least for me, I had to learn to stop and acknowledge that we just took a mountain. Can we just stop for a moment and go, look what you did before we charge down to the next mountain. Let’s just pause for a moment. And then run on; because it recharges you for the next run. Right? , and so, This bell was part of taking the mountain.
Alice Tang: Oh, pause and recognize and celebrate that you have, climbed the mountain before you go to the next one. So it’s so important. , you talk about the brain, I don’t know enough about my brain, but I also know that if I do not create a strong memory
when I’m in the toughest time, I don’t have enough reference to tell myself that I can. So I have a friend recently told me that, why don’t you create a channel [00:20:00] about all the little and small success? Just keep going. It could be pages over, pages, over years. And when you have a tough time, just go back and look.
Oh, 1963, you were born. Your mother was happy. It’s such a gift. Or 1983 you graduated from, and then you do this and you do that. Just look at the list and just feel that you can, going back to the question, what if I fail? No, I succeed because I have there all these records.
Celeste Mergens: I love it. And actually with Days for Girls, we failed forward.
So I actually believe in failing forward. And by that I mean, Brene Brown said, I think it’s that no creativity and progress can be made if you’re not willing to fail. Not at your core missions. But in general, days for Girls Pads went through 30 iterations and became an two patent award-winning design.
And that was with the feedback of those we serve with. And so I [00:21:00] also think that one of the secrets to success is being willing to go out there and you know, hey, we might fall flat on our face, but if we do, we have a plan and be thinking about next. And oh, we did it. Okay, next, again, back to that curiosity to be willing to be curious, what are we learning and make any loss count as a big step to the next leap.
So look at every action, whether it goes forward or backwards, as fuel for your progress. I think that’s a really important mindset for million dollar women.
Can I share something that, will feel a little off, but I promise it will relate.
So I once decided to paint our dining room and , my husband had said that we’d hire someone within four months. So I decided to do it between meetings. I got all the way to the very last little strip, and then I backed up and did a spontaneous happy dance, forgetting that I put a half gallon of paint.
Bucket on the bottom step of the step [00:22:00] ladder, you can imagine it spilled all over me on my feet, on my clothes, on the antique, Turkish rug. And on barnwood floor. My husband was due in like 40 minutes. I had an important partnership meeting in an hour.
So you go into that panic mode, I, went, okay, Celeste, you have a choice right now. You can go into complete meltdown or you can stay curious and creative. Which do you wanna be? I literally have to use my hand and go, stay open. Curious, don’t panic, uh, because then you lose your ability to think and create in a new way.
So I. Took a deep breath, looked around, and the gallon Ziploc baggies that the paint rollers were in, I took them off and put them on like slippers, stepping out of the paint, put ’em on, shuffled to clean up on the way back, got rags, paper towels, cleaning things, and stopped for baking soda and a big zip tie.
So here’s what I did. I. [00:23:00] Scooped it up, put baking soda in the cracks, and on the rug it soaked up. I used the zip tie to scoop out what was now like putty or play-doh and scrape it off the carpet, put more , baking soda. Kept cleaning, 15 minutes later there was not a single spec of paint. I don’t believe that I would’ve had this baking soda.
Who thinks baking soda, I had never had that thought. I recommend it in the future, should you have something happen. I’m not painting, I’m hiring from now on, but , I actually have witnessed that when we allow ourself to stay curious. Amazing things happen. So when we are in a crisis where it’s like, oh man, if we can get our whole team to shift to, okay, wow, with big challenges come, big opportunities.
I’m really curious what we’re gonna do. Do you have any ideas? And not make people wrong, but invite them, Hey it’s okay to get [00:24:00] wacky cuz we fail forward around here and we’re creative. Let’s get curious. Then you can stay open and create brand new solutions.
Alice Tang: This is a super memorable story I could personally retell in my Chinese English.
Let’s recap where it comes with huge challenges or difficulty. There is always opportunities and, our mind, A human mind is as sophisticated machine. It’s either in a panic crisis mode or in a curiosity mode. I also heard, from a psychology PhD, and she said, fear and curiosity cannot coexist it’s either. or if you are not, I would say a super specialized curiosity expert, like Celeste, you want to ask curious question like, I wonder how vanilla ice cream tastes like [00:25:00] now when I am in a crisis. So at least you take your brain to a break. So that you can, apply your power of the curiosity to hopefully resolve the solution within 15 minutes. Just likes Celeste did cleaning up the paint.
[25:17] Well, this is woman million dollar conversation. Of course. We would not, finish it until we ask the question, what is the value of money for Celeste?
Celeste Mergens: Okay. A dear friend, Lynne Twist, who wrote the book, the the Soul of Money. Amazing book. She says in it that money is not something we have to grasp with both hands. It’s not something we need to be concerned about or hoard. It is a resource that flows through our lives to create, to make the life we so yearn for ourselves and for others.
It’s a flowing, it’s a resource like energy and like thought. It’s just this [00:26:00] resource that flows so. If we’re in that state with it, if we are good, it does more good. If we are generous, it does more generosity. If we are creative, it does more creating, so my hope and why I really love the abundance that I’m so blessed to have in my life, and the days for girls is so blessed to have is because you just get to create more.
You just get to do more. And for me personally, it helps me to show up for my purpose in life for that beautiful feeling you have. Like this is what I wanna create more in the world and for me. That’s helping people know how amazing they are, for me. That’s helping people show up and make the difference, be the difference, and know that there’s all the hope in the world if we just come together for amazing shifts that look impossible to happen because we came together.
The more resources I have, the more I get to step up in my [00:27:00] purpose. So now the upper limit is gone. Bring it on because I want to be partnered with everyone I can to be the change we so need to be in this world.
Alice Tang: Beautifully said. Last question. What are you grateful for today?
Celeste Mergens: Oh, so much. My amazing family, the amazing network of days for girls, and that I have a book coming out and that there’s sunshine outside.
Those are just the top things that come to mind.
Alice Tang: And a beautiful Turkish antique rug still intact.
Celeste Mergens: Yes, exactly. And that could have gone a completely different way.
Alice Tang: That’s right. Well, thank you so much Celeste for sharing some time with us. We appreciate your presence today. Lots of story, lots of lessons. Be creative. See challenges as opportunities.
Just go, money is the resource right to create hope and create experience for people who [00:28:00] is near you or for the next generations. Keep going. Bring it on. Thank you, Celeste.
Celeste Mergens: Thank you. This has been delightful.
Celeste Mergens is the Founder of Days for Girls, a global award-winning organization that has reached 3 million women and girls in 145 countries. A specialist in bridging cultural divides and overcoming trauma, she helps individuals embrace their strengths to become the change they wish to see. Her work, which affirms that what connects us is far more than what divides us, has been featured in Oprah’s O Magazine, Forbes, and Glamour. Her upcoming book, The Power of Days, offers techniques for overcoming adversity and uniting for change. She is a sought-after international speaker and a recipient of numerous honors, including the AARP Purpose Prize.