Meet Tabby Biddle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tabby Biddle.

Tabby, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
For over a decade, I’ve been working at the forefront of the movement for gender equality and the advancement of women and girls — as a writer, women’s leadership consultant, coach, and educator. I started my career in the early 1990s in Washington, D.C. up on Capitol Hill.

I worked at the Women’s Campaign Fund, an organization that raised money for female political candidates and trained them to run for office. We saw a lot of success during that election cycle, 1992, dubbed the “Year of the Woman.” We tripled the number of women in the Senate (from 2 to 6), and a record number of 47 women were elected to the House of Representatives, 24 for the first time.

My office was across the street from the Supreme Court. Every day I would sit next to this important democratic institution. This was not long after the Anita Hill hearings and the eventual confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice. I don’t think at the time, age 22, I realized the significance of all that had just happened. After all, I was Generation X. And weren’t women and men supposed to be equal?

Ha! What I didn’t know then. I was one of those people that was under the impression that we had an Equal Rights Amendment in our Constitution, and that society was just needing to catch up. Unfortunately, I was wrong. While I wanted to play a significant part in the governing of our country, I ended up leaving politics as a career path because I felt that, in order to survive there (forget about thrive), I would have to be someone who I was not.

Cut-throat, manipulative and divisive. And it wasn’t worth it to me. I could make a difference in another way. So, I made a career switch to my other passion: journalism. I was hired by the National Geographic Society, also in D.C., and eventually was working there as an editorial researcher on the magazine. I loved National Geographic — everything about it. The humanity of it, the people who worked there, the mission of the organization to explore and protect our planet.

After four years there, I began to feel a deep calling to move out of “office-life” and go out on my own and see the world. More specifically, I felt called to become a backpack traveler, exploring and traveling throughout Southeast Asia, Nepal and India. And so I did just that. I spent the greater part of two years having life-changing experiences and adventures throughout Asia. During these travels, I began to open up and awaken to ways outside of my Western thinking.

I began to open up to ways of the East, specifically through the study and practice of yoga and Buddhism. I sat for multiple 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreats in Thailand, began a daily yoga practice, and also spent significant time in Dharamsala, India, where the Tibetan government-in-exile is located. There, I studied Tibetan Buddhism with the Dalai Lama at his annual spring teachings, taught English to Tibetan monks, and taught yoga classes to Tibetan teenage girls, refugees, at the Tibetan Children’s Village.

It was through this exposure to Tibetan culture and Tibetan life that I was introduced to a goddess named Tara. Tara is an important figure in Buddhism and is worshipped throughout Tibet, Nepal and much of Southeast Asia. She is considered the “Mother of all Buddhas,” and is highly revered in Tibetan culture. Learning about goddesses in both the Tibetan culture and the yogic tradition was new to me. I had never been exposed to goddesses in my upbringing.

So, this got me really curious. Who is this “Tara”? What is she about? Is she real? Does she exist? Was she human? Or is she an archetype – a representation of the qualities of compassion and mother love? So, I began to look into her more fully, and I learned a very interesting story about her that goes something like this: Around 700-800 CE in India, Tara was a princess named Wisdom Moon who was very devoted to the dharma and had a deep meditation practice.

She was close to enlightenment, raising the intention to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all beings when a monk approached her and said what a pity it was that she was in the body of a woman because she would have to come back as a man before she could become enlightened. She said no way. You don’t have to be a man to achieve enlightenment. Gender does not matter. And to prove her point, she vowed to be reborn over and over again in a woman’s body to work for the benefit of sentient beings, until all beings were enlightened.

I thought this was very cool. And then I started connecting the dots. Wait a minute, in Western culture, we reference “God” so often as a “he” and rarely as a “she,” and from what I can see, it is the men who are the majority of spiritual leaders. I began to get more and more interested in this to the point where I realized if the “ultimate authority” is always portrayed in the male image, wouldn’t that mean that we, as women and as girls, would always think of ourselves as inferior?

After years of studying yoga and Tibetan Buddhism, one day I woke up to an embodied understanding of Tara, the Goddess, and the Feminine. I had a visceral experience whereby I felt all of the pain and suffering, screams and cries from women around the world being oppressed and abused. It was as if I woke up to all of the human rights abuses going on for women and girls around the world, particularly in relation to violence against our bodies and the oppression of our voices.

At this same time, I woke up to a mission that felt like it was being given to me. The mission was to bring the Goddess out of the ashrams and temples and bring her into the mainstream to help women remember themselves as goddesses and fulfill their leadership potential. The “knowing” that sprang forth was that if we ever wanted to create peace in our world, we needed to balance the feminine and masculine both within ourselves, and within our worldly leadership.

From that point forward, I committed my life, and as a result, my profession, to helping women remember themselves as goddesses and remember themselves as leaders. This made it really clear why women for so many years have been treated as second-class citizens. Then I began to get more curious. So wait a minute: When did patriarchy begin? So, as a good researcher, I went to the books and learned about the 20,000-year history pre-patriarchy that I had never learned about!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It hasn’t always been a smooth road. I’ve had to weather some financial challenges, some crisis of faith, and some terror over whether I would be tossed in the “crazy house” for speaking about goddesses.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
As I mentioned earlier, for over a decade, I’ve been working at the forefront of the movement for gender equality and the advancement of women and girls — as a writer, women’s leadership consultant, coach and educator.

Currently, my focus is twofold: Getting more female thought leaders speaking on TED and TEDx stages, and quickening the pace toward gender parity in the media & entertainment industry. To this end, I am the co-founder of 100 Women Change Hollywood, and co-director of 50 Women Can Change the World in Media & Entertainment. Alongside this, I have a private consulting/coaching practice where I support women in finding their voice, accessing their feminine power, and moving to the next level in their leadership.

Through my speaking appearances, group classes and private coaching practice, I’ve supported thousands of women on their path into greater leadership, from business leaders to media personalities, to filmmakers, to celebrity activists, to artists, to students, to entrepreneurs. I also wrote a book called Find Your Voice: A Woman’s Call to Action that became a bestseller.

I’m proud to share that I’ve been hailed by the United Nations Foundation as “a voice for women and girls around the world,” and by Global Girl Media as “one of the true feminist and fierce leaders of our movement for gender equity in media and representation.”

I believe what sets me apart from others is my ability to see a woman’s larger purpose, connect her with it, and move her into her larger leadership potential with the use of my intuition, fierce love and strategic thinking. I have been described as a “spirit guide in the flesh,” and “an extraordinarily unique blend of gentleness, candor, strength, and clear-eyed business practicality.” Women come away from their work with me feeling more empowered, confident and ready to conquer the world.

I am most proud of all of the women I’ve helped find their voice, build more confidence in themselves, and step out bigger as feminine leaders. We need that.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I have always followed my intuitive callings and my intuition. Because of this, I have found that I tend to be at the right place at the right time. Some might call that “luck.” I’m not much of a believer in “bad luck.” I think it is simply a result of being out of alignment with your larger purpose.

With that said, sometimes what looks like “bad luck” can actually be an on-purpose gift to help you grow and learn. For example, when the retail market crashed back in 2008, and I was running my start-up yoga clothing line, having just invested a lot of my own money in it the previous year, that felt very unfortunate.

I took that as an opportunity to grow and learn as an entrepreneur, and pivot with my other skills to accomplish the same intention as the yoga line – awakening women to their feminine power.

Pricing:

• Women on the TEDx Stage: A 6-Week Accelerator for 50 Female Thought Leaders – $500
• Your Feminine Legacy: 4-Week Private Women’s Leadership Coaching & Consulting – $1500
• Find Your Voice: 3-Month Private VIP Women’s Leadership Coaching – $5000

Contact Info:

• Website: tabbybiddle.com
• Email: tabby@tabbybiddle.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tabbybiddleauthor/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/tabbybiddle

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.