Join us for an incredible conversation with Brooke Wurst, Pennsylvania. Brooke is a social impact technology founder, longtime HIV advocate, educator and one of our esteemed 2024 Women of Achievement. Dive into this inspirational podcast episode sprinkled with a touch of humor and discover what makes Brooke truly extraordinary!
Brooke delved inro her work endeavors and how she supports organizations to “help them do the good they do better.” She dropped some serious wisdom about showing up authentically, finding and activating allies, and recognizing mutual opportunities for support.
Plus, she took us on a hilarious trip down memory lane as she recalls her time in the Bloomers, the first all-female comedy sketch group in the country. Between laughs, there was a more serious message about being a confident woman, engaging in tough conversations about what’s funny and understanding the essence of comedy—knowing your audience.
Finding balance was also a hot topic, and Brooke talked about embracing her introverted side. We explored how Tri Delta is the catalyst woven into every aspect of her life—career, passions and creative. We even got a sneak peek into her upcoming project (hint … it involves elephants).
Hello, Tri Deltas. Welcome to another episode of the Let's Talk Tri Delta podcast. I am one of your hosts, Karen White. I have the amazing privilege of being Tri Delta's CEO and interviewing our fantastic sisters, bringing you their stories right here on the podcast. And today, we have one of your hosts, Karen White. those extraordinary women, Brooke Wurst from the University of Pennsylvania. She is one of our 2024 Women of Achievement. So Women of Achievement is Tri Delta's recognition annually of three extraordinary women, among thousands of extraordinary Tri Delta women across the world who are doing amazing things, breaking glass ceilings, truly paving the way for the next generation of women. And you'll soon see why Brooke is among this group of recognized Tri Deltas. Brooke is a social impact technology founder. She is a longtime HIV advocate and educator. She helps organizations do the good they do better. She travels to remote corners of the world with her organization and identifies as a devout, but not always practicing capitalist. As serious as Brooke's career path has been, she is a very funny human. She manages to bring humor into every aspect of her life. So without further ado, let's meet Brooke. Brooke, hello.
Good day, thank you for teeing that up. I can only let people down now, so thank you.
Not at all. Listen, let's start with your career 'cause you have enjoyed an incredible career, right? We're gonna ask you a little bit about your background, how you ended up in this field, and for our listeners and viewers, your mission and your impact with the companies you've both founded, you've led, continued to be involved in, is really impressive, right? You founded the Triad Trust. It's an HIV/AIDS education and training NGO that operates in remote regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti. Then you went on to create Remote ID, the first ever secure biometric based mobile identity access management platform. It is optimized for low-resource settings, brilliant. And then in 2009, you founded Remote Harbor to bring the Remote ID platform to scale. Most recently, recently, you have co-founded RAIS3 Partners. Make sure I'm getting that correct.
That is correct.
Okay.
You're doing great, thank you.
Okay, awesome. And this provides strategic and technical advisory support for organizations helping them to do the good they do better. So we find so many of our Tri Delta sisters in high-powered positions and in traditionally male-dominated fields, right? It's my question to you. is, do you find that too? And how did you navigate through it?
Yeah, I think the social impact side of things, the nonprofit space, the public health space, the working in the space that is filled with extraordinary local leaders in reproductive health fields, that wasn't as male dominated. The male-dominated aspects of that, especially in the HIV space, was very often with a lot of folks who were early on in the fight against HIV and for the people living in the kid, which tended to be early on a lot of gay men and members of the gay and bisexual community. So there were wonderful allies in that. And as that evolved and the technology evolved, part of my career evolved, that's when I think I confronted the reality that, oh yeah, this sort of patriarchal structure still existed. When I just showed up, I was who I was and you find allies everywhere you go and you activate allies as you recognize mutual opportunities to support each other. So I think just never forgetting who I am and why I am in that moment has helped me navigate potentially otherwise uncomfortable situations.
That's awesome, right? You know, the question will always come in a situation like this and a format like this, right? Advice for listeners on navigating their own careers or words of wisdom maybe for, you know, achieving your goals and your success in life.
I think part of it is, again, just knowing what gets you excited. It's easy to say, well, if you love what you do, you're never working, of course you're working. Sometimes you're working harder because you care so much. But you go to bed exhausted in the best possible way. So in terms of sticking to your goals, I think the key is just, you know, figure out and identify what is it that resonates with you, what really aligns with your values. If your goals and your values are aligned, it's going to be a lot easier to achieve your goals and feel good about them. And that doesn't mean that everyone needs to be all, you know, impact-centered or whatever. Your goals could be to achieve whatever you want, whether there's a halo around that or a perceived halo around it or not. There are a lot of people who say they're doing good, who are not doing it responsibly or ethically or compassionately, and there's no there there.
Right, right, which, you know, my sense about you is that would have never been enough, right?
Idon't know otherwise. All I know is how I'm hardwired and
Yeah.
A little too weird.
A little too weird. Well, speaking of weird, let's talk about Tri Delta, right? You have many degrees. You studied literature at Harvard. You earned your Master of Science from Northwestern. You hold certificates from University of Virginia and Duke. But it all started at Penn, your undergrad, and Tri Delta. And I know you've said before, you've found your people in Tri Delta. So take us back to college and talk us through that.
When I showed up at Penn, I never expected to join a sorority. I'll go through rush just to see how it goes, but you know that whole spiel.
Yeah.
But when I, when I went through Rush and, you know, all my gray hair will tell you how long ago that was. It was a place where. where that concept of the house being a foundation rather than a roof that's limiting you really sort of manifested. And the women that I met back when I was a pledge in January of 1991, you can do the math now, are still the people who are texting me as I'm sitting here and with whom I work and have had the opportunity to work over the years. and just we show up so It's not just that I found my people amongst my Tri Delt sisters, but they helped me find me they helped me develop, you know, recognize who I was and the most important parts of me and celebrated that and fed that to some might say enable that and to become in the best way of enabling that.
Yeah. Yeah in power right?
I've supported and been with me literally every single day ever since. There's not a day that goes by. And I said this to you when we first connected, it's not a day that goes by where I don't speak to someone, text someone, email someone, see someone, work with someone that was part of my cohort at Tri Delt at Penn.
That's just incredible. And I shared with you that in recent years, not a year has gone by where a woman from Penn has not been one of our Women of Achievement, right? So something special going on there for sure among the members that find their way to our chapter at Penn.
I just, I would agree with that. And this is no disrespect to other schools, but there's definitely a self-selecting process in terms of both people. who are choosing to go to a school that encourages women to achieve and pursue excellence and the community within that, that is Tri Delt, I think, does the same thing. There were a lot of performing artists in our chapter. There were a lot of athletes or a lot of people who did both, which I can't imagine doing. There were people who had leadership in ROTC. There were people who had leadership in faith. So, you know, whatever it was that you did, this was sort of where you're going to do it and feel supported and have other people show up for you, which was so helpful when things were exhausting.
And, oh, yeah, class, right?
Yeah, right.
That thing called college, right?
Absolutely.
So, at Penn, though, you were the writer, performer, chairwoman of Bloomers right? I understand this is the country's first all-female musical comedy sketch troupe. You got it? I didn't want to be too descriptive.
Yeah, great job. Good job. You did it. Perfect.
Good. So where did you play? What did you play? We want to know everything. I mean, you're hilarious, right? We've had time together. So, you know, for the audience. But tell us about this. Tell us about Bloomers.
Bloomers was, as you described, the first all-female musical comedy sketch troupe in the country, founded, you know, I think in 1979. And believe it or not, there was always a critical mass of tryouts in that. The woman who really inspired me to like show up and actually do rush was a woman who was a year ahead of me and she's like No, no, this is this is great. You're gonna be like you would love it not dirty rushing but encourage me to check it out and you know we we had fun Anytime you have a group of confident women who are creative and passionate you also learn like iron sharpens iron So we you know we had a lot of really, you know tough conversations around what what is funny and what is funny to me might not be funny to you, right? So it also taught us about knowing your audience and knowing how to calibrate communications to who's in front of you. And if I showed you old VHS tapes from 30 years ago, you hear the audience laughing through most of it, not all of it, not everything landed. And you might find 50 % of it funny because you remember that time. Whereas if I show my friends’ kids this, they didn't know the time, the place, like, you know, so it became a wonderful place to be who we are, but also understand that the essence of comedy is knowing your audience. Drama is easy, everyone knows what's tragic, but back to you have confidence, to try to be funny is a skill that's going to serve you in the real world, in the business world, which are not always the same.
For real, I wonder if that's part of what has given rise to some of the improv training, that corporations are taking people through. I've had the opportunity to do that.
that, right? And you're right, it's so, A, know your audience and B, trust your partners, right?
Absolutely, absolutely. And I still, like I said, there were tryouts in that troupe on every part, performing on stage in the pit with me, in the writer's room, in the front office, the producer. And I was just texting her 'cause her birthday was this weekend. And the, the violinist in our band is still the violinist in my current band and several of the performers up on stage, one of whom we were talking about before the call, she was a Tri Delt and she was in Bloomers and I just took her kid up for a college visit because she wasn't able to. So you know these friendships and relationships just consistently reinforce that you know as as much poor judgment as I may have used in college moments in terms of finding the friendships, at least that wasn't wrong there.
Yeah, I mean, it's a through line, right, is, you know, I think it's such a treat that we meet the women we meet through Tri Delta at the time we meet them, right, at that time in life when we're, you know, coming into our own, right, and I do think it sets us up for lifelong friendship. Not sure we know that when we're 18, but it sure turns out that way more often than not, right? So you still, you're still in a band, right? I'm sure there's still some comedy in your life. And then you're doing such high-impact work. So how do you balance between all of that and the really different things that you're doing, aspects of your life and In terms of balance, too, do they ever intersect in really unexpected ways?
I have I have a pretty good internal sense of how to keep things in perspective, maybe not in the moment, but big picture. And again, part of it is buoyed and mitigated by the fact that I always love what I'm doing. I'm a little too arrogant or stupid to do something that I don't love. So I think that helps me keep feeling balanced even if I'm not in terms of the physical part even if I'm not in the moment and you have to you have to rest like you have to learn to listen to your body. I have a meditation practice and I listen to my body. I'm a very, very good sleeper and I can fall asleep as soon as the seatbelt fastens on an airplane and wake up as soon as I have my seat, you know tapped and I'm like I didn't recline it. I was asleep when I couldn’t recline it already so
So that helps.
And how all of this intersects, I think, again, I think following passion is the through line about what I believe in and who are the people that support that and how can I support the people in my life. So I think that keeps me sane and safe and able to show up for whatever it is, whether it's work or personal. It's how I do life.
Yeah, and you show up fully, right? I mean, in the short exchanges we've had, you're all in, right?
Yeah, I think that's the power of, believe it or not, I'm a deep introvert. And I think that the power of my introversion is, it's how I do it. I was like, you know, I hate people. I'm not just a topic. I just, I'm putting so much energy into that connection that I need to recharge alone when that presence, that episodic presence is complete. And I think we all need to know what recharges us.
Yes 100 % I do think that the sleep is a gift right the ability to sleep and turn it off right so you can turn it all back on and full tilt right uh when you get up and start again right just so such such good stuff right um we are hearing um about a new project that involves an elephant, lots of elephants, elephant conservation in Zimbabwe. What are you doing next, right? Tell us all about this project.
Sure. Well, staying on the theme of Tri Delt, a year ago, literally a year ago last week, I was out at NBA All-Star Weekend for work in their big tech summit, which I call Nerd Prom for Jocks and you know part of my work has intersected with the NBA both through the non-profit work and the technology work and Penn Tri Delt sister Melissa Rosenthal Brenner is the queen of all things digital at the NBA and so she always puts on like she runs that summit and it is in an extraordinary place and lo and behold walking across the hospitality area is another one of our sisters, Jenna Seiden, and we reconnected. We'd been in touch on social media but reconnected and immediately got in deep and she was working on some wildlife conservation work using artificial intelligence and I said well we are doing all this stuff around using technology too how can we work together and so together we are helping to accelerate her organization's work, which is creating a basically an intervention system, an alert system that is going to, I can't give too much away, but that's to help the rangers and the people who are doing wildlife conservation management, real-time information to protect one of the most extraordinary and endangered species out there, which are elephants. They're smart, they're compassionate, they're better, they're more humane than we are. So that work is is pretty extraordinary using artificial intelligence and really machine learning to look at some of their behaviors to help alert when something's going wrong from poachers or climate-related threats.
That's, it's amazing, right? The, that those points of intersection in your work and another cause and, and the conduits of that being Tri Delta relationships is just absolutely incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
So people are going to want to know you, Brooke, right? So where can we friend you or follow you or find you?
LinkedIn. I'm such a nerd that that's my, that's probably the social platform that I check out most during what are normal waking hours. So I'm LinkedIn. That's Brooke with an E and Wurst with a U in the middle here. And that's generally easiest. I tend to be in private mode when it comes to Instagram, and I'm not on TikTok.
That would be that would be the biggest irresponsible use of my free time.
I think that I would get sucked right in.
Yeah more puppies. More puppies. I need more puppy content. I look forward to connecting with you in person and so many people down in Florida this summer. And I'm really, really grateful and humbled by just this whole thing. It, you know, when I first got the outreach around this, I literally thought it was one of my friends punking me. 'Cause I couldn't possibly imagine this actually being a serious thing. So I'm humbled and excited that it is, but I still am waiting for the, you know, the sort of the punchline, so.
There is no punchline. There is just a huge thank you for being you, right? For bringing you to Tri Delta and for showing up in the world and the amazing ways that you do. So, you know, the thank yous and appreciation comes from us with a hearty congratulations on being a 2024 Woman of Achievement.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Absolutely. So we are going to catch up with Brooke and our other Women of Achievement on March 26th, noon central time, during a very special panel session as part of Tri Delta's LEADDD Network. Now, if you're not a member of the LEADDD Network yet, you can join today just in time for this session and take advantage of the networking, hearing powerful speakers, fun membership perks that are offered all year long through the network. You'll find details on our website TriDelta.org. Just click on the LEADDD Network to get started. And always, right? Please like, subscribe and rate our podcast. We love five-star ratings in Tri Delta. We hope to see you soon on the podcast. We hope you'll join us in Florida this summer for Tri Delta's Convention, July 11th through 14th. J .W. Marriott Grande Lakes, great property, great time to connect with sisters and “flamingle” with us. So thanks for joining us. Until next time, friends, Delta Love.