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Syracuse University alumna Shelly Fisher and her team lived “100 days in 10” in April when they created Girls Night Live in only 10 days.

“They’re not kidding,” Fisher said with a laugh.

GNL, which was originally called Girls Nite In Online, is a platform that hosts workshops and gives women a space to amplify their voices and earn money through a “virtual tip jar” system, said Fisher, founder and CEO of GNL. The company held its 400th workshop on Jan. 13.

The workshops – hosted on Zoom – cover fitness, beauty, self-improvement and many other topics. GNL has also started a women-owned business marketplace for businesses to sell their products. Women accounted for 111% of the net 140,000 jobs that were lost in December 2020 alone, according to Fortune Magazine. GNL aims to support those impacted the most.

GNL has also been working with 12 paid winter interns from SU since the end of November. Interns, lovingly named the “spectacular dozen” by GNL President Peg Casullo Hertrich, worked closely with Casullo Hertrich and Fisher to promote the brand and find speakers to host workshops.

“It was an internship they came to,” Casullo Hertrich said. “Now it’s ‘our’ brand. They feel invested in GNL, but that’s because of Shelly. That’s what she creates.”

SU senior Daijha Thompson worked for GNL until Jan. 15 as a public relations intern with a focus in media relations. She ended the program early to start an internship at communications consultancy Dix & Eaton, something that Fisher encouraged her to do because she never wants to stop any of her staff members from pursuing an interest.

Thompson was drawn to GNL because the company and employees share the same values and passion for empowering women as she does. During her internship, she worked to promote the brand and its workshops.

“The fact that Shelly did this completely and solely out of the idea that ‘I want to help people not for monetary gain, not for my own personal gain, but so these women don’t have to struggle as much,’ is really what I would consider the most unique thing about this platform,” Thompson said.

GNL operates as a part of the Pay It Forward Group LLC, where Fisher is the CEO. Along with GNL, Fisher has founded The Herb it Forward Foundation, a scholarship and empowerment program for young people. Fisher also created She Knew She Could, a women-empowerment lifestyle brand, along with a few other philanthropic endeavors.

Casullo Hertrich, who oversees all of the departments and employees at GNL, said she has found that every age group of women is looking for connection, especially during the pandemic.

“We want to find a way to connect with one another,” Casullo Hertrich said. “And that’s one of the things that we found that Girls Nite Live has done.”

GNL looks for authenticity in its speakers because they know their audience wants to hear real stories from “real women,” Casullo Hertrich said. People who are on Zoom all day for work should still be able to come to the workshops and enjoy themselves, she said.

The workshop leaders for Girls Nite Live host events that cover topics such as fitness, beauty and self-improvement. Courtesy of Girls Nite Live

Workshop participation varies depending on the event. While some allow participants to freely interact with each other, others are considered lectures and are led by the speakers. As part of the “virtual tip jar,” speakers can ask the audience for donations during their workshop.

The company’s 400th workshop highlighted women who are essential workers during the pandemic. Speakers included Katrina Kelley, a senior nursing development specialist at The MetroHealth System, and Domonique Revere, a principal consultant at HRemedy consulting.

“Ten months, that’s really not a long period of time, especially when you consider that in those 10 months, we’ve had an entire pandemic going on,” Thompson said. “And the fact that they’ve been able to host 400 workshops with over 700,000 people worldwide is mind-blowing.”

The workshop was attended by over 1,200 people and was hosted by Kati “Jazz” Gray-Sadler, founder of the nonprofit Fifty Shades of Purple Against Bullying. The workshop focused on treating people on the frontlines of the pandemic better. The topic resonated with people because our essential workers are being mistreated, Gray-Sadler said, and because people are broken by the pandemic.

Gray-Sadler was one of the earlier speakers on GNL, and she accredits the survival of her nonprofit to the organization. Smaller nonprofits are more at risk of going under during the pandemic because they’re often seen as “less essential,” according to The Washington Post. The research group Candid also found in July that about 22,000 nonprofits in the U.S., about 7% nationally, could close due to the pandemic.

“(Fisher) did something that no one else did. She shined an incredible halo over our small nonprofit organization,” Gray-Sadler said. “And when she shined that halo over us, it was so humbling.”

Fisher never expected to still be working on GNL, and originally thought of it as a temporary project. But after hosting its 400th workshop last week on Zoom, she hopes to continue her goal of providing free classes to support the voices of women like Gray-Sadler and frontline workers.

“What has been said to us over and over again is it’s just nice to have, especially with all of the layers of challenges in the outside world right now, to be able to offer a safe space where everybody can come together on topics that make people feel good,” Fisher said.

Published on January 20, 2021 at 10:41 pm

Contact Sydney: sabergan@syr.edu