This post was cross-published at Levo League and Sloan Women in Management blog.

On Thursday Nov 3, Suzanne Bates, an expert on personal branding and author of Discover your CEO Brand spoke at the Successful You! Women’s Leadership Forum sponsored by Microsoft. She asked the middle and senior women managers in the room, “What is a brand? What is your personal brand? How do you figure out what your brand is and leverage value in your career and business?” When asked how many people knew what their brand was, about 25% of the room raised their hands.

Suzanne says, “a brand is the conversation people have about you.” A personal brand is not a first impression, it is a consistent message that builds over time. The very effective great leaders not only know who they are, but also they know what they stand for. As people understand who you are and what you stand for your value grows. For example, Amazon is one of the most trusted brands in the world. Every time you go there you have same experience and they give you preferences of items to buy based on what they know about you.

Two personal branding tips from Suzanne are:

1) Communicating your brand drives exceptional value, it attracts people and opportunity. When the right leader is matched up with the right organization at the right time, the results are spectacular. Be bigger-a brand can always be more.

2) Connect your values to actions and results.  She describes that sharing a personal story is a powerful brand builder. Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox says, “Never be a victim, circumstances don’t define anyone, where you are is not who you are.”

At first, I was hesitant to publicize my brand and expertise on women, leadership and movement. I soon realized that it’s not about me. It’s about my work in the world and I am just a vehicle. If I get nervous before a speech, if I hold back in my writing, if I don’t share my personal brand, I’m not serving my purpose. Forget the imposter syndrome—share your personal brand!

Today is the launch of the Girl Effect Blogging Campaign, a collaborative effort of hundreds of bloggers coming together to write about The Girl Effect on Oct 4, 2011.

To start, watch this 2 min video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53yuF64UgSM&w=420&h=315]

It’s clear. The studies show that investment in women and girls can change the world and the way we live.

Growing up in a South Asian family of physicians, there was always a ‘conventional path’ for a girl to take. When I was 17, I attended a global entrepreneurship program where I met non-traditional women entrepreneurs and innovators who expanded my own view of my possibilities. The next year, I founded a high school Young Women’s Leadership conference where I invited female business leaders to tell their stories to girls in Pittsburgh.

Soon after, as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I turned my passion for women’s leadership into activism and began to work with Choice USA, a national women’s rights organization.  I became one of ten national leaders who mobilized the largest youth delegation of over 3,000 college students to attend the March for Women’s Lives on April 25, 2004, a gathering of over 1.15 million people in Washington, D.C.

As an organizer of the March, I worked tirelessly in college to find ways to further the causes of women’s health and reproductive freedom. I fondly recall the image of thousands of sleeping bags around me in Union Hall in Washington DC. Standing together wearing orange shirts, our youth contingent stood out in the sea of one million people on Capitol Hill. This unforgettable image was captured on the front page of the New York Times the next day. For my work organizing the march, I was named one of Teen People’s “20 Teens Who Will Change the World” and one of “15 Students You Don’t Know But Will” in Newsweek’s college edition.

When I look back at these formative years and my activism work, I can’t help but think about the investment that was made in me by women leaders. Now it is our turn to invest in the next generation of girls and women around the world who don’t have the same choices and possibilities.

Choice is not just a privilege, it has a moral dimension. The Girl Effect campaign is helping us invest in girls to change our world.

So, what can you do?

Follow or blog about the Girl Effect Campaign, join the conversation on Twitter/Facebook, donate to a women’s organization, or just be a MENTOR to a girl or young woman. Often, the biggest differences that we make are in our daily lives are to the young people we can touch in our everyday encounters.

And here’s a few more stats for your next conversation….

• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Chris Fortson, “Women’s Rights Vital for Developing World,” Yale News Daily 2003.)
• One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15. (Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,”  www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008].)