How I Became - a Charity Founder w/ Danika Revell.

Welcome to the ‘How I Became’ series where Billie talks to girls across New Zealand who are killing it in their chosen career and see how they got there!

Trying to decide what you ‘want to be when you grow up’ is hard enough as it is and your careers counsellor probably won’t have all the answers you need.

HIB aims to give you a bit of insight into different career paths and what it takes to get there.

Name: Danika Revell

Age: 36

Job title: Charity Cofounder + CEO

Current job: Cofounder + CEO of The Period Place

Firstly, what drew you to charity work?

To be honest – I wasn’t bloody drawn to it! Or at least I didn’t think so.

I grew up with my family working in social services and saw how much it takes out of the people who work on the frontline shelters, in organisations and in agencies – I didn’t want any part in that.

I finished high school, flitted off 600kms down to Sydney the day before I was due to start my Commerce/Law degree at a country university in New South Wales in Australia (I’m an Aussie!) and thought I’d figure it out. I worked in different industries and in the last job I had I met this Kiwi guy, who is my now husband. At 19 I thought I knew everything (I did, I swear I knew more then than I do now!) and was in love, so after a 6-week relationship I followed the Kiwi guy to London. It was over there I decided to enrol in a Communications Degree to major in journalism like my home-girl Rory Gilmore. A few semesters in I was frustrated with the degree, and switched my major to PR. After 4 years in London (and a stint in Paris) we moved to Auckland. I worked in PR, in Social Media and Digital Marketing. I drank the champagne. I sat front row at Fashion Week. I did the things. I got the car. I got the married. And then I got pregnant, finally, at 30.

While on maternity leave with a sleeping baby (the last time he slept properly through was those first three months… boy was I cocky!) a friend and I were talking and decided to do a pop-up shop to sell cool feminist merch and talk about periods. Long story short, that didn’t happen, but an art activation happened, we realised we were onto something, and someone then told us we should register as a charity. So, we did!

While I never sought out to start a charity, I absolutely cannot think of anything else I would rather be doing or should have been doing my whole life.

What subjects did you take in high school that you think helped?

Augh, high school. Please, don’t ever take me back. My high school was like a soap-opera, and a cheesy American High School movie combined. The popular kids didn’t have the Letterman Jackets that the kids on the screens did, but everything else was the same. The bullying was relentless for me in every year of high school – my whole group was bullied, but me especially. I was always standing up for my friends, and even people who weren’t my friends, so I copped it bad. That resulted in things like me not choosing the subjects I wanted to in the later years of high school because I knew which peers were going to be in them, and I wanted to stay away from them.

Doesn’t that suck? Thinking about that now, I wish I could go back and tell Danika to just do what you want to do boo, you’ve got this.

When I look back, I genuinely believe that taking Woodwork and Metalwork classes in the middle of high school when we first got a bit of autonomy led me to this work. And you know why? Because I was the only girl in the classes. For years. Being the only person representing something is what I was doing then, and it’s what I am doing now at times, when I am the only person standing in a room with a Minister, or the only person in a meeting with a corporate that trades on the stock market, and I’m banging on about periods. So yeah, those early days of me-being-me got me to where I am today more than the social/cultural/history classes ever did.

What did your pathway towards starting your career look like?

As I mentioned above, it was a scribbly journey. I always knew I was going to do something. I was going to do something and be something different. I always knew that - because my whole life I have always been told I am different. As a kid and adolescent, I didn’t know what that meant. I wasn’t a singer, I didn’t play an instrument, so how was I going to be known and what for? I assumed if I wasn’t going to be known for my talents, the only other way to be known was in the media. Maybe that’s the small-town country-Australia girl in me, maybe that’s just what the options were before the internet.

I knew I was great at communicating, and I was passionate about it. (Sidenote: I hate the word passionate, it’s such a cop out in the charity space when people say ‘Oooooh you’re soooo passionate’ because they never follow up with the funding after that.) But I have always been fervent fan of communication, how it works, how it doesn’t, how much can be said with so few words, and how much extra context can be communicated with body language. So I studied it, but then switched majors. I didn’t like the idea of an editor coming and cutting my story shorter. Stuff the inverted pyramid I said.

What did you study/where/how long did it take?

In London, in typical Danika fashion, I decided I wanted to start the degree and enrolled that night online through Online Universities Australia. The Comms/Journo degree was going to be offered through Griffith University, so I clicked yes I was happy with that, and then bob was my uncle. I started two weeks later. Back then (before videos were posted!) I was sent my course work at the start of each term – literally just piles of ring bound paper were couriered to London and I would read them each week, complete my assignments, and get kick-ass grades. I remember being told at the time ‘Cs make degrees’. I was mortified. If I got a Distinction (second highest grade, High Distinction being the top) I was disappointed. I figured if I was starting my degree at 21 and paying full fees only to have piles of paper sent to me and never seeing what a lecturer looked like our sounded like (all communications between us was via email, or on message boards for each class) than I was going to give it my all. I will say that I got 2 Cs in my final semester, and by that point I was like “You know what, these Cs will make my degree. HA!”

I studied in my London flats, on the tube, at work while the kids slept as a Nanny, in lunchbreaks as a waitress, on the top deck of double-deck buses on my way to see friends, on airplanes to European weekend destination trips, in the van I lived in with my husband for 3-months while we drove around Europe – wherever I was going and whatever I was going, there was always something with me. I loved it. I got to live my life, live my dream, and lay the foundations for my future at the same time. Sometimes it sucked. Because holidays in London and Australia didn’t line up, there were times I had to miss out on going to the pub because I had to sit an invigilated exam while everyone else had a three-day weekend. But I got through it – after throwing my toys and having a whinge about missing out, of course.

I spent 4 years doing the degree while travelling Europe and working in London and Paris. Then I worked for a pretty short time in the scheme of things for other people. Within 18-months I was freelancing, then I launched my first business at about 26? Again, I wanted to be able to do things my way. Drive my own Maserati down the highway, or a dead-end street, as the case was a few times. (Another sidenote, I live and breathe Taylor Swift).

What’s the best thing about your job?

Personally? That I get to listen to Taylor Swift every day in the office. I’m not even joking. What that represents is that I have control over my own days. That shit is powerful. I get to choose what I want to do, when I want to do it. Sure, there are board reports and meetings and times I have to spend in spreadsheets I still don’t understand, but I get to choose when and how I will do that.

It's intoxicating to be able to be who you want to be in the workplace. Every other workplace I have been in did not let me be who I wanted to be, so I had to make my own one. And I haven’t looked back.

What’s the hardest part?

There are two.

The feeling that it’s all on me.

Sometimes, in my darkest days, I feel like I am responsible for every vagina in Aotearoa. I know, that’s a bit dramatic, but it’s dramatically true. I want every person who can’t afford to purchase all the period products they need to be able to access them in other ways that are filled with dignity and joy, and I want everyone who can afford them to still have them provided for them in every bathroom outside of the house. Just because they can afford them, doesn’t mean they should have to pay for them themselves – we don’t all carry rolls of toilet paper around every day, why the bloody hell should we have to with periods? Society has accepted that the other two uncontrollable bodily functions be provided for in all workplaces, restaurants, cafes, shops, places of leisure etc, but not this uncontrollable bodily function?

It's not a tap. We can’t just turn it off because we’re at our fancy desk in the big shiny city building but forgot to put some tampons in our bag that day. So my heart feels responsible for every girl, woman, trans, non-binary and self-identifying vagina in the country because I can see the future I am literally giving my blood, sweat, and soooo many tears to, and I want it NOW, for everyone.

The other thing comes back to what I mentioned before – and the cop out calling me passionate. The Period Place is chronically underfunded, like every small charity in Aotearoa is. I am sick to death of the pats on the shoulder and being told what we do at The Period Place is important, and not having that backed up by funding.

What surprised you most about your job once you started working?

How utterly open everyone is when they reach out with their stories. The stories I carry with me every day are B E Y O N D. The physical pain, the trauma, the shame, the disgust, the hatred, the self-loathing that people in Aotearoa feel about themselves because they can’t access products, because they can’t access healthcare, because they aren’t believed, because they can’t provide for their children or whānau, because they must wait years for surgery – all of it, it’s bloody intense.

But at the same time, I never want people to not share those stories with me and the rest of the team. They share these stories because they know we are the safe place to share them. It’s in the bloody name. We’re The Period Place. You tell us your stories, and we sit beside you from then on. You’re never alone again in your menstrual journey, however positive or negative it is.

And then sometimes, a year or two later, after you’ve engaged with us. You write to us. You tell us that you finally had that surgery. That the products we sent you way back then are still being used, and you are using them now post-op, and all you can think of is how you were not alone in that surgery room or in recovery afterwards because you knew we were there with you in spirit. And we sit down on the ground in the office as we read your message, and we cry, and we hug our laptop, and we remember why we do this.

What does an average day look like for you?

There is no such thing. I guess the most average thing I could say is that there is always going to be Taylor Swift, alongside whatever else I am obsessed with at the time. Recently it’s been Harry Styles and Kesha’s old albums on repeat with TayTay.

I could be unpacking 15 palettes of period products, then shooting social media content, then on the TV talking about periods, then booking a meeting with Ministers for a trip to Wellington, then back at my desk trying to reply to the always 200+ emails in my inbox. I have barely had moments that are average at The Period Place, let alone days!

What advice would you give to those looking to follow a similar career path?

Go hell for leather. Do not stop, go. Do not collect your $200. OK maybe stop and collect that – period products are expensive and we’re in a global cost of living crisis, but after that, get in your Maserati and floor it.

You are going to have bad days, bad weeks, bad seasons. But through it all, you are going to have YOU. And you know you can do this.

What are the biggest challenges in your opinion to getting into charity work?

Financial privilege and lack of support for working mothers.

I fully accept and share openly that I was able to start this because I was in a long-term relationship, married, and already had a mortgage. My husband’s career enabled me to ‘continue my maternity leave’, cough cough, in that I worked on The Period Place full time for 2.5 years before I got paid. Sure, the first year on it was basically the planned maternity leave, but the 1.5 years after that were not in the plan. Without his salary, I would not have been able to fight like the dog with the bone that I was, and keep pushing and pushing until something finally got across a line, and we got funding.

I took my kids to every meeting, every korero, every hui I had to. I took my second kid who was born 20-months later down to Wellington to see the Prime Minster in her office when the Positive Periods team (a bunch of organisations and businesses that got together to petition the Government to put period products in schools). The meeting was scheduled late morning or around 12 from memory. James was hungry. Jacinda Ardern was delayed. So, while waiting outside her office, I started to breastfeed James. Which of course was the moment the doors opened. So, I stood up and walked into her office breastfeeding him. As a parent of two young kids with no family support in Auckland to help us, I was experienced in walking around my house while breastfeeding – because I had to play/keep alive my first born. The parliamentary photographer almost walked into the wall he was so out of sorts when I walked in cradling James sideways while he fed, but everyone else just had a laugh and talked about what we women have to do to get shit done.

We could afford for me not to work while I built The Period Place, but we could not afford childcare on top of that, so I just had to figure it out. And I did. .

What kind of skills does your job require?

Bullheadedness. A flare for the dramatic. Activism. Complete and utter belief in yourself. That’s not to say I believe in myself every day.

Again, I share very openly about who I am and what I go through. I have clinical depression, anxiety, and last year was diagnosed with C-PTSD, and I bordered on an ADD diagnosis (anyone who knows me can tell you I have ADD). So I have my basket of crap, and sometimes that crap leeches out and takes over and I think I can not do this for another second, let alone another day. But I’m much more experienced now at recognising the signs, and stopping to look after myself before the overwhelm takes over. If I have to leave my workplace at 12.30pm and go home to bed for the afternoon – I do. There has barely been a week since I cofounded this 5 years ago that I haven’t worked 50-60 hours across days, nights and weekends, so I know when my mind is starting to talk to itself negatively and it can’t be overcome, it’s time to give it the break it needs so I can get back to slaying the patriarchy the next day.

What part of your job gives you the most satisfaction?

The same thing that surprises me the most – the complete trust people put in us to reach out to us and ask for advice on a menstrual cup, or to ask for pads or tampons, or to talk about their menstrual disorder.

What has been an absolute highlight of your career?

You’d have to think getting period products into schools was pretty cool. That’s some intergenerational impact right there. But again, the highlights come from the individuals when they contact us, about big or small things – every single time.

What’s an unexpected element to your job that people don’t realise you have to do?

How much time I have to spend sitting at my desk replying to emails. I get hundreds, thousands, every week. From people, businesses, groups. People wanting support, people with ideas, people wanting to volunteer, people wanting to enquire.

It’s utterly overwhelming and I live my life with 200-300 emails in my inbox every day. I reply to things usually a month late, and I live my life running 10-15 minutes late for every meeting, Pilates class, coffee, or Gin meet-up with friends. If we were properly funded, I wouldn’t have to be CEO, social media manager, operations manager, financial manager, volunteer manager, campaign manager, media spokesperson, drives to the post-office person and all the other bloody persons I am while I’m working. I could be like, half of those.

Describe your job in three words

Christ on a stick, three words?

Pure unadulterated joy.

The Period Place excited to be partnering with One Good Kiwi in May, a digital koha app that profiles ten charities per month. Billie readers in New Zealand can vote on the app for the charities they love most to distribute a share of $100,000 per month. The Period Place wants to raise $10,000 on One Good Kiwi to purchase $10,000 worth of period underwear from their partners UbyKotex. If they make it, UbyKotex will match it with another $10,000 worth of period underwear – that’s $20,000 worth for those in need!
Go vote here now!