Shelley Zalis: Chief Troublemaker

What is your name and what do you do?

Shelly Zalas, CEO of The Female Quotient, founder and chief troublemaker.

We're going to go in chronological order.

So I'm going to go back way back to the very beginning.

What was life like for young Shelly?

It was amazing, actually.

I grew up one of four girls.

My parents are truly remarkable.

They raised us with confidence to believe in ourselves.

We were the football players.

We were the sons my dad never had.

So all athletes, which is why women in sports is so incredibly important to me.

My father passed several years ago, but he was a cardiologist and did service in the army.

So my mother had to move around a lot with no money.

And, you know, would push us in grocery carts in San Francisco, up hills.

And we lived in Germany.

And she was the primary caregiver of four little girls, you know, and we're very close in age.

My older sister is 14 months older than I am.

And, you know, it was not easy, but she always made it feel easy.

And that we didn't have any hardships.

And we always had whatever we needed.

And, you know, the one thing that my mother talked about a lot was she had to move around a lot and move with us a lot.

But what she always did was create community in every city we went to.

And it was about everyone helping each other.

And so she always created community for us.