There’s nothing better than some female empowerment, especially during Women’s History Month, folks. One Penn State alumna, however, is working to inspire young women all year long through her new social platform.

Jayme Anne Goldberg created Consequential Flowers, a private social media platform dedicated to empowering women leaders from ages 18 to 24. The platform released back in January of this year, and Goldberg is working with the Smeal College of Business to provide free registration to all Penn State students.

The name, Consequential Flowers, is representative of the fact that women are beautiful and essential in the world. Her business partner, Holden Comeau, created the website and name for her while she was in the process of starting a website to showcase her passion for photographing flowers.

Goldberg graduated from Penn State with her bachelor’s degree in finance with honors from the Smeal College of Business and Schreyer Honors College. She also has an MBA from the Columbia Business School.

Her Penn State experience defined the rest of her career. After all, it’s the place where she learned that she can’t wait around for what she wants.

“That persistence of going after what I wanted when things weren’t just handed to me,” Goldberg said. “It put me in the mindset for the rest of my life to be that way.”

Her inspiration for the platform comes from her previous work experiences in the business sector, where she was often the only woman in the room and dismissed by her male coworkers. Eventually, she realized that neither of these aspects was reflective of a healthy or inclusive work environment.

While it is geared toward women, Goldberg said Consequential Flowers is open to people of any race, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and more. The whole goal of this platform is to be an inclusive, safe space.

Consequential Flowers’ vision is “to create a new behavioral norm where women go out of their way to support each other because they realize how much joy they get from helping to bring out the best in each other.”

“I’ve always mentored women. I have done it because things have often been really hard and have been very isolating. I don’t want anyone else to feel like that,” Goldberg said. “So, I want to take everything that I have learned and experienced — many things the hard way — and I want to build a community that’s bigger than me.”

On the platform, people can post any questions or prompts to get a conversation going. From there, other users can share their advice or experiences to help build confidence within each other.

Goldberg decided to gear Consequential Flowers toward college-aged women because they’re learning how the world works and have a high value of what their own potential could be before getting into the workforce. But, if they get into a culture where their potential isn’t supported by the environment, women’s confidence can falter.

“If we start working on [their self-confidence], and being aware of the forces that can chip away at it, we’re going to be better prepared to not succumb or not be affected negatively by those forces,” Goldberg said. “And if we are, we’re going to have the wherewithal to be resilient.”

Creating Consequential Flowers has been a process of learning along the way for Goldberg, mostly because a platform like it hasn’t really been normalized. She plans to continue this approach based on the platform’s community needs and what they need to help implement the practice of empowerment into women’s lives.

“I want to create this practice of every day of thinking purposefully and with intention to focus on our own leadership, our own development, and focus on helping each other and building each other,” she said.

Unlike typical social media platforms, Consequential Flowers is a private site. Goldberg intentionally made it this way to ensure that people who join feel comfortable sharing their experiences knowing that none of the information they share will be leaked.

While one of Goldberg’s goals is to expand Consequential Flowers’ network into a larger platform, her primary goal is developing an inclusive and safe culture on her site.

“The priority is to build a culture of inclusivity and integrity, where the norm is to get joy out of bringing someone up,” Goldberg said. “Establishing a culture is a prerequisite to the kind of growth that is really important for me personally to have because if you grow too fast without culture in place that you want, the community will take a life unto itself.”

Goldberg knows what it’s like to feel at your lowest point of value because of a toxic work environment and said that she doesn’t want anyone to ever have to feel the way she did, which is also a huge motivation for her creating Consequential Flowers.

“There were times where so many forces around me were purposefully trying to make me feel like a zero, and I have felt like a zero before,” Goldberg said. “So, I just don’t want anyone to ever be near there.”