Maryam Rezaei
Chrissoula Manolakaki
Panos Chreppas
Stamatis Tsagias
Asimeni TountaDina Kaplan
How many of us would agree that “ambition” is the means of getting what you want? In achieving your goals? Climbing the ladder? Well I personally know what it means to be ambitious…but I also know that ambition from positive means can turn into negative and can be self-destructing too! You see, when you truly know yourself your path and cause, especially when you have taken the time and space to find out who you are, thus ambition is the key to success! But when ambition is caused by a traumatic event in your childhood and it’s what you use in order to get heard and to “prove” yourself, then it will only be a matter of time when it will eat you up and show its negative power… and looking in the mirror not recognizing who you are anymore! This is the story of Dina Kaplan, a woman who had everything you can imagine and more, working hard from a young age and left it all behind to find herself… the woman she had lost somewhere along the way!
Dina born in Pittsburgh, a lovely shy girl, made a promise to herself… a promise that she buried inside her and hid it for many years; not to be shy nor be bullied again…little did she know that her promise would change her completely! But let’s start from the top… Dina Kaplan 13years old moved with her family to Boston and for a few years to Rome, Italy, in a boarding school forcing her to be open and social. She changed 180degreeds and from a nice shy girl into a cosmopolitan extrovert!
Another thing you should know about her, everything she has done through her career has always been mission driven… working in the White House as Director of Research for the Office of Bill Clinton, associate producer for MTV News, Emmy-award winning television news reporter for local NBC stations and co-founder of Blip and being Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women of Web 2.0.
As Dina says, she had it all… everything a person would want; fame, money, status and a super lifestyle! But what she had given in return was her feminine side… as she found herself being and acting like a man as to be accepted and not to stand out from the masculine workforce. As she was among the very few women founders in tech! But you see, our body and soul thankfully is always protecting us and showing the way when we are lost, by getting sick in many ways! So, having panic attacks, one day she found herself not being able to walk at all in public and couldn’t walk across the street to her office building where the cab left her! And that’s the moment where everything changed… She booked a one-way ticket to Asia! A 2,5-year journey of meditation and getting to know herself and facing her fears! She found the real Dina… and that’s when she also remembered her promise to herself as a young child… But Dina Kaplan didn’t really need the “cool-popular” shield to protect her anymore… she learned to be herself!
Today, she is the founder of a beautiful company, The Path! Where they teach meditation to the modern mind, hosting weekly sits, courses, workshops, retreats, social events but also giving teacher training programs.
Looking into her eyes, I could see the pain she had faced… but also the tremendous power of transformation… it needs besides huge guts and will-power, a lot of faith and courage being open and vulnerable facing your fears and just “loving what you see” ... the beauty and the beast inside! Cause we all have both sides… Dina in walking in the light and shaping other people’s paths making a positive impact in our world!
http://www.thepath.com
