There was a time, not so long ago, when the phrase "platforms for women" referred primarily to footwear. The language of empowerment has shifted considerably since then, and so have the people doing the empowering.
Chantell Preston, an entrepreneur whose résumé includes being the only girl to play baseball in the state of Oklahoma, has made a career of what she calls "shifting narratives" — the kind of work that lives somewhere between media, marketing and motivation, in that increasingly crowded intersection where personal brands meet broader cultural movements.
Ms. Preston, in a recent interview, traced her professional philosophy back to those early days on the diamond. "Sports expose you," she said. "There's no hiding. They show you who you are under pressure."
(One imagines a few chief marketing officers nodding along, perhaps ruefully.)
The work she describes now — "creating spaces for women to step into their power faster" — belongs to a genre of entrepreneurship that has flourished in the past decade, as the advertising and media industries have discovered that authenticity, or at least its convincing simulation, sells rather well. Whether Ms. Preston's ventures will prove durable enough to outlast the current enthusiasm for founder-driven storytelling remains to be seen.
What is clear is that she has identified something real in the culture: a hunger for narratives that feel earned rather than inherited. "It's never just been about sports," she said. "It's about impact."
The arena may have changed. The competitive instinct, it seems, has not.