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Ladies Lotto: Where the Girls Are :: This collective helps creative women pick the winning numbers

By Julie Gerstein   Photography by Sarah A Friedman

09/13/07 :: URB 149

“We’re interested in cultivating professional relationships. We want to help each other become centered and whole,” explains Natalie Blacker, co-founder of Ladies Lotto. The New York-based organization is shaking up how young women do business and build relationships in New York and around the world.

Blacker’s personal motto seems to be “you gotta be in it to win it,” and that’s how she runs Ladies Lotto. The group is grounded in the idea that by working together, women can accomplish all of their personal and professional goals. A PR professional, Blacker started Ladies Lotto in 2005, along with friends Jules Kim and Katie Longmyer, as a way to bring together all of the smart, creative women they knew. Blacker simply sent out an email to all of her female friends—a loose network of New York’s rising artists, producers and professionals— suggesting that they meet and figure out new ways to collaborate and move forward in their careers. Ladies Lotto was born.

“Women look at each other as competition and not necessarily as allies. We are interested in building allies.”

Ladies Lotto members help each other out with everything from apartment and job searches to career advice, professional and personal collaboration. Lotto members also work on projects that help others, pooling their resources and skills to support groups like Planned Parenthood.

So far, the Ladies Lotto paradigm seems to be working. More than 300 women are involved, and the model’s been replicated in Los Angeles and Montreal, with other chapters in the works. Members meet once a month, and take advantage of guest speakers from a variety of fields.

Writer/astrologist Kiki T. came to Ladies Lotto as a speaker and was so enthralled that she became a member. “It’s good to have a sense of community with other people who are in the same realm as you,” she says. “It’s not an easy thing to find your way in the world, trying to live creatively.” 

Member Claudine Halpern sees Ladies Lotto as a way to invest in “our artistic and cultural future. We can change the world if we work together.”

Click here to see a photo gallery of the Ladies Lotto members

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