Home featured Joan Westenberg Entrepreneur Featured Entrepreneur ‘If you launch a company during an uneasy time and you don’t fail, you know it’s good’: Joan Westenberg Ann Wen December 18, 2020 Joan Westenberg is the founder of PR firm Studio Self and D&I consultancy QueerInclusive. Joan has written for the SF Chronicle, Wired, the AFR, the Observer, ABC, Junkee, SBS, Crikey and over 40+ publications. She is also Australia’s first openly transgender woman to run a PR and communications firm, one of only five globally, and Australia’s first transgender angel investor. We chatted to Joan about starting and running a PR company during COVID-19, her entrepreneurial journey and reinventing how we look at diversity & inclusion. What is Studio Self and why did you start it? Studio Self is a PR and brand studio that helps tech companies. I am a developer and for me, I always felt that the people who do communications and PR come from a consumer point of view and don’t understand tech. People in tech speak a different language and we understand it because we’re in our own ecosystem, but other people don’t. My goal is to sit between tech people and normal people and communicate in a way that makes sense. What makes you different from other PR companies? I take a no bullshit approach. We are transparent on everything: we are transparent in the way we charge, we sit with clients and constantly communicate and are part of their team. We make sure