Best Of Forbes 2021: Women In Business | Forbes

[Music] songwriting is the greatest joy that i have in my life it's the favorite my favorite element of what i do taking it in and being grateful every day for the fact that i get to write songs for a living because a lot of people write songs and it doesn't get to be what keeps their lights on and for me to be able to be one of those people i never forget how lucky i am anything you know distance makes the heart go fonder so having that distance from my fans for the longest i've ever had since i was 12 years old having almost two years separated from me and my audience the pandemic kind of reunited and and just lit that that spark again for me for the gratitude that i have for being able to be a live musician first i think i've had in a way this amazing gift that my audience grew up with me it's very different than the relationship that i have with the public or the press or the media or their perception of me but it's really stayed grounded in the really unique relationship that i have with my fans and with my audience because a lot of us were the same age the people that watched my show were my same age [Music] i'm very passionate about a lot of things especially different forms of creativity and artistry i never sign or say i'll collaborate with someone that i don't have the capacity to actually give them what they deserve which is my full focus my attention and my ideas and when i'm depleted i don't have as good of ideas right now a focus of mine is my collaboration that i have with gucci it was just very natural for me i i respect gucci as a brand i love what they're doing philanthropically we actually shared a lot of the same team members uh from happy hippie and gucci without even knowing we were ever gonna partner up so we already we align on our values and our morals and then also making beautiful clothes [Music] happy hippie is my purpose i think the activism and artistry they're really one i think artists come with a message and my message was justice equality celebration of individuality and it's been a beautiful evolution not just to watch but as you know the founder of happy hippie to see how much process we've had in the last five years not just happy hippie but it kind of seems globally that the conversation of love acceptance justice equality that is the topic right now and it's just really beautiful to be alive and experience this new kind of revolutionary time that we're all living in feels like there's a nice shift happening where people may not completely change their mind but their mind is open and that's really the way that you can get in there with your own message [Music] beyonce knowles also known as queen bee is one of the most successful artists alive today she was born in houston texas her mother tina owned her own hair salon her father was a salesman at xerox beyonce's little sister solange would go on to later become a famous singer in her own right you could say beyonce was discovered in first grade her dance teacher encouraged her to enroll in the school talent show which she won she enjoyed the limelight at just nine years old bee joined an r b group girls time and eventually made it to the popular tv show star search her raw talent was undeniable bee's father quit his job to focus on making her and the rest of girls time famous creating a superstar boot camp of sorts they would soon be rehearsing with a media coach choreographer and voice teacher who for a time lived in an apartment over b's garage as girls time continued to evolve they played wherever they could church services local fashion shows six flags even grocery store openings as they continued to develop the group changed its name to destiny's child in 1997 the group inked a deal with columbia records and released its first single killing time which was featured on the men in black soundtrack their self-titled debut album was released in 1998 and just like the first group members rotated in and out making a splash on yet another movie soundtrack [Music] destiny's child now composed of beyonce michelle williams and kelly rowland were at the top of the charts in 2003 beyonce released her first solo album earning five grammy awards she flourished as a solo artist and continued to release albums and at 2018's beachella i mean coachella beyonce pretty much broke the internet beyonce was the first black woman to headline the music festival coachella and her performance was the most streamed coachella video on youtube ever she released her concert documentary homecoming which went on to win a grammy for best music film and we can't forget some of the other films she was in it's me foxy you're sophisticated look you have to take your place as king it's been five years since she's released a solo album but she continues to rack up awards using her voice to fight for social justice and gender inequality this summer she released a new swimwear line that she collaborated on with adidas and of course she's one half of hip hop's billion dollar power couple bay and jay as fans call them have three children together and own homes in los angeles and new york beyonce is worth an estimated 440 million dollars and is number 73 on forbes 2021 list of america's richest self-made women [Music] i don't think i wanted to be an entrepreneur i was inspired on a trip to japan i was fascinated by the kimono and also you know just the general japanese aesthetic so i started to imagine this kind of idea around simple clothing i felt a little jealous of men who could just easily you know get dressed and you know if they wanted to look professional they had a kind of a uniform i wanted to do something that was simple and that was timeless i loved textiles i love fabric and so i started seeing these pictures and i imagined these simple clothes and how they worked and pictures just kept coming to me and you know i just started talking up the idea to friends and i found myself at the boutique show and i was i remember floating through and going like oh i could do this when i decided to start the business i remember thinking what you're crazy you don't have any money you can't afford to do this and i remember looking at my bank account going like 350 that's it that's all you have what are you doing you know but that's what it cost me to to sign up for the first boutique show i just took one little wall in the back of the boutique show and i shared a booth with two other people and that's sort of how i launched i think that that being over 50 the way i find myself describing it is i feel like i'm like on a spiral and i keep kind of repeating the same mistakes but i'm just coming a little higher i'm like so i see them i have a little more perspective i see them from a little higher place so i can i can fix them quicker or you know i can be a little more aware of what's happening or what might work or what might not work i can catch certain things because i have a little different perspective i think that's personal too in my own life i see myself oh hmm that's the same thing i did before okay okay this time this time i caught it a little quicker this time i spoke up sooner this time you know i i actually made a change [Music] i never thought about giving up i thought it might give me up you know it might it might fail there were several times along the way including during covid that i thought we might not do this we might not make it so um that was disturbing devastating and um also i'm a problem solver you know so like when things go wrong i like dive in it's kind of like with sustainability it's like okay here's a problem let's try to fix it you know even though you know that's a kind of a strange attitude in life try to fix problems but i kind of see problems as opportunities or possibilities or you know something's wrong piles of clothes that are piling up from our recycle program what are we going to do must be a creative solution somewhere you know life is long and and like i said you know it's just you know kind of keep going you have so many we have so many opportunities when it comes to work you know to invent and reinvent ourselves and to do amazing things at all ages [Music] the sacrifices you make when you're creating a brand any creator can relate it's lonely it can be frightening you can be scared i'm so proud of myself for believing in something that i worked so hard to create it's incredible my name is alexandra cooper i go by alex but alexandra because this is forbes i am 27 and i have a podcast called call her daddy call her daddy essentially is a podcast but also just a brand and a lifestyle that embodies what maybe you would talk about with your friends in your bedroom but maybe too embarrassed to talk about in public or tweet about there's so much shame around so many topics and themes that i was fortunate to grow up in a household that was normalized to speak your mind and so i was like give me the microphone i'll say it my dad is in the industry he does sports production and there was always cameras in my house and i would pick it up and point it at my face and be like i need to be on camera i need to be making movies and then after college i heard out like i'm like oh my god what's a podcast started a podcast and i always knew i was going to be in the creative space in some form and it just happened to be that podcast started to get big and that's where i landed [Music] i think probably the entire business industry has been really exciting to learn but also nerve-wracking like i didn't go to business school so i'm sitting here and i know how to be a creative but on the other side you have to learn how to manage your business also social media never turns off and i think that's something that creators are probably really struggling with managing how do i put it down and detach for a minute so i think i've also learned like more sometimes is shutting off for a minute because then i'm going to come back more refreshed and i'll actually be giving them quality over quantity [Music] spotify is one of the biggest in the audio space i'm not gonna sit here and be like yeah you know it's cool like this is insane that i signed this deal i think for call her daddy the goal is to continue to grow and maybe like a tv show a book a movie a tour a christmas album and then i'll retire at 80. luxury fashion is fickle even in the best of times but the pandemic has taken a huge toll on the industry this year i had two focuses in terms of industries i looked at fashion and i looked at defense and i feel like those two industries had different reactions to covid in so many ways we've seen a lot of networks and a lot of companies be impacted by it seeing fashion in certain cases struggled more than other industries was very interesting if you had a billion dollar business last year in fashion you're just not going to have that this year at the beginning of the lockdowns in the united states tory burch was a little bit in the news in the way that she was in touch with the trump administration to get some relief for the retail industry a lot of people saying that why do we need to help fashion this light industry i can tell you it is an industry that is supporting america when you're looking at gap being the number one apparel purveyor to americans that's supporting america when you look at the number of employees that we are employing that is not a light industry it is not frivolous it is incredibly important to our economy and it cannot be left behind so i read that story and i thought okay this is very interesting but i want to know what's happening with the business and then i reached out and i said hey i would love to chat with you about what's going on how is the business doing and then how is tory burch doing as a designer and as an entrepreneur who's leading this business and i think what became clear with the story also was that you have to be very agile and you have to be able to pivot at a very tough time and you know that has emotional implications and that also has a lot of business implications so our conversations in the past month or so have been about keeping something you love so much alive at a time when staying alive is harder than any other time [Music] the fashion industry relies on global systems of manufacturing a disruption like covet 19 can be disastrous for every supplier involved you have a cardigan and the button comes from italy and then because of covid italy is shut down so you don't have a button what happens to that cardigan you either turn that cardigan into something else if you can or if you can't then you just scrap it and you have to design something new and i think the fact that she was able to do that she was able to design and they were able to make certain business decisions it was very fascinating to me i know that they moved production from asia to brazil because south america shut down later but it wasn't just manufacturing that took a hit the retail arm of tory burch faced a dire situation as well at one point almost all of her stores were shut down maybe they were not all shut down at the same time but at one point she had to shut down almost all of them they were thinking about opening uh 20 stores just in china and you know plans are changing they've had to improvise shifting focus from physical stores to e-commerce infrastructure and online campaigns beginning in china the middle east and japan tori burch started selling items on tamal alibaba's retail site and optimized all sites for mobile while incorporating artificial intelligence to generate personalized product recommendations birch also introduced virtual styling which enables customers to make private video appointments to see different items in the store according to a mckinsey report industry-wide sales profits declined 93 in 2020 as consumers continue to stay home and wear comfortable casual clothing there's definitely been a move towards casual wear the thing that tory burch herself is focused on is they have tori sport which is their casual wear arm and they have been given more exposure to their loungewear collection but at the same time she's saying people will always want to dress up and she's still focused mostly on that and what she and her husband are specifically focusing on is having iconic pieces and i was talking to an analyst at mckinsey who told me you know the brands that are in luxury that are going to survive the covet storm are the ones that have iconic products so it's just kind of like establishing yourself as one of those brands and just you know having the tory birch bag be the thing having the toy bird sandals be the thing and then you know the idea is that you're so good that people will buy your stuff no matter what i think that's an optimistic way of looking at things because people are just not spending money how do you make people spend money and we're at a point where we still don't know obviously their private company they're not telling us what sales are like but they're telling us that the revenues will be down by 20 this year and it could be more they said you know if there's a second wave we're ready for what comes you know we know how to shut our stores we know how to pivot to more e-commerce and things like that but at the same time there's still so many unknowns and the consumer psyche is still you know more cautious discretionary spending is down by a lot almost 30 percent of luxury sales in north america and europe were done by chinese travelers people are not traveling you know you can be as optimistic and you can pivot as much as you like but at the same time the pandemic will always be an issue as long as it lasts [Music] after many years of making forbes highest paid celebrity list kim kardashian west is officially a billionaire this year she made the forbes billionaires list with a net worth of 1 billion dollars kim kardashian west's name first appeared in the pages of forbes in 2011 and at the time it was just a simple italian for twitter followers five years later she graced the cover of forbes thanks to her booming mobile game business which helped her earn 51 million dollars that year the first time she appeared on a forbes self-made women list was in 2018 with a net worth of 350 million five years after gracing the cover she's officially joining the world's billionaires list the biggest assets in her empire are her two lucrative businesses kkw beauty and skims kardashian west founded kkw beauty in 2017 following the success of her half-sister kylie jenner's kylie cosmetics she borrowed from kylie's playbook using a similar direct-to-consumer model that relied heavily on social media marketing her first launch which was 300 000 contour kits sold out within two hours by 2018 just a year later her business had expanded into eyeshadows concealers lipsticks and fragrances and was bringing in about 100 million dollars in revenue she cashed in on her ownership of kkw beauty last year when she sold 20 of the business to beauty conglomerate cody for 200 million dollars in a deal that valued the company at one billion dollars forbes estimates that figure is a little bloated and that her remaining 72 stake is worth about 500 million dollars there's also skims the shapewear line kardashian west launched in 2019. she raised money from fashion industry insiders like neda porte's natalie massan and theories andrew rosen and capitalized off of her massive social media following to show the brand the fast growing company has been quick on its feet during the pandemic consumers became more interested in comfy clothes for the couch than smoothing their stomachs under evening gowns and she swiftly started turning the company's focus to loungewear it's mistaken skims that pushed her over the threshold to become a billionaire and what may cause her net worth to continue to grow in the coming years the rest of kardashian west's fortune sits in cash and investments including real estate every year since 2012 kardashian west has earned at least 10 million dollars pre-taxed by forbes discount and some years it's much more those paychecks come from keeping up with the kardashians endorsement deals and endeavors like her mobile game or the now defunct emoji app she's also got three properties in calabasas and a portfolio of blue chip investments including shares of disney amazon netflix and adidas that her soon-to-be ex-husband kanye west gifted her for christmas in 2017. as she tweeted herself the day she made the cover of forbes it's not bad for a girl with no talent [Music] rihanna is officially a billionaire robin rihanna fendi was born on the beautiful island of barbados in 1988. she grew up in a small bungalow with her two younger brothers and her parents who had a rocky relationship rihanna always loved music and grew up singing along to reggae artists like bob marley and boujou bantam as well as vocal powerhouses like mariah carey whitney houston celine dion and shania twain from a very young age she knew she wanted to become a star rihanna's big break came when she was in high school one of her friends in school introduced her to a vacation and music producer right in a hotel rihanna sang for him forever changing the trajectory of her life he flew her to the u.s where they worked on a demo album and went on to audition for none other than jay-z within 12 hours of that she was signed to def jam she released her debut album music of the sun in 2005. one year later she dropped her platinum selling sophomore album but her third album good girl gone bad shot rihanna into major stardom earning her her first grammy dad i know i promise you i'm gonna give you my first grammy but we might have to fight for this one from there she released hit after hit [Music] she was a global phenomenon touring all over the world her face was everywhere and she secured several high-profile partnerships with beauty and fashion brands as well as successful perfume lines but it wasn't until 2017 that she launched the brand that would take her to billionaire status and would make her the first black woman with creative control at a major fashion house her makeup line fenty beauty was one of the industry's first inclusive lines offering 40 different shades of foundation the brand co-owned with french luxury goods giant lvmh was an immediate hit in 2018 rihanna launched savage xfenty and in 2020 she launched fenty skin also with lvmh this february her lingerie line savagex venti raised 115 million dollars in funding at a 1 billion valuation today forbes estimates rihanna's net worth at 1.7 billion and her clara lionel foundation which raises money from fans and supporters has made donations to coronavirus relief efforts to new york's needy to abuse victims in los angeles and more [Music] cafe cafe is kansas city's first vietnamese coffee shop so it is essentially a coffee shop on wheels and we specialize in amplifying the asian narrative by including all flavor profiles of vietnamese coffee and all of our coffee beans are from vietnam so before the pandemic i spent 10 years in new york being an actor i studied musical theater in college and i did a lot of touring productions of various broadway shows and most recently right before the pandemic i was on the broadway revival tour of miss saigon while i was on the road with miss saigon i had taken a trip to vietnam during one of our breaks and it really inspired me to be a little bit more involved in my community and in my culture so i'm a first generation vietnamese american i'm the first one in my family to be born here so when i took the trip to vietnam it really resonated with me that there were a lot of things about my culture and a lot of things about myself that felt untapped and while i was on the road i kept thinking i want to do something for my community i want to do something that is more than a line on a resume essentially and i got the idea of starting a coffee shop because the coffee culture in vietnam is just like incredible it's super dope but i didn't plan on doing it this soon the pandemic hit and we were out of a job so our show stopped completely we were out of work and then our show got cancelled like for real so i didn't have a job to go back to and at the time i was living out of a suitcase for like almost 18 months miss saigon had come to kansas city for two weeks and while we were here we were just enamored by the city and i thought wow this would be really cool to start my coffee shop here you know so because of the pandemic i didn't have anywhere to go so we came here and i said you know what i'm gonna jump and let's just do it it is a mobile coffee shop right now because during the pandemic i wasn't able to receive a loan or any funding because everything was being shut down so much i took every penny that i had from savings which was like 10 grand and then i also did a kickstarter where i asked the community of kansas city to essentially help me and that's all i started with that and i just did everything myself i still do a lot myself like 95 of it myself including like social media photos all the pop-ups all of the labor up until last month was all me we started off you know sales were like really low because i was just doing a small lemonade stand you know essentially i was just setting up a table having some vietnamese lemonade and vietnamese coffee at a table and like serving it that way just to get my name out there when i first saw my balance sheet and i realizing we were really making a lot of money it was almost a shock because i'm not used to big figures like that and the the speed of which we got there i mean i'm just talking like within a month we doubled and then in a month we tripled so that was crazy to be like oh my god uh not only is this becoming popular on social media but on paper and like the numbers it was actually becoming lucrative you know i could actually make a living i could pay my employees you know it was a shock and it was also legit at first building our business was difficult financially because of the pandemic then it became difficult because we were so loud and we were so outspoken about being asian and we felt like the the temperature of the country was just really unbearable because of all of the attacks but what we found was that because we continued to be strong in our opinions and we continued to fight for you know the asian community in town we found that the community itself was so much more supportive than we could ever imagine we threw a stop asian hate vigil for kansas city where over 500 people showed up and we taught everyone how to light incense so we did an incense tribute instead of a candlelit vigil and that was just so magical and so amazing because we saw kansas city come out they were like yeah we we want to be there for you we want to show you that you're safe here and that we don't want anyone to attack you either we've felt targeted a few times and so we've like closed down our shop to give ourselves just like some space to feel safe but as a result of our vigil kansas city and the mayor of kansas city declared may to officially be aapi heritage month in the city of kansas city and we as a coffee shop were able to speak with the mayor that day we got like an official decree it was awesome and so i feel like there's been good and bad with this shop but overall it's just been better for us and we've helped the community recognize that hey there is a community here and it deserves to have a platform as well being an asian woman and having a brand and a company where being asian is at the forefront of our brand and of our company that's been so rewarding because i've gotten hundreds of dms and messages and emails from other asian people thanking me for doing this and i i knew that there needed to be more things and more businesses that made being asian super cool and i've tried really hard to build this brand to make other asian kids out there be like that's cool and i feel cool and i feel seen and i feel heard that that's probably been like the most rewarding because we've created the space for that reason we wanted to amplify the narrative within the midwest where asians aren't as heard or recognized and feel more invisible in these areas of the country and being able to kind of look at my shop and be like i did that like that's that's really cool around the world 300 000 women and more than a million newborns lose their lives every year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth often in health facilities that don't have electricity turns out that 59 of health facilities in low and middle income countries are without reliable electricity or have no electricity whatsoever so midwives and doctors struggle to save lives in near darkness and we care solar is bringing solar electricity to health facilities in need to help health workers have the power to save lives and women and children to have safe childbirth yeah i've had a number of different chapters in my life i originally thought i was going to be a concert pianist and dancer in college and then i had a medical condition that required me to have surgery and that got me very interested in women's health care so i became a pre-med student and ended up becoming a doctor so for years i was an obstetrician gynecologist and i loved my job i loved delivering babies and then when i was about 40 i had a devastating setback i had a back injury that literally put an end to my clinical career i had to stop delivering babies stop doing surgeries and for about a year get physical rehabilitation so that i could even sit up for extended periods of time after a year i was told i wouldn't be able to be a clinician anymore so i turned my attention to public health i went to graduate school in public health first getting my master's in maternal child health and then entering a phd program and while i was there i was invited to join a research project in northern nigeria that was studying why so many women die in childbirth at that time about half a million women died every single year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth which was so different than my own experience as an obstetrician where i saw pregnancy and childbirth as a really joyous event so i joined this research project in northern nigeria where i did medical anthropology i basically sat myself in a hospital watching doctors and nurses as they conducted care to try and understand some of the factors contributing to these terrible loss of life so i started writing home to people about the conditions that i was seeing particularly to my husband hal aronson who's a solar engineer and he said look when you get back maybe we can come up with a solution and so when i returned to the states he developed a solar electric system for the hospital and over the next year the maternal deaths dropped by 70 percent the solar suitcase is a compact rugged solar electric system that was designed specifically for maternal healthcare it includes medical surgical lights rechargeable headlamps medical devices such as a fetal heart rate monitor and an infrared thermometer as well as 12 volt dc charging for phones and other devices and we deliver these to remote health centers that may have no electricity or unreliable electricity and with the solar suitcase midwives and doctors are able to provide immediate and appropriate medical care so it enables health workers to have bright light and emergency communication so that no matter where they are they can provide immediate and appropriate medical care for women in need what was once viewed as the most devastating setback to my career ended up opening the door to probably even a more exciting career in some ways and you know i loved actually delivering babies i loved working with patients one-on-one but now i know i'm touching literally millions of lives through the work of my team and through our organization and you know even though i hadn't ever imagined that i'd have a career like this i think particularly after 50 it's really wonderful to say how can i touch the world there's so many problems in the world that need all sorts of skills and resources in order to solve them and so in a way i feel like many different parts of my life brought me to this moment that i'm able to step up and really rise to the challenge of trying to solve a global problem when i was eight years old he took me and we opened a business account when i was 14 years old we had a daddy daughter evening out he took me to a tax seminar he used to call me his little businesswoman at a very very young age so i guess he thought it into existence carolyn aronson is the founder of it's a 10 hair care a beauty brand that does nearly a billion dollars in sales every year but carolyn didn't grow up among the one percent she was born into a large puerto rican family the eleventh child and a family of twelve kids and entered foster care when she was just two weeks old she was adopted alongside one of her biological brothers when she was two years old and was raised in detroit michigan she grew up almost knowing she'd be an entrepreneur so good to see you again hello good to see you how have you been these past few weeks great great thank you because as we discussed i think that everyone it has in their career the one person who changed everything and you don't always know it while you're going through your career but i think it's sometimes just fun to sit back and kind of connect the dots and realize hey this person changed my whole life and may not even know it when i look back at the entire picture of being an entrepreneur of being a business person of being a ceo it has to be definitely the foundation that was laid for me by my father he graduated from manhattan college with a business degree a bba same degree i was going for and um and then enlisted uh got called to the army was in the korean war and after the korean war went immediately and worked for ford motor company as a clerk worked his way all the way up to manager of labor relations for all of ford motor company it was yeah it was a very very high level position within ford he retired after 32 years with ford he never wanted to be an entrepreneur he thought i was crazy for wanting to be an entrepreneur but he was extremely smart and supportive in what it was that i wanted to do and really gave me the tools to do it in a safe and good way he really showed me how to be my own little business at a very very young age i really realized how he he was trying to teach me and empower me i had uh started my hairdressing career i was poor starving hairdresser that was trying to just take the little bit of money i had and live off of it and he sat me down he showed me how to use um quicken which is a personal program to manage your own money he showed me how to do my own taxes he sent me showed me how to set up a roth 401k because i was self-employed i was 1099. i had to do quarterlies he showed me how to set that up as carolyn worked as a hair stylist she absorbed business lessons from her salon owner boss and she even helped him with his books eventually she opened a salon of her own after 20 years of working in and running a salon carolyn realized that she wanted to do more she was tired of hair products that didn't do what they claimed or weren't convenient for her needs so she put years of trials and testing into finding a product that would give salon quality results at home in 2006 it's a 10 was born most people don't think that the beauty industry is mostly run by men but it is so the majority of time when i'm in business meetings i am one of the only women i i look back and i think it was probably a combination between his mentality that um you know just because i was his his daughter didn't mean that i could not um obviously achieve what any of his three sons could and and honestly i think just growing up with three brothers i mean men don't intimidate me you know we all know that we can't choose our families but carolyn's story is an example of what happens when parents choose to invest in their children biological adoptive chosen or surrogate the origin doesn't matter what matters is you can be the one for someone else the benefit and actually the beauty of having a public failure at least for me it took away any fear of failure because you fast forward 10 years later and i'm stronger as a person i've already failed publicly i lived through it it was horrible at the time and all that did was just allowed me to move forward at a very fast pace and create an amazing company [Music] the real rail is the world's largest marketplace for authenticated luxury resale when i was growing up both of my parents be mostly because they're artists really loved beautiful things and that didn't necessarily mean beautiful new things so my mother would go to people's homes if they had a nice rug she'd say when you're ready to sell it i'll buy it from you and my father and i would go to the junkyard to scavenger for beautiful pieces which he would then refurbish and turn into something else at the moment in time when i shut the company down to return money to shareholders i was thinking about my employees and making sure they had a pay package and future jobs and also my husband had asked me for a divorce that day so there was a lot going on and i would say six months later it really hit me that this was really bad for my career it didn't help that every major newspaper and every tech article was written not about the company and not about the times but also about me personally and um pretty pretty horrible things i was called the dumbest person in silicon valley and so it was it was a hard time after pets even though it had a lot of negative press i didn't really realize how much of it would sort of stick to me and how my options may be limited after that until i met with a recruiter and he said basically after he said well pets.com was such a blow up your career is over and you know i wouldn't show you to any comp i wouldn't introduce you to any companies but hearing that made me go okay well what am i going to do about it you know and clearly i'm not going to be able to get my dream job from someone else and i'm going to have to create my own that's exactly how that hit me not like always wrong or he's a jerk it was like okay i'm taking this as valid how what does that mean for me it means that i should start my own company because i'm other people don't believe in me right now in the valley it's small world but i believe in myself so that's my best option with the real rail our biggest accomplishment is bringing awareness to the amount of fashion in landfill and the incredible benefits of buying and consigning previously owned goods we're doing it on everything we do on our website we're doing it on our own company we're now carbon neutral and even more importantly we're working with our congressmen and multiple people in the government to help change laws to actually increase the awareness of the importance of recirculating used goods and conscious consumption and if we make any dent on that given the environmental situation the world's in i'm going to feel like i'm going to feel pretty good about what i've done and what the company's done i would say that you need to think of your career as a long-term investment i would encourage you to take risks never stop taking risks and even when you think you're there you're not there yet that learning happens at every age and you're going to have you will have setbacks you know figure it out don't give up and this is the long game don't play the short game and more importantly you have to love what you do and you also have to be conscious of the choices you're making so if you become an entrepreneur and i'd love to see more female entrepreneurs recognize that that will consume your life so be conscious about it is that really the track i want to go or do i want to balance my home life with job for a while and then i can do it later the other thing is you know really the real reality started at 53 so clearly it's never too late but i had a lot of great experience to build on so you know life life can be long and also take care of your body and your mind and you know you have to eat right you have to exercise you have to give yourself a spiritual spiritual nourishment so take care of yourself along the way i think about being a woman a mother a tech ceo in uh you know the enterprise software space and yeah i i do think i'm probably unique in that industry in terms of my background but i do believe that different perspectives are good and i think as long as we keep different perspectives at the table and we keep an open dialogue and everyone's listening into each other and talking we're going to make great decisions and i'm excited to to kind of bring my perspective and my style to the industry so i joined vimeo about six years ago as a director of marketing and three years ago i was promoted to ceo to help pivot the platform from being a viewing destination that competed with youtube to being a software platform for businesses i definitely was younger less experienced and just generally at a very different background than sort of what's traditional i recognized that and i tried to use it as an advantage and i do really believe that the best decisions get made when you have different perspectives in the room and so the way i kind of approached it i remember every time i walked into a board room i was you know i looked very different than everybody else around me but i actually thought of it as that means that it's actually incumbent upon me to be vocal because that's the only way we will collectively make better decisions so i had a very sort of maybe stereotypical kind of immigrant experience i grew up in flint michigan in a very tight-knit community of other indian families and my dad's a physician but his true passion is entrepreneurship and he raised me to believe that the best way you can impact your community is by creating jobs i think all of that created in me at a very young age a desire to be in business to be a leader to build things and to have an impact on a community if you'd asked like little ambitious anjali what she wanted to be i would have said i wanted to be a ceo or a leader of a platform that i thought was affecting positive change and it's honestly amazing to me that i feel like i'm actually in that position now i feel so privileged and fortunate but i do feel in some ways like my parents like american dream has kind of come true for me [Music] i think being a mother has made me both stronger and more empathetic i look at each of my my colleagues and it's like i didn't appreciate what was happening in their personal lives and how hard it can be and there were so many things about the way that we work in the past that i just were so insensitive to working parents that i never appreciated i mean i was the one before i had a kid who was like why aren't we doing the six o'clock call you know without realizing that's the window for a lot of people to see their kids so i i think it's been obviously an incredible experience i'm a very proud mother um but i also just think you know it's it's it's a challenging one and if you can survive it makes you stronger and i i do think it's the job of folks like me and and other leaders to make it easier for working parents to to really do all the things that they can do some of the lessons that i learned from my experience and becoming a ceo is look where others aren't looking sometimes when you're in organizations it feels like there aren't opportunities and you have to create your own opportunities and sometimes the best way to do that is to find the places where people aren't focused don't stay in your lane i think sometimes as an employee you feel like the organization just wants you to do x y and z but actually i can tell you as a ceo i want to grow the business and do what's great for the business and if there are people around me who can bring ideas to help me grow the business i want to hear them i want to learn i want to build and i want to make an impact and today i'm more excited than ever to do that at vimeo i think we have an incredible platform and opportunity and i'm also you know i got a lot of energy and a lot of work um and value i want to bring to the world so i hope to do many things but always if i'm learning building and making an impact [Music] country music's favorite icon dolly parton was born january 19 1946 in the smoky mountains of tennessee her family was poor really poor the no heat no electricity no indoor plumbing no running water kind of poor the only somewhat modern thing they had was a battery-powered radio so young dolly fell in love with the music she heard writing songs when she was just a toddler and getting her first guitar when she was eight when she was 15 she signed on as a staff songwriter for a publishing company then landed a deal with mercury records where she recorded a single which flopped so she went home to finish high school the first in her family of 12 children to graduate the day after she graduated she took a bus right back to nashville dolly wasn't giving up so easily to support herself she worked several jobs she was a receptionist at a neon sign company a waitress and a singer on a local early morning tv program in the 1960s dolly was still building up the music part of her resume she became a staff writer at combine music earning 50 a week but her big break was the porter wagner show where dolly pardon overshadowed the namesake host and developed her own little fan base she achieved 10 solo number one hits the namesake host had none but despite her stardom she was still making the same union pay as the band members 200-350 per concert after many years working with porter wagner she left the show starting her career as a solo artist she wrote a song you probably heard of which was inspired by her departure from wagner [Music] that song ended up being one of her biggest hits it was re-recorded by several artists including whitney houston in 1992 whose rendition went on to earn dolly 10 million dollars that year alone in royalties when she left the show she wisely formed her own publishing company and to this day maintains ownership of all her songs in the next few years as a solo artist her concert booking fees increased fivefold she was earning 100 000 a year almost double her show salary throughout the next few decades pardon accomplished what most would do in a lifetime as she evolved from country music writer and singer to full-on pop star then dabbled in bluegrass her extensive list of credits include acting writing oh and she happens to be godmother to miley cyrus outside of the music she's capitalized on her country charm opening dollywood in 1986 and dollywood splash country in 2001 followed by dollywood's dream more resort and spa in 2015. she created imagination library an organization that has donated more than 150 million free books to children she also more recently made headlines when it was revealed her one million dollar donation to covet research helped fund the moderna vaccine crazy to think that the same little girl who listened to an old radio in a one-room house would end up one of the most prolific singer-songwriters in the world paving the way for so many others to follow in her diamond high-heeled footsteps shonda rhimes is one of four covers on the 50 over 50 inclusive capital issue and it's four female covers which is super exciting for forbes she is the only woman from hollywood to get a cover and i think that's important and iconic especially because she's a black woman in hollywood and hollywood not only has over the last few years been reckoning with a metoo problem in terms of gender discrimination or sexual harassment and assault and kind of how difficult it is for women to really succeed sometimes shonda rhymes might be a surprising fit for the 50 over 50 list because a lot of her biggest hits came out before she turned 50 grey's anatomy scandal how to get away with murder but uh the reason she's on the list is really because at 51 she's entered a new phase in her career with the netflix deal she made a few years ago and with bridgerton being this international mega hit for netflix when shonda was at abc she was basically the queen of the network to the outside world right she was commanding thursday night she was getting the most viewers she there were a ton of headlines saying how she was saving broadcast tv but behind the scenes there was always a negotiation by the end she was getting paid a lot you know 250 000 an episode for grey's anatomy at the same time you know she always had to kind of fight to prove her value to abc and to disney and that's even after she brought in two billion dollars to the disney empire around 2017 she started to realize i'm one of the best storytellers in television right now i'm one of the most valuable show runners why am i fighting to to get paid what i deserve or to get the creative freedom i deserve and she started to meet with netflix with ted sarandos at that point she realized where she could get paid a ton of money up front but more than just the money she could get creative freedom flexibility she can make the kind of shows she wanted to make and she's really embraced that as ever since um and we saw that with bridgerton which was the first show of her netflix deal to come out and it became within a few weeks uh netflix's number one show ever in the first 28 days 82 million households or 40 of netflix's paying audience watched the eight episode series uh bridger tim that smashed previous viewing records a second season was buffed within weeks in april netflix renewed for seasons three and four and there's also a spin-off in the works uh based around her character queen charlotte so shonda who is already making 30 million dollars a year to create exclusive content for the streamer is expected to receive millions in bonus pay because of the series success [Music] shonda rhimes was the first person to sign an overall deal with a streaming service um and that was a really big deal back in 2017 when it happened at netflix she earned the most money in 2021 and then she's earned in her whole career she'll earn close to 70 million dollars this year we estimate close to 40 million of that is coming from netflix and then she still obviously is making grey's anatomy in station 19 and she also gets eight figures in her share of grey's anatomy scandal on how to get away with murder profits since her television career began in 2005 she's earned more than 350 million dollars pre-tax making her one of the biggest show runners in terms of earnings in hollywood history she knows what she deserves and she's clear about what she deserves she's this huge overarching figure and so it's it's really cool to see that here's this 51 year old woman in hollywood and she's still just getting started and there's so much more of her career left especially when it comes to an industry that really idolizes youth a lot she is building the kind of company that that hollywood needs more of you know a lot of women um it's extremely inclusive of every kind of race and every gender and and that's just so important um that you know she's not only putting people of color in her shows she's actually building this empire this company that is inclusive on all the rungs of the latter if she continues being as successful as she is she will be the highest paid show runner in television and i think it's just a real lesson on betting on yourself and betting on your abilities to succeed for the past six years i've been an active early stage investor i was born in seoul south korea and i'm fortunate to have immigrated to the united states thanks to my entrepreneur parents who came to america for education and ended up staying for entrepreneurship i actually had been slated to go on the air on the plane to korea for my first trip back to my homeland in a couple of years and when this meeting got booked my flight wasn't until midnight um i actually said there's no way i don't need to i don't need to be at the airport until 10 p.m and i'm not gonna miss this opportunity and i will be there at 5pm so i got to the meeting did the meeting went home packed my stuff and got on a plane to go to korea for two weeks a few days later i received an email from troy asking me to come back and grab a coffee he said how would you feel if we just if we did this we meet thousands of people over the course of our lives sometimes as many as 80 000 but of those tens of thousands how many actually change our lives how many can we look back and say they're the one who changed everything through this series we're going to talk to female founders entrepreneurs and leaders about who it was who changed everything for them susie roo has a uniquely american story she and her family immigrated to los angeles nearly 30 years ago from south korea after graduating from usc and working as a financial analyst for a year susie took a job at the advertising giant omd five years into her time at the agency susie started thinking about her next career step and it's right about then that she met troy carter a music executive and investor who rose to prominence from managing artists like eve and lady gaga i admired him from afar and knew about his work and his just cultural relevance in los angeles in the country in the world and so when there was an opportunity and he heard about our team ignition factory i jumped at the opportunity to meet him and just hear his point of view and perspective and in that meeting it went really well he asked us about our taste our perspective like how we work with partners how we advocate on behalf of our clients i really admired his office and the architecture and the interior design and it was just really well put together and i remember asking him the library this beautiful room i remember asking him as walking out of the building saying could could i take a photo of this space so silly and he said oh for sure go for it for sure so i did and i think i wondered to myself maybe this photo will mean something one day and lo and behold a few a few days later i received an email from troy asking me to come back and um grab a coffee and at the end of the conversation he asked are you if you don't mind me asking are you a lifer at omd and this is i had just started to think about what are my not five years going to look like and i responded to him in the most honest way i could i said could i join a startup could i join a brand could i be at a venture capital firm do i move to san francisco do i move to new york do i move to london to get an international experience and he said to me well that's great let's continue the conversation so i just poured my heart out in terms of what i was thinking about and he said that's really good to know let's keep chatting suzy eventually joined troy at cross culture ventures his investment firm an atom factory his talent management company she led venture and innovation initiatives for troy and when spotify tapped him to run its relationships with its artists and record companies in 2016 troy asks susie to keep their ventures running in his absence and she did a few years later troy left spotify and returned to his work investing and managing artists simultaneously he and susie started thinking about forming an entirely new company a fresh start they would call it q a a company that fuses music and technology but as ventures mature titles need to be formalized which meant that susie had to ask troy a somewhat awkward question i said troy i want to take myself out of the running for future jobs or opportunities that come my way and i want to be not available and with that i have a little bit of an ask and it's a conversation and it is really an ask how would you feel if i was a co-founder of this company and that was like the aha moment and no hesitation he said absolutely we talk especially uh in my world covering women in business a lot about the importance of women supporting women right like we're more powerful when we band together but here is what i really like which is an example of a male ally advocate accomplice whatever word you want to use um so i'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit so i've observed troy does very well when there are strong women around him and he almost almost like craves that strong feminine energy and doesn't shy away from it whatsoever wants to empower and i think that requires from men um humility and also um empowerment and not almost not seeing through a gender-based lens and um give bringing along women to have opportunities that they might not otherwise have so um i would very much encourage men to be allies and to fight for every opportunity where they can become an ally because we know that this gender parity gap whether it's at the executive level at the board level or with with regards to compensation for teammates for executives for board members we know it's going to take a long time to solve and we might have made wonderful progress through organizations like all raise and time's up over the past five years but there's a long way to go and it's going to take every ounce of effort from both men and women and everyone in between i'm tracy chadwell i'm the founding partner of 1843 capital 1843 capital is an early stage venture capital fund that invests in technology companies originally i went to law school and i became a lawyer i had a dad it was a lawyer and he said tracy the only sure things are death and taxes he was an estate planning attorney and and so he said you definitely should go to law school and and you'll have work for life and so i did and i loved working in law but it was there was always something missing and so i decided to go back and take some business courses and started to work on the financial side of things with a merchant banking firm that i worked for in chicago my life has been really interesting and i feel very lucky because i have a lot of different parts that have come together to create one whole so i've started from being an attorney then working in financial services and uh being an investment banker at robertson stevens and then moving to become a partner of a billion dollar growth capital fund one of the first women partners i've also taken some time off i've been out in the field and been a mother for a little bit so then when i came back to starting my own firm i used all of those pieces to create what is now 1843 capital when i was 52 years old i decided i think it's the right time for something like this you know when i was at baker capital i never saw any other women investors i never saw any women founders of companies and all of a sudden we had this perfect storm of women being interested in building businesses and capital there to support them accelerators that were there to support them and uh no capital so i said you know what i think i'm going to start first of all by investing in women because they're not getting enough venture capital dollars so they were getting 2.7 percent at the time and really the number has not moved unfortunately but um in finance we always look for inefficient markets and i thought wow what a perfect inefficient market so uh that's how i started um and i've developed a terrific track record and then i turned that into starting my own fund my message to women that are 20 and 30 years old and and because i do a lot of investing and longevity and technology for the aging is you're going gonna live to be 150 years old so enjoy yourself relax i think what the what has led to my success is i follow the breadcrumbs and i'm quiet and i listen i spend a lot of time meditating and if you follow the breadcrumbs you you won't get distracted off on to a path that wasn't meant for you because i really truly believe that every person has a role in this world and we all have a purpose and if you if you're quiet you can listen and find that purpose but if you're distracted and you're running around and you're letting yourself focus on things that are important when people say to me what is it you know how tracy how do i find my purpose how do i know what i'm meant to do first ask yourself the question why are you pursuing what you're pursuing are you pursuing something because of fame are you pursuing something because of money are you pursuing something because of you know either internal or external expectations that are put on you what you need to do is just be very quiet and listen and then things will opportunities will start to present themselves and when it feels right that's the universe pushing you in the right way if you're having a tremendous amount of frustration you're either really learning an important lesson or you're being moved in a different direction which is absolutely terrific so take time look around you be mindful and things will unfold [Music] jenny just is one of just 23 self-made women billionaires in the united states and she's not very well known because she doesn't have a consumer-facing brand she got her start in the options world on the the floor of the chicago options exchange there were so few women working there at the time that there wasn't even a women's bathroom and she learned on the job how to trade options and rose through the ranks and her company it was a company called o'connor she and another guy there started their own firm doing doing options trading and then she's just expanded since then to a whole range of uh different kinds of companies but the most significant of her of her companies is this back-end kind of fintech for fintechs um apex clearing but basically when you buy and if you're buying and selling stock or moving money from one account to another apex clearing does this for a whole bunch of different kind of more well-known uh fintech companies the reason she came to forbes attention was she cut this deal earlier this year to merge her apex clearing which is a private company with an existing publicly traded what are called a blank check company essentially it's a public company with no assets that's in search of a private company to buy the public shell is going to buy her private company it's supposed to happen at a valuation of 4.7 billion dollars the deal hasn't closed yet they're waiting for the sec to sign things sign off on things but even if it doesn't go public at 4.7 million even if it goes at half the value of that forbes still calculates that she'd be a billionaire but we figured that she's worth about 1.5 billion dollars today based on her stake in the company she's got some other investments as well you know she's really a pioneer in finance and options trading and she's also trying to pave the road for more women to follow in her path she's created internships inside her company so women can learn how to trade and so women can learn programming and then kind of a fun thing is she is a fan of women learning how to play poker and she thinks it's a skill that's good to learn because it teaches you how to strategize how to take risks what she told forbes is that she thinks that women should be taking more of a role in making financial decisions and she feels like poker can help with that she was a single mom when she you know first started this company and then she ended up marrying her business partner in like 2003 and she's really all about trying to empower women to make financial decisions mackenzie scott first appeared on the forbes world billionaires list a year ago after her 2019 divorce with amazon founder jeff bezos her shares in the company were worth 36 billion dollars this made her the 22nd richest person in the world and the fourth richest woman on the list this year she's still ranked at 22 but she's now worth 53 billion an increase of almost 50 percent this is because the value of amazon stock went up 64 but even though scott's wealth has made the headlines so has her philanthropic efforts in a december 2020 medium post scott wrote she had given nearly 4.2 billion dollars to 384 organizations in a period of four months in her post she wrote this pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of americans already struggling economic losses and health outcomes alike have been worse for women for people of color and for people living in poverty meanwhile it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires scott's donations have helped 500 organizations across the us and puerto rico including historically black colleges and universities and the food bank non-profit feeding america she also has signed the giving pledge which promises to give away at least half her fortune to charitable causes either during her life or after she dies although scott's overall rank remains the same she is now the third richest woman in the world behind l'oreal heir francoise bettencourt myers who is worth 73.6 billion and walmart heir alice walton worth 61.8 billion i think with any job that you take on there's always going to be this period where people need to know who you are and i think you have to reveal yourself in some ways because you really need to earn that respect from your staff they have to know who they're fighting with and who they're fighting for and the things that you believe in and what ultimately you know they are signing on for that will hopefully take you to the promised land which for us is a world championship my name is kim eng general manager of the miami marlins in terms of the road that led here was probably over the course of about 15 years definitely more than 10 interviews with many other clubs it was a long and arduous process you know i think to be rejected that many times is tough on anybody's ego but i think at the end of the day it's really hard to lose hope in your dreams and you just have to keep pushing on in terms of this stage i just feel a lot more wise than i was 10 20 years ago i think i've seen a lot more the experiences are rich and um deep and so i think you know when you get to this point in your career in your life i think you just have a better understanding for people what they go through the trials and tribulations and again trying to get everybody on the same page and how much that really means you just absolutely have to keep going after it and you know look at a certain point um you know we all come come to doubt ourselves um but you know i think that those are also points for reflection and for really getting it gaining a deep understanding of what is important to you and it's at those times where you make those choices and you decide whether to just keep pursuing or you know take a break but i think you never lose sight of those dreams my name is imanna bouzade i'm the ceo and co-founder of incredible health so i'm originally from sudan and i've lived in several countries including saudi arabia the uae and the uk i moved to the u.s when i was 24 years old both my grandfathers were entrepreneurs and so i'm a very you know risk-taking person and also both my parents are immigrants as well so they really instill the importance of hard work and whatever you choose to do make sure you do it to the best of your abilities healthcare is the biggest labor sector in the country our demand for healthcare as a country keeps going up as our population is aging the supply of healthcare workers has not kept up with that demand another thing we discovered as we were you know really digging into this is that the software and the technology and the processes and tools that hospitals and health systems use for hiring really hasn't changed since the late 90s and so we figured there just has to be an easier way i'm a medical doctor by background i don't practice at all anymore but a lot of my family members and friends are doctors and surgeons they were actually complaining about understaffing and they have and that's been going on for many years and at the same time my co-founder ron portlock he has many family members who are nurses and they're saying i'm experienced and i'm qualified but you know i apply to 10 15 places i usually don't even hear back and if i hear back can take a couple of months so incredible health is the fastest growing career marketplace for healthcare workers in the country our mission is to help healthcare professionals live better lives and help them find and do their best work hospitals and health systems they use our custom matching technology to hire high quality nurses in permanent roles in 20 days or less the national average is 90 days so we dramatically accelerate that we already work with over 500 hospitals and health systems across the country the way we cut down the higher time to 20 days or less number one on our marketplace the employers apply to the talent instead of the other way around the second is we've built pre-screening and pre-betting uh technology that automatically vets the talent and then the third and probably most important pieces are custom matching algorithms so let's say you are a recruiter at kaiser permanente or at uh you know baylor scott and white or jefferson health and you log in like you don't want to see 200 nurses like you want to see 11 that are the exact right fit for you at the time and that's what our custom matching algorithms enable same thing from the nurse's perspective let's say you're a highly sought after icu nurse or or nurse you don't want to hear from 100 employers you want to hear from four or five that are the right fit for you the other thing we're able to achieve is dramatic cost savings for the hospital so for every facility that we work with we save at least 2 million dollars in contract worker or travel nurse costs overtime costs and hr costs adoption of the healthcare industry of technology has changed dramatically and especially in the last few years and hospital executives are much more open to adopting technology that that makes their operations more efficient so the way i feel about running a high-growth startup is you know not only is it exciting but it's extremely motivating you know our our mission is huge we want to help healthcare professionals live better lives we're trying to help them find and do their best work what we're all doing together you know our team as well as with our with both the employers and the healthcare workers is that we're building we're defining a new category and we're becoming the market leading company in healthcare labor and we're trying to transform this industry that we're in and so that just means that you know when there are bumps on the road you just you know you just go right past you know on a personal note i'm an md by background and i think healthcare workers are some of the most overworked and under-appreciated workers in the country and we just wanted to create a product a service that gives them the most delightful experience possible because that's not what they're accustomed to in may melinda french gates received more than three billion dollars in stock from her soon-to-be ex-husband bill gates making her a billionaire today worth 3.2 billion dollars she received 851 million dollars worth of shares in farm equipment maker deerinko according to sec filings she also received 2.4 billion dollars worth of stock in four other companies canadian national railway car dealership group autonation mexican coke bottler coca-cola femsa and mexican broadcaster grupo televisa bill remains the fourth richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of 126.6 billion dollars as for melinda it remains unclear how much of the fortune she will end up with following the divorce the pair asked a judge in washington to follow a separation agreement a contract signed when spouses are living apart but have not yet divorced the terms of the contract have not been disclosed so it is not yet known who will get their main family residence a 131 million dollar estate dubbed zandu 2.0 along with their other homes private planes and large farmland holdings while details of the split haven't been confirmed by the pair according to the wall street journal melinda began consulting divorce lawyers as far back as 2019 after bill's meetings with deceased sexual predator jeffrey epstein came to light also according to the wall street journal a spokesperson for bill admitted he had an affair with a microsoft employee in 2000 which the company's board investigated in 2019 bill stepped down for microsoft's board before the probe was completed though the spokesperson denies he did so because of the investigation everyone was losing their job in 2008 all my friends because the recession hit and i honestly didn't think that i would lose mine because i thought teachers were essential workers and how do you let go of um of a teacher and it was three days before the new school year was set to start and they called us to say they lost their funding and our school was closed and we were all let go suddenly we meet thousands of people over the course of our lives sometimes as many as eighty thousand but of those tens of thousands how many actually change our lives how many can we look back and say they're the one who changed everything through this series we're going to talk to female founders entrepreneurs and leaders about who it was who changed everything for them tiffany alicia is better known as the budget nista she has helped over a million women save more than a hundred million dollars and pay down 75 million dollars in debt tiffany was a great saver in her early 20s she worked hard to save a down payment for a house and build her credit the 2008 financial crisis erased her progress as it did for so many americans and by 2009 tiffany had to start from scratch step by step she rebuilt her financial life tiffany is now a speaker a blogger an author and she even took her commitment to financial education and made it a law you are now a personal finance expert you have helped millions of women save hundreds of millions of dollars and pay down tens of millions of dollars in debt what's the connective tissue what got you from that moment sitting there with nothing to where you are right now there was so much shame involved when i lost everything because i i thought of myself as like the go-to for personal finance and so to have lost everything i sat with the shame for a while i didn't want to tell anyone and it wasn't until i kind of leaned into my friends and shared with them what i was going through that i realized that not only did i have the solutions but i was capable of using them to help me but then to teach others because after all i was a teacher and so as i started to fix my finances i started to lean into the fact that like i missed teaching what i realized quickly too is that i wasn't the only one who was struggling tiffany volunteered at places personal finance experts rarely visited like the newark housing projects and the boys and girls clubs and this community work caught the attention of the united way which gave tiffany her first paid contract she wrote a financial curriculum for them and had so much fun that she realized she wanted to take her message to a wider audience and it's right about then that one person changed the course of her career so for me it's definitely my mentor her name is lynette khalfani cox she's amazing because me being a black woman i'd never really seen other black women talk about finance you know especially not on a national scale but i saw lynette on the news on tv this is right when twitter really came out and just being in awe of her like it's possible that this little business that i was building she was an example of like what was possible so i used to tweet with her and she was always really friendly so we would tweet back and forth but i followed her and then i went to this event and um i didn't know she was gonna be there soledad o'brien was speaking and i was super excited cause i'm like oh i'm gonna be solo that o'brien i didn't know lynette was in the audience so she came up to me after the event was over i did not recognize her and i'm ashamed to say i was waiting in line to get a picture with soledad and lynette came up to me right when white went it was my turn and i turned to her i was like oh excuse me can you take a picture of me and solo that i didn't know and so she was so nice and she said sure took my picture with sold out i was feeling so good that i happened to look at her name tag to say thank you and i almost had a meltdown i felt so bad i was like and she said you know i heard your your name the budget nista and i know that we follow each other on twitter i just wanted to say hi and i was so embarrassed like i'm so sorry like i love you too can i have a picture with you as well we end up talking like i taken the train from new jersey where i lived to new york to the event and i remember um she asking me you know where i lived and she lived in new jersey too i had no idea and i took the train because broke but she drove she asked me that i want to ride home and i was like yes and so she drove me home and there was so much traffic but i've never been more grateful for the traffic because in that hour and a half right home she proceeded to pour into me just like giving me all these tips and tricks and everything that she'd done so i remember she dropped me off in front and she said to me before i got up wait have you ever been on tv and i was like no she's like do you want to be and i was like yes and she said well you know normally i do these tips on this um this news program called pix11 news and she said normally i do it but you know what how about i call them and say that you know i can't make it that you should do it instead i couldn't even believe it i'm like i've never been on tv i don't even know what to do she's like oh i'll coach you and i said okay i was gonna say we so often talk about the importance of women lifting other women and this is such a strong example is there one or two things that stand out today in 2021 that she told you in that car ride that you think back on as man of everything she said that was the best stuff one of the big lessons that lynette shared with me was to not be afraid to share my story now my story has been something that i use to connect with people to let them know that i'm not financially perfect and yet i've been able to to fix myself and i can help you do the same and now as a result i myself have been now sitting in the same seats where she said i'm on the today show i'm on good morning america i'm on the reel and so it just feels amazing because where i saw lynette she positioned me to be where she once was and i get to sit in those seats now and i don't know that i'd be occupying those seats without her doctor catalin kirikou is a hungarian-born biochemist whose research is responsible for the mrna vaccines that are in many of our arms protecting us against copen dr crico got her phd in hungary and she immigrated to the united states in 1985 with her husband and her young daughter there were rules about how much money you could come over with at the time so she stuffed the equivalent of about twelve hundred dollars in her daughter's teddy bear before coming here so came here with very little got a job at the university of pennsylvania in about 1990 she was working on this research about something called mrna a traditional vaccine takes a dead virus or piece of that virus and introduces it to your body in order to train your immune system to fight it but an mrna vaccine does something unique rather than giving you a piece of the virus it instead gives you a program or message to your body and your cells themselves make a piece of that virus and that piece of virus trains your immune system to fight the whole virus what makes this more impressive is that because all you need is the genetic code of a virus you can actually produce vaccines much more quickly than you can using traditional methods it's cutting-edge science it's never been used in a widespread vaccine like this before and dr curico saw the potential in mrna science back in 1990 she studied it at penn for years five years in fact until in 1995 she got devoted in effect she was ahead of her time almost too far ahead because she kept applying for grants and the answer kept coming back no she had no money she had no backing so she was demoted and sent back to a lower level of the scientific academy she wasn't fired so it allowed her to keep doing the work but it was a huge step back in the trajectory of her career so her husband was back in hungary at this point dealing with the visa issue and she was diagnosed with cancer no one would fault her for giving up by it would be enough to topple anyone between the demotion and getting ill yourself she knew there was potential but her bosses did not but there was always one person who believed in her and she has actually said that really all it takes is one if you have one person who buys it to your idea and fund you and give you enough money to live on you your career can survive and that's effectively what happened to her drew weissman is her longtime collaborator at penn she really tried to get funding all through the 90s and she said every night i was working grant grant grant and it always came back no no no she has heard no so many times and the fact that she persisted until she was successful until we now all or those of us who've gotten vaccinated have this science in our bloodstreams that is why she is on the 50 over 50. a lot of the stories on this list are stories of triumph our stories of persistence continuing to work even when the world is telling you stop and she didn't just do it for her she did it for humankind it it was difficult because the people did not believe that messenger rna can be a therapy and together with my colleague drew weisman at the university of pennsylvania we developed this method where we changed one component in the rna which made it less immunogenic and it is possible to use it for different kind of therapy and also it turns out that it is better for vaccine these vaccines are able to be scaled up quickly they have proven to be highly effective even against viral mutations and they are incredibly safe even by the standards of vaccines which are themselves very safe compared to other drugs by refining the research by refining the science they figured out a way to make it safe and that is why the technology was finally at a point that it was so promising when kova became a pandemic and it became clear that mrna science would underpin the most successful vaccine patents that she shares with dr drew weissman are licensed to both biointec and moderna for their mrna vaccines her discoveries which help these vaccines deliver their potent immune boosts were originally developed for cancer vaccines and continued to be applied to research in that area mrna technology behind the vaccines is also being developed against other diseases such as the flu and even heart disease and really we will celebrate when uh you know what is uh human suffering is over when you know the hardship and all of this terrible time will end and hopefully in the summer when we will forget about virus and vaccine then then then i will be really celebrating every story about these vaccines there's a reference to her uh one of the heroes you know the unsung hero you you see the term again again and again she is finally getting credit we are incredibly passionate about our mission and that is what makes us so successful every single employee at spring health care deeply about fixing mental health care and we care deeply about bringing the highest quality of mental health care to as many people as possible i think that passion goes a long way it allows us to move quickly it allows us to dream big and innovate and fix mental health care in ways that no one else does spring health is a comprehensive mental health solution for employers we work with some of the largest employers in the world like pfizer and pepsico and adobe and we give their employees and their family members access to really high quality mental health care i was thrilled when i found out that we would be a two billion dollar company i was just proud to be honest with you we had grown so quickly we had so much momentum and we had built a fabulous business and it was really wonderful being recognized for that growth and for you know the strength of the business i think one of the biggest challenges that i've faced in building the company is just getting out of my own head i'm here because i'm you know the youngest female ceo of a unicorn and it's funny to be celebrating that right now when for the past five years i've tried to you know distance myself from that or like hide my age and i think for a long time i i just thought about it too much and i felt a lot of imposter syndrome in the beginning and there was a lot of doubt and a lot of sexism and and racism and ageism that i had to deal with but ultimately if i can inspire other young women to build unicorns and billion-dollar businesses then i think that that's a great thing female founders should know that they can do anything that they set their minds to and that people might criticize them more along the way but that they shouldn't give up and they should know that those criticisms and the hardships are of the price that we pay for breaking records and breaking glass ceilings judy faulkner is one of the most successful self-made women that you've probably never heard of her company is called epic systems and it is based in verona wisconsin epic systems is a company that does electronic health records which might not sound all that exciting what the company does really is basically like the backbone of a hospital and the way that you would interact with it is so you call your doctor you go online and you make an appointment that appointment scheduling is through the electronic health record then when you actually go visit your doctor and they figure out what's wrong with you you get a prescription that also goes in there there are about 225 million people in the united states with an electronic health record in epic faulkner has been building epic since 1979. i didn't intend at all to to have this career i happened to write the original software and everybody asked me to start a company and i kept saying no until i finally said yes she created this system and it was basically just a really fast and easy way to create a schedule that otherwise would have taken an extremely long time and a lot of people to do it she started building a database that and this was really really innovative at the time you could actually track a patient's record over time from when you know the first time that they went to see the doctor too the next time that they went to see the doctor as the company grew it added things like billing it um it got a nicer user interface so and it was being used at outpatient clinics and then inpatient hospitals around 2009 the government started to get involved by really encouraging hospitals to adopt these electronic health records then there was legislation passed and hospitals uh all of a sudden had a reason and they had funding to really increase adoption and um epic it was really it was reliable today around 2 400 hospitals worldwide are using epic since epic's founding in 1979 faulkner has rejected outside investors wall street financing and acquisitions but that's also where epic gets criticized because people say that that kind of build it alone mentality means that it's difficult to share data during the pandemic epic system stepped up to help judy and epic made a decision that they wouldn't charge their customers for code 19 related software so this was like infection control software for all these pop-up hospitals that were starting to be built many other pop-up hospitals like at the javits center and still they're no longer charging customers for those uh that kind of software and judy said there was like 500 million dollars in foregone revenue that they didn't take in because they gave they gave away all that stuff for free forbes estimates faulkner's 47 stake in epic to be worth 6 billion which makes her the second richest self-made woman in america perseverance um speaking out and speaking your mind and taking a stance on things and not um i like the saying what you put up with is what you stand for and that's a high bar she has built this empire or tiny empire i would say in verona wisconsin epic has around 10 800 employees and the entire company revolves around this campus which has i mean it's hard to describe people have compared it to an adult disney world but they're just crazy buildings and um all these different themes like alice in wonderland and the wizard of oz and uh tom harry potter there's a great hall people who know judy all have the same thing to say and the first thing that everyone says regardless of whether they like judy or their critic of judy is that she's brilliant that was the word i heard over and over again she originally coded everything herself she had you know a real understanding of the fundamentals and what the company was building and that is part of the success of epic as it's grown is that they build every all of the software in-house the thing about healthcare is it is so slow-moving um and so epic and everybody else they have time to figure out what's next but it definitely is an exciting moment um for the industry judy doesn't talk publicly that much she has this like very mythical uh status like if you're in healthcare circles if you say the name judy everyone knows who you're talking about you don't have to say judy faulkner i asked judy what it's like to be one of the few women leaders in software and her answer was that she just doesn't think about it that much she's just a person doing work and that's how she approaches it she told me that as long as she's effective and bringing value to the company that she will keep being ceo and so i think she's just going to keep working being under 30 and building a biotech company is not sexy it's a kind of faux pas honestly and it's just been very fun learning how to modernize an old industry i'm saying hollywell i'm the founder and ceo of a company called loyal we develop drugs to extend dog lifespan and i am 27 years old so i grew up in austin texas we had 15 cats like two or three dogs we used to rescue animals there's a picture of me as a little baby squirrel on my shoulder which looking it's really cute but looking at announcing that's a total rabies risk so i'm definitely a huge animal person but actually the reason why i started the company was the summer before i got into college for art school i decided to do an internship at a neuro-oncology clinic and i basically just kind of realized that we don't actually in my opinion have free will i met a number of relatively young brain cancer patients who there was something anybody anyone could do for them so really like ever since i was since i was 18 i've been trying to understand what's the best way to work on that problem right so i was you know pre-med student for a while then i started a phd then i worked at a venture fund investing in biotech companies i ended up going to dogs first about two years ago because i basically realized that there was a huge unmet need especially in the case of larger dogs but also the dogs were a really awesome proving ground for potentially getting the first ever drug approved exclusively for aging and then translating we learn from dogs over to people i struggled for a while because i'd walk into a room and people wouldn't assume that i'm competent i don't know if it has to do as much as me being under 30 as me being a woman i think that's really been a big variable in that so you have to believe that you can build a dog aging drug that it's a billion dollar market that this is the best way to get to human aging drugs that there's an aging drug for human markets and that i can do it i'm competent my team's competent and we can execute we're questioning the variables that have been set for a long time and that's allowed me to build this really amazing team around this really cool idea in a period of time that has been quite rapid i'm aisha evans ceo at zoox we are transforming personal transportation to make it safer cleaner and more enjoyable for everyone via autonomous driving growing up in senegal at the beginning at a very young age i thought i was going to be a fighter pilot by the time i got to paris and bounced between senegal and paris i wanted to be a technologist but i wanted it to be impactful and by the time i arrived in the us it was going to be around computers i was at intel for 12 long but beautiful years i learned about your responsibility as a technologist when it comes to society i learned to be a leader at scale i learned to deal with press and media and investors more importantly i learned how you need to focus on people but at really massive scale i was doing really well at intel i was enjoying it and i felt that i was working on something important i was also getting a lot of opportunities to maybe go do something different and i had to have a one-on-one with myself and say okay i'm happy here what would made me make me think about something else and i said transformative technology and the beginning of that wave so that you get to participate in making the wave as opposed to riding the wave and that's exactly what happened with zoox you have the opportunity to literally impact society when i was younger and even not so long ago i did not think that i would be working at 50 i thought that i would be teaching math in elementary school middle school or high school because i feel that math is not taught properly especially to girls so that's what i thought i would be doing along the way though i've discovered what's called meaning frankly i don't know what i would be doing uh if i was not working uh the idea of uh you know playing golf all day long and traveling or and eating the country club sandwiches is not really very appealing to me i have plenty left uh plus i'm going to tell you another secret i think that if i went home tonight and i told my kids and my husband that i'm not going to be working anymore they they would say okay you need to find something you're going to do between nine to five because you're not gonna manage us so my message to um teenagers uh all the way to young women especially 20s 30s and by the way i'm having these conversations with my 15 year old take a chill pill by and large it's going to be okay don't worry about making too many plans and then disappointing yourself or limiting yourself know yourself really well what type of person are you what really motivates you and if you find it you'll know because you'll find the traits through almost everything that you do figure out what's important to you and then write the different phases and waves and by the way if something doesn't go so well take a step back have a one-on-one with yourself talk to your support system see what really happened make adjustments and by and large we're gonna be fine and you're gonna be fine i just remember sitting on my kitchen floor and just in a puddle of tears and really thinking how could i lose this all now when i did feel like we were gaining momentum and i called carrie and i said carrie can i come and meet you and i sat across her desk nervous with my plan in place and she was wearing my jewelry when i walked in which was a really good first sign and she had this warm smile on her face and she gave me a texas-sized hug and i knew right away that she was my kind of person and in tears explaining to her where i was i was able to woman to woman human to human i wasn't a lone number i was a person and she loved my product and i said to her you know what tears in my eyes i will pay back every cent of this loan and i promise you that i will i will you know if i just sell everything i own but please don't let me end my business today give me a shot and she did we meet thousands of people over the course of our lives sometimes as many as 80 000 but of those tens of thousands how many actually change our lives how many can we look back and say they're the one who changed everything through this series we're going to talk to female founders entrepreneurs and leaders about who it was who changed everything for them [Music] kendra scott is the founder of the jewelry and lifestyle brand of the same name she first started making jewelry out of her bedroom in austin texas in 2002 when she couldn't find color gemstone jewelry that she could afford kendra has been an entrepreneur nearly her entire adult life i had a hat company that i started when i was 19 years old if you can believe it i really had hoped that everybody would wear hats again like the 40s and unfortunately that wasn't the case and after five years of struggling to keep i had a hat store a retail store and a really small online business i just couldn't do it and that business failed and i just remember thinking at that point you know that i didn't think i would ever be a success i felt so down so bad about myself but looking back in retrospect that little hat business was truly the best education i could have ever had to get me to the next thing that was going to happen in my life which was kendra scott jewelry how did you go from hats to jewelry what was funny is in my store i realized that you know not everybody might want a hat when they come in and i loved jewelry so much and i took some jewelry making courses at a local beach shop then i took a a course at a community college for jewelry making and design and started making some pieces in my little hat business my jewelry would fly out of the case the day i would put it in the store and that's what customers wanted and the my future was right there in front of me but i was so focused on hats after i closed the hat box they would call me and say kendra we want a matching pair of earrings for that necklace i bought in your store they weren't asking about the hats they were asking about the jewelry and so it really triggered me to have to continue to design and make those pieces but then also think hey maybe there's something here that i wasn't paying attention to and so kendra began building her jewelry company she started it as a wholesale fashion brand selling through established retailers before going direct to consumers nobody gave me vc money i went out so many times to try to raise capital a texas girl doing a fashion brand um you know that wasn't even a college graduate that had a failed business prior that's not exactly super sexy to investors so i wasn't able to to get that vc money that i wanted so i did everything on debt i signed everything i had for collateral and i paid my note on time i thought i was doing all the right things but when the recession hit because i was in jewelry and fashion the bank thought that we were a high risk loan and they called my loan and said you have this many days to pay it off well i didn't have that money in the bank and i was a single mom and i didn't know how i was going to do this she was turned down by bank after bank until finally someone recommended that she meet with kerry hall at texas capitol bank carrie took on the 700 000 line of credit that kendra needed and crucially she bought into kendra's vision for the business's future i'm curious though just take us back to the immediate days after she decided to take on the loan from that next day business at kendra scott changed forever i remember getting up that day and meeting with my team and saying which was a small team i think there was you know seven or eight of us at the time saying look this is crazy this plan i have you know that i want to do i want us to change how we're doing business completely but if we're going to come out of this recession we can't rely on buyers or store owners to tell our story or to sell our products we have to connect with the customer one-on-one and i knew it could not fail like at this point we were all in and no matter what we were going to have to figure out how to make this work and so many lessons of my first failure were such gifts during this period on a shoestring budget kendra built her store maxing out credit cards personally guaranteeing leases calling friends for favors and even laying down flooring herself but the new direct-to-consumer approach worked and customers flocked to the shop today kendra scott jewelry has more than 100 brick and mortar locations around the country as women sometimes we're um we think that being a mother makes us less than when we're in a career or running a business and we're in a place where women can do it all they can have an amazing career they can have an amazing business and they can be an amazing mother making it a priority is really important and carrie was all of those things she is a mother she's an amazing businesswoman she runs a bank right and she's she was all of those things and so having that relatability gave us already a singular voice of understanding i think you know we've got it in our minds that if you ask somebody for help that shows weakness and i always say to me that is the greatest sign of strength if i didn't go to kerry hall if i was too scared or i thought that you know she would think i was you know whatever right i wouldn't be here today and people innately want to help other people it is part of our human spirit

Channel: Forbes

Views: 300,418

Keywords: Forbes, Forbes Media, Forbes Magazine, Forbes Digital, Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Investing, Personal Finance

Id: HeeIoXtGqm0

Length: 112min 27sec (6747 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 26 2021