Are you a young woman looking to join the growing number of female entrepreneurs that have made waves across the globe? If so, the list below is definitely one you should look at.
Female entrepreneurs are no longer the exception and a vast majority of industries have experienced a surge in female participation in recent decades. In some, the upturn in female participation has been a significant factor and has caused major shifts in business practice.
Oprah Winfrey
Net worth $2.5 billion
It is impossible if not unfair to delve into female entrepreneurship without mentioning Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah found her success in media and television when she revitalized a run-of-the-mill talk show into a top-rated tabloid talk show that ran in syndication for 25 years.
By skillfully negotiating rights to the show Oprah ran the show with stellar financial success and became a millionaire by the age of 32. She currently owns her own network, OWN.
Susan Wojcicki
Net worth $ 765 million
Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube and has held the position since 2014. She has been in the tech industry for over 20 years after discovering a previously unexplored interest in tech.
By then she had already finished a bachelor’s degree in History and Literature from Harvard when she decided to pursue this budding fascination with technology.
Wojcicki was a player in the founding of Google and went on to become Google’s first marketing manager in 1990.
She was the one who proposed that Google acquire YouTube which was done in 2006 and she later became the CEO of YouTube in 2014.
Arlan Hamilton
Net worth estimated at $15 million
As an entrepreneur, Arlan is simply inspirational.
Coming from a background of total adversity and poverty, Arlan Hamilton was convinced that the disenfranchisement that was experienced by the LGBTQ, women, and people of color was not just a ‘pipeline problem’.
She contended that there were other factors such as conscious and unconscious bias, investment reluctance, and homogenous hiring at play but instead of fighting it she sought to exploit an untapped resource.
The lack of investment in these groups meant that there was immense untouched brilliance just waiting to be harnessed and so Backstage Capital was born.
Backstage Capital is a mentorship and venture platform that offers support, training, free business courses, and most importantly capital to startups owned by women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.
Arlan chose to invest in startups and reaped the benefits tenfold.
Her work has been so monumental in the demographics mentioned above that one of her Twitter followers is former president Barack Obama!
Conclusion
Women have come a long way in entrepreneurship and have a long way to go still.
The profiles above only prove that women have a significant role to play in innovation and business.
Alexander Gierczyk 