Author: Kirsten Barker

On The Covers!

Sharing a post from SPANX CEO Sara Blakely’s LinkedIn feed…

Magazine rack at Barnes and Noble with 6 magazine covers featuring women.
Picture from SPANX CEO Sara Blakely’s LinkedIn feed

Blakely writes, “Wow. Standing at Barnes & Noble, Inc. and every cover in the business section is a woman! What an awesome moment. When I was on the cover of Forbes 7 years ago it was a much lonelier place to be. Congrats to these amazing women and all the women out there making it happen. And of course to all the women who came before us who paved the way. We are grateful to you. I’m most excited about the feminine redefining what success looks like for their employees, customers, communities and the world. Rock on sisters!!!! “

It’s so important to see these covers become the “norm”!

Apply For the Female Founder Fellowship

Since launching in 2009, the Founder Institute’s Female Founder Fellowship program has graduated over 575 female-led businsses across six continents. The fellowship program’s goal is to narrow the gender gap in high-tech startups.

If you are a woman who is working to build an enduring tech or tech-enabled company, you are eligible to apply. (This includes aspiring entrepreneurs currently working full-time, solo entrepreneurs, teams, and entrepreneurs in established companies that are pre-funding.) Click here for more information about the program.

Interview with Tristan Walker of Walker & Company

logo for "How I Built This" podcast

Guy Raz from the NPR’s “How I Built This” podcast sat down with Tristan Walker for an interview in front of a live audience. Walker was looking for an idea for a company and his answer ended up being in the mirror. Like him, many men of color were frustrated with the lack of shaving and beauty products for coarse or curly hair.

This led him to launch Bevel, a subscription shaving system built around a single-blade razor. His company grew to include 36 different hair and beauty products and was sold to Proctor & Gamble in 2018. Tristan Walker became P&G’s first black CEO. Check out the podcast here.

Interview with Susan Wojcicki – CEO of YouTube

Headshot of Susan Wojcicki
Picture from Susan Wojcicki’s Twitter profile

Susan Wojcicki has been the CEO of YouTube since February 2014. She was the 16th employee at Google and became Google’s first marketing manager in 1999. She was in charge of Google’s original video service, and after observing the success of YouTube, proposed YouTube’s acquisition by Google in 2006. She is also a mother to five children.

In this interview posted in the Female Founders blog, Wojcicki discusses her career path from being an undergraduate liberal arts major to navigating the world of tech, the growth of YouTube and shares her thoughts on the importance of paid maternity leave.

Indra Nooyi States Unconscious Bias Can Only Be Called Out If We Create A Sisterhood

headshot of Indra Nooyi
Picture from Wikipedia

Indra Nooyi is an Indian American business executive and served as CEO of PepsiCo for 12 years. In this interview conducted by Nina Easton at Fortune‘s MPW International Summit on September 16, 2019 , Nooyi discusses how she plans to “pay it forward” to the next generation of women and how the current support systems (of lack of them) seem to only reinforce unconscious biases that exist for women.

Tips on Managing Cash Flow

metal case full of US currency

This post from May 2019 in Forbes and this post from May 2016 in Entrepreneur both share useful tips for what to focus on when you are managing your cash as you launch your business. Nothing you probably don’t already know – it is important to have goals, spend wisely, reduce overhead, etc but useful to skim through to make sure you are doing all you can to effectively manage this critical resource!

Missouri Quilter Turns Hobby To Multimillion-Dollar Business

multicolor quilt

After losing most of their 401K retirement savings during the 2008 financial crisis, the Doans needed to figure out a way to recover.  Jenny Doan, who had been a stay-at-home mom to her 7 children, found herself looking to enter the workforce at the age of 50 with little external work experience.  With help from the kids and some creative thinking, Jenny launched Missouri Star Quilt Company which ended up saving the family and the town of Hamilton, Missouri.  Listen to Jenny share her story in the “Without Fail” podcast here

Jenny mentions in the podcast how her YouTube tutorials (her first being from a wheelchair!) rapidly increased her company’s exposure. Read more about how YouTube made a difference for the Missouri Star Quilt Company in a January 2019 Forbes article.