Today is International Women’s Day and I’m spending it celebrating the incredible women in my orbit.
Helping other women has always been really important to me. I spend a lot of time and effort helping other female entrepreneurs grow and succeed, whether it’s investing in them financially, providing regular mentorship and guidance, participating in public forums and events, or literally helping them craft their company pitch decks.
I don’t do this for the purpose of getting anything in return. I do this because when women help other women, we all win. We become better investors, entrepreneurs, leaders and employees when we share our energy and critical thinking freely and genuinely.
Women have made impressive entrepreneurial strides in the consumer and lifestyle business realm as of late. But I’m most focused on helping women who are tackling deeply technical, B2B and enterprise-level challenges. Because this is still an area where women are sorely underrepresented and in need of more support.
Join me in celebrating some of the incredible women I have the honor of supporting in their entrepreneurial journeys:
- Sharon Goldberg, Co-Founder and CEO of BastionZero, a company reimagining the tools used to control remote access to servers, containers and clusters in the cloud.
- Jess Lynch, Founder and CEO of Wishroute, a company providing human-powered accountability, increased customer engagement and retention for wellness companies through AI-enhanced, human text message conversations.
- Susan Conover, Co-Founder and CEO of LuminDX, a company focused on elevating doctors to quickly and accurately identify skin conditions using computer vision and AI.
- Tracie Thompson, Co-Founder and CEO of HackHunter, a company building cybersecurity tools to detect and actually locate unauthorized and malicious WiFi.
These are just a few of the women in my thoughts today. As someone who dedicates her extra time and energy to helping other women, I am merely following the example of other women who’ve blazed the trail before me – women I’ve learned from and whose actions to support other women I hope to emulate. Women like:
- Lynn Loacker, Partner-in-Charge at David Wright Tremaine LLP and Project W, whose mission is to help female founders build great companies and take their place in the C-suite and boardroom.
- Kay Koplovitz, Co-Founder and Chairman & Amy Millman, President of SpringBoard Enterprises, a leading network of influencers, investors and innovators dedicated to building high-growth companies led by women who are transforming industries in technology and life science.
- Keri Lee Sinclair, Chair; Noga Edelstein, Director; Jodie Imam, General Manager; and Olivia Doherty, Director of Programs of SpringBoard Enterprise Australia, whose mission is to help women build and scale global, sustainable businesses by providing them access to tools, networks and knowledge.
I know we’re all busy dealing with seemingly endless challenges of our own right now. As a mom, investor, entrepreneur and CEO, believe me I get it. But we all have a responsibility to make the time to help women succeed, because we still have decades of systemic inequality to overcome.
Data from Crunchbase shows global venture funding for female founders decreased significantly in 2020 and new research from PwC reveals what we’ve already feared: The pandemic is reversing gender equality progress in the workforce. Now more than ever, we need to go to bat for women and their products, sponsoring them wholeheartedly from ideation, to funding and beyond.
Happy International Women’s Day, everyone. Now let’s get back to work helping other women!
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