Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Courtney D. McWilliams, founder/owner of MaryMac’s Doggie Retreat.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I like to refer to myself as the Canine Emotional Officer (CEO).
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
This is a very big question! I left my career as a Master’s level social worker to open a doggie retreat. I must say, I would have never thought in a million years that I would be working with animals.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
For me, it’s more than just being a woman that’s a challenge- the biggest challenge is being an African American woman in the Caucasian male driven field of pet care.
There’s no one who looks like me in this line of work OWNING a doggie day care/doggie boutique. As a result, it’s difficult to gain respect as a black, female owned pet care business. I could not use the traditional route of getting business or referrals from veterinarian companies or any other pet companies. I had to think outside of the box with marketing in order to generate revenue and clients.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
I do have mentors, but not in the traditional sense. They do not even know that they are my mentors.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Do not take no for an answer. Do not allow people to tell you that your dreams are stupid or invalid because they do not understand them. Do not allow your FEARS to STOP you.
Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and rock out with your hair down to overcome your fears.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Lisa Nichols, Ming Lee, Oprah, and Tracy Ellis Ross.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is the most recent book I’ve read. If you have not heard of it, it focuses on the law of attraction. It’s helping me work on being more purposeful in what I say, hear, and do.
What is something coming up that excites you?
My cousin recently had twin boys which I am super excited about. I am focusing more on family and being present, as well as continuing to grow my business. I am learning to prioritize things so that is exciting as well.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Purnima Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of mihygge.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I manage all the operations and wear many hats. My main job is empowering the team and getting to know the future customers as we work to launch the product b2b, and then the entire product, in a few months.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Leaving the bullies behind and finding people who will help me grow. Personal intuition is powerful. I’ve also learned to cherish customers and staff equally and empower everyone for a win-win. When you create something that people love, they will never leave you.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Racism and ageism. I am a second time founder (well educated with 5+ credentials ) and a no nonsense Asian female leader who believes honesty is the best policy.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes. Mentorship is a two way exchange. Every living being is both a teacher and a student from conception to death.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Be brave, take the leap and go for it. Find your path, be an ever learner and create your niche so well that no one can ever copy you.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Mother Earth. She is the stage where we all act and play our part. When we leave and our acting is over, she doesn’t judge.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
I love listening to a meditative story podcast, as well as reading gardening books. I also read a lot of classic English fiction which has taught me many things that are deliverable in my own business. My favorite books are by the Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen.
What is something coming up that excites you?
The launch of our product and beginning the process of signing up paying b2b customers. I am excited to receive feedback and have an open dialogue with our customers so that we can work to empower them.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Modika Fembe Hilda, Co-Founder of SCECYDPs (Social Change and Establishment Center for Youths and Disabled Persons). I am an advocate fighting against marginalization, discrimination, violation of human rights and exploitation of persons living with disabilities. In addition to my work at SCECYDPs, I am a Global Peace Chain Ambassador, UNESCO Peace Ambassador and an African Change Maker.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I supervise the running of Social Change and Establishment Center for Youths and Disabled Persons (SCECYDPs) activities, manage the calendar, give out scholarships for vocational training to unemployed youths and disabled persons, and advocate for the rights of persons living with disabilities.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Staying positive on my vision and avoiding people who were distractions to my personal growth and development.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Trying to get big personalities to do me a favor vs. putting me to bed is the greatest challenge I have faced as a woman.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes I do. I have mentors in my spiritual, organizational and career life. Rev Samuel Tanyi, Mr. Ngale Foretia Henry, Mr. Samir Saran, Mukete Tahle Itoe, and Manna Dabholkar.
Mentorship is very important to me because it gives me directives on how to go about my life and career from people who have had similar experiences. It is helpful to be able to understand their challenges and how they were able to overcome, as well as their greatest secrets of how to succeed in life.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Never give up on your dreams or vision because of what people say.
Always stay around people who can take you where you see your dreams in years to come. Challenges will always be there. The difference will be how you are able to manage yourself during the crisis and emerge victorious as a role model in society and mentor to others.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Manna Dabholkar. She is an International Human Rights Advocate for children and disadvantaged families all over the globe. She has developmental programs that ensure children are prepared emotionally, mentally and physically for their future. These kids will become the future leaders of tomorrow based on what they have learned, and will be able to transform the lives of others.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
Purpose by Rev Samuel Tanyi. This book enables you to discover and walk with purpose and I believe everybody should read it.
What is something coming up that excites you?
My soon to be released book, Accept and Live with It.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
LaShawn McGhee, Co-Founder | CPO of Revry.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
As Chief Product Officer, I oversee the development and maintenance of our applications. I also manage the physical acquisition of Revry’s content from delivery through distribution.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Continuing to educate myself on best practices and trends in the streaming video space.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Being heard, especially by people who have “more experience” than I do.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes, mentors are essential. You need someone who can help you navigate things. I have both corporate and technical mentors.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Learn everything you can about your chosen field and reach out to people who do the job you want to do.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
Bozoma Saint John. She commands the rooms, she’s in demand, and she is authentically herself in every environment.
When did your company join Pledge 1%? How long have you been working on your impact program?
Revry joined Pledge 1% in March of this year. We have been committed to impacting our community since Revry’s launch and one of the ways that we contribute is by participating in Mayor Garcetti’s Internship program call Evolve.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
I’m a huge fan of the podcast Masters of Scale with Reed Hoffman.
What is something coming up that excites you?
We are launching a new set of features for our owned and operated applications. I can’t wait to share it with the world!
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Holly Copeland, Senior Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability & Impact at Horizon Therapeutics.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
My role involves creating, building and executing our CSR, Sustainability & Impact strategy while also managing the philanthropic portfolio of the company.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
To be intentional and authentic when connecting with others, regardless of their position or status.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Effectively communicating the value of impact work relative to the business and bottom line.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes. Mentorship involves having someone in your life that has your best interests in mind and can help guide you with sound advice through a particular situation or time in your life.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Take as many 1:1 introductory meetings as possible. Buy them a coffee and ask great questions. Listen. Take notes. You can learn something from every encounter, even the bad ones.
Cultivate the good ones over time. Before you know it, you’ll have a solid network that you can leverage when needed.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo.
What is something coming up that excites you?
The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment!
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Erin Michelson, Founder & CEO, Summery.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
As a sole, female founder, I oversee every aspect of our business—product development & delivery, sales, marketing, & customer success, operations. Of course, I’m simply the point person representing the hard work and dedication of our amazing team at Summery. We’ve been able to build and expand so quickly because of our culture of shared values that enables us to operate at the highest level.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
My best decision was to truly believe that we could help individuals be more personally and professionally fulfilled by providing the tools to measure, assess, and activate individual values. By taking this risk and recruiting an incredible team of behavioral, cognitive and data scientists, we are now working with startups and Fortune 500 companies like Salesforce, global foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and higher education organizations around the world.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
There are countless studies showing that despite out-performance, women business owners only receive about 2% of all venture capital.
In our case, this lack of available funding translated into a determination to prove product-market fit and an early focus on generating revenue. Not taking capital early on turned out to be the best way to prove our model and grow our client base.
When did your company join Pledge 1%? How long have you been working on your impact program?
Summery joined Pledge 1% within months of launching because the framework—donating 1% of our time-product-profit—is so easy to implement and aligned with our mission. The primary way we meet our commitment is to open our flagship product to the public: The Kind Quiz, which enables individuals to better understand and activate their social impact values. Upon completing the 5-minute quiz, you receive a 3-page Kind profile and are matched with like-minded celebrities. Summery then makes a donation to a nonprofit organization that reflects your collective values.
What is something coming up that excites you?
We are launching The Kind CoLab, a global community designed to engage, educate, and empower individuals who seek to discover and activate our unique kindness through curated content, activities & events. Join the fun at www.summery.ai.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Lauren Duffield, Strategic Partnerships & CSR at xocial.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I am the CSR leader at xocial, and spend my days forming strategic partnerships for world-changing campaigns!
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Attending Tony Robbins Business Mastery!
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Being told to take the emotion out of it.
Emotion and empathy is our competitive advantage as women!
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes. I have had 2 mentors in the past and continue to keep in touch with them both. Mentorship has been, and always will be, a major part of my career. I love learning from people have already experienced what I am going through. I also follow Tony Robbins and Rachel Hollis closely. They will always be my digital mentors.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
This statement is becoming cliche for a reason; fail to learn. Just do it. You can only plan so much. A-B test. There is no one way of doing anything!
What woman inspires you the most? Why?
Rachel Hollis. She is the most authentic, public facing female leader I know. She built her business from the ground up and was an average Jane. One of my favorite quotes of hers is, “Don’t play small to make others feel comfortable.”
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment? Please share your most recent favorite book or podcast!
I am currently listening to Dean Graziosi’s Millionaire Success Habits.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Neha Sampat, Founder and CEO at Contentstack.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
The main focus of my role as CEO is to represent the company and our interests, facilitate sustainable growth and unblock things to help my team and organization move the ball forward towards our vision and mission.
Vision: Our vision is to pursue equality and use technology to break down barriers for better human connection.
Mission: Our mission is to make Contentstack indispensable for organizations to tell their stories and to connect with the people they care about through inspiring, modern experiences.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Hire smart people who give a damn, and learn from them everyday.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
I thought it would be appropriate to call out a few key challenges that women CEOs in tech often face.
- Access to funds: For example, males are 63% more likely to raise capital than women, with all other things equal. Research also shows that 95% of venture deals and dollars are going to companies without a single woman in the top management suite.
- Subconscious bias: We live in a society that has been trained subconsciously to think about the capabilities of men and women differently. There are organizations making real change and taking action by analyzing and correcting salary inequities or removing names from resumes to prevent gender bias in screenings. With awareness, this is slowly changing but there’s more work to be done.
- Uneven playing field: According to Center for American Progress, women hold almost 52% of all management and professional-level jobs, yet they lag substantially behind men in terms of their representation in leadership positions. I strive to help the technology industry overall become a more level playing field. There are organizations like the Girl Scouts that help to train girls into leaders, and organizations like Springboard that turn women into incredible CEOs.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
I’m fortunate to have great mentors throughout my career, including many of the women of Springboard, an organization that supports entrepreneurial companies led by women.
Mentorship is about taking what you have learned and paying it forward. I try to pay it forward by helping budding female entrepreneurs get to the next level in their businesses. I help guide entrepreneurs with investor decks, customer relations programs, customer growth, hiring strategies, and more.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
The best life advice I’ve ever received came from an entrepreneur I truly admire. I only wish it had sunk in even earlier in my career. This individual has impacted his entire community and literally millions of people with his work. He once said, “Don’t think about what you can get from someone or something. Think about what you can give.”
He gave several examples of how he has given back selflessly and relentlessly in his world. This mentality has shaped how I think about building my career, my companies, my home and all of my relationships. It has not only made me a better entrepreneur, but a better citizen of the world.
What woman inspires you the most? Why?
None other than the Notorious R.B.G. Ruth Bader Ginsburg dedicated her life to fighting for women’s rights, LGBT and racial equality. Her role as a justice in the Supreme Court has shaped history and she will always be known as a woman who beat the odds to make her mark. Regardless of her health and personal struggles, she shows up and continues to be a force to be reckoned with — and in my opinion — one of the most admirable people alive today.
When did your company join Pledge 1%? How long have you been working on your impact program?
We took the Pledge in 2018. Our impact program has taken several forms since we started our series of companies, most regularly in the community in India where our engineering office sits.
Today, we are focused on COVID-19 relief for that region in India, supporting a local trust that has committed to feeding over one million people in this region. The Trust is also committed to providing PPE and additional facilities for overrun health institutions for the isolation and care of COVID-19 patients.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment? Please share your most recent favorite book or podcast!
I’m currently reading Shoe Dog a memoir by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The book chronicles the history of Nike from its early struggles to its evolution into one of the world’s most recognized and profitable companies.
I’m also watching various Masterclass lessons these days and am especially loving the authentic tutorials from some of the most talented chefs in the world!
What’s something coming up that excites you?
Besides pandemic relief and the ability to start interacting with people again, I am looking forward to launching my new project, Dreammakers.
This podcast will feature interviews with change-makers, visionaries and interesting people who happen to enjoy drinking wine together. In addition to conversations with inspiring people, the podcast aims to broadcast unique dreams of individuals around the world and potentially connect them with someone who can help make that dream come true. The combination of #Dreammakers and #MakeItHappen will be used to share these dreams in the Dreammaker community.
Pledge 1%’s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are changing the world. Our leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, and are all doing their part to have an impact in their communities and at their workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their background and path to success.
What is your name and title?
Kimberly Georgeton, Managing Director of Digital at Simplus.
Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your current role.
I am in charge of developing and growing the digital commerce and marketing capabilities for Simplus.
What’s the best decision you’ve ever made?
Staying true to my beliefs and convictions.
What’s the number one challenge you face as a woman in your industry?
Being taken seriously.
Do you have any mentors? What does mentorship mean to you?
Yes, I have had multiple mentors over the years– some formal and some informal. Most of them were previous female managers who understood our plight. Mentorship is modeling the way and providing a sounding board and feedback loop to whatever you’re facing in your career and life.
What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?
Be who you are, but also be open to new ideas.
What women inspires you the most? Why?
My mother. She was strong of conviction, even in the face of adversity and challenge. She had a quiet strength that permeated and always counted on her faith to lead her.
Are you reading/listening to anything interesting at the moment?
Educated by Tara Westover and The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile.
What is something coming up that excites you?
Taking my daughter on a trip to Paris; and, of course, any other new and exciting partnerships and opportunities for my team to learn and be engaged!