Q1:  What is your name and title?

Cathy McCabe, CEO Proximity Insight

Q2:  Briefly (1-2 sentences) describe your role at your company?

Following a diverse 30-year career in retail moving from shop floor to shop tech I am now the CEO of an innovative retail tech startup – I work with an awesome, global team who are passionate about helping brands to get closer to their customers. My role varies every day encompassing sales, marketing and product vision and I love the variety of working with leading retail brands and great visionary people. It is a tough but hugely rewarding role.

Q3:  How long have you been in your current position?

 18 months

Q4:  What advice do you have for women who are just starting their career?

 I have been lucky to enjoy a diverse career. Finding your path and enjoying what you do is really important and I often put my hand up to work on something that no-one else wanted to do. So never be afraid to try new things.

You absolutely have to work hard, take risks and lead by example but don’t let your career consume you.

My Mum always said “You can never make a bad decision. If something does not work out you simply change track and move forward onto the next path”

Q5:  Is there a cause that is particularly close to you? If so, why this cause and how did you get involved?

I am particularly drawn to Africa after visiting my son in Uganda where he was working with a youth trust helping to train young Ugandans to construct water tanks and school buildings with eco-friendly bricks that are sustainable and do not require firing with wood. It was an inspiring and thought-provoking journey in a very beautiful country. I want to continue exploring ways to help out with causes in Africa and I am hoping to join a Building Blitz with Mellon Educate in November 2019.

Q6:  Do you serve as a mentor?  If so, what does mentorship mean to you?

 I love mentoring and I currently mentor a variety of different people – it provides me with a simple way to give back, to help, to guide and to continue to learn about myself and new ways of working.

Q7:  What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself 5 years ago?

 Don’t chase a title or the money – in the end the title and the salary does not mean that much. It is more important to keep learning and trying new things.

Q8:  Are you reading anything interesting at the moment? Please share your most recent favorite read!

Super Engaged by Nikki Gatenby – absolutely fabulous book about how to transform business performance by putting people and purpose first – great nuggets that any business can use regardless of size.

Q9: If you could sit down with three women (living or dead) for dinner, who would those three women be (and why!)?

Gosh this is a tough one – so many women I admire for lots of very different reasons!!!

Angela Ahrendts – an amazingly strong, astute woman, ahead of her time and yet super approachable and a great leader. Angela leaves a footprint on your life and the time I spent with her as part of the leadership team at Burberry was truly inspirational.

Mary Portas – I love her frankness, openness and her downright pragmatic approach to revamping retail and her wacky confidence and ability to be just so utterly true to herself.

Jose Powell – my maternal Grandmother – a working woman with four children who had a strong work ethic and amazing family values – she taught me to be strong, inspired me to travel, to read and taught me to be kind and thoughtful. A woman who grew up in the 1930’s and continued to travel until her 80’s passing away in when I was only at the very start of my career.

Q10: What’s something coming up soon (personally or professionally) that super excites you?

Personally, I am writing a book about the future of retail which provides me with my space to reflect and develop my own perspective. It can be a struggle to fit in the research and writing time but the moments I find to take stock and breathe help me to think about how the real principles of retail have not changed yet the purchase path has changed incredibly in the last 10 years.

Professionally we are about to embark on our first round of funding and that will be a completely new and important learning journey for me – a pivotal and exciting moment in my career!

Please share your Twitter handle (if applicable):

@cathymccabe

Leigh Christie is the Executive Director of the Entrepreneurs Foundation. In this role, Leigh oversees the daily operations of the organization; leads member company programming and events; manages the philanthropic contributions for realized equity donors; directs the corporate community involvement programs for member companies; and supports the organization’s leadership projects.

Leigh is a lawyer by trade and has more than 20 years experience in program development and operations. Building and supporting strategic and impactful collaborations to address community needs is her greatest strength and joy.

She is a graduate of the Leadership Austin Essential Class, the Acton Leadership Edge Program , the AISD UpClose Program, and a sustaining member of the Junior League of Austin. Current roles include: Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Board Member; City of Austin, Corporate Engagement Council, Member; Austin Gives, Executive Council Member; and SXSWedu Advisory Board Member.

Leigh was named one of the 2016 Austin Business Journal’s Profiles in Power & Women of Influence Finalist. She’s also getting geared up to complete her 4^th and 5^th marathons in 2017 and 2018.

Adhamina Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of AR Green Consulting, a boutique sustainability consulting firm based in San Francisco that strives to change the World one building at a time.

Adhamina brings over 20 years of experience in the construction industry managing interdisciplinary teams to improve sustainability in buildings and organizations. In her roles of Director of Sustainability, Project Executive, and Senior Project Manager for large corporations, Adhamina has managed hundreds of complex projects from beginning to end, has established strategic sustainability policies, and implemented green building design and construction to deliver healthier and better performing buildings.

Adhamina has served in the Board of several Energy and Sustainability Committees, is an official instructor in sustainability at U.C. Berkeley and has lectured at Stanford University since 2001. Adhamina is an Architect/Civil Engineer from the University of Seville (Spain), and has a Master’s Degree from Northwestern University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.  In 2011 Adhamina was recognized by Engineering News Record (ENR) as one of California’s Top 20 Under 40.

Read the full interview below to hear Adhamina’s ideas for leadership and how to have an impact in the workplace.

Q1: How long have you been in your current position?

2 years. Before that I worked for almost 17 years for a large corporation as Director of Sustainability and Project Executive.

Q2:  What inspired you to work in this industry?

I am Architect and a Civil Engineer with a Master in Project Management. I was drawn to the building industry because of its unique combination of art and technology, and the enormous impact that buildings have on our environment and on our every-day life. We spend 90% of our time indoors, buildings are our habitat.

Q3:  What would you tell women who are looking to work in tech?  Any advice on how they can build their career?

Technology surrounds us, it is in every aspect our life, but even so, there is so much that we still can improve. There are traditional industries, like construction, that take longer to adapt than other industries like transportation or manufacturing. I encourage women to take on the challenge of transforming traditional men-dominated niches into progressive markets that help us close the gap towards a sustainable future.

Q4:  Is your company a Pledge 1% member or do you personally give back to your community? If so, how do you give and to what cause?

Yes, my firm is a Pledge 1% member from day one and I have personally given back to my community during my whole career. I have a passion for sustainability, protection of the environment, and children, as they are our future. I have volunteered hundreds of hours to my local community educating and feeding people in need, and worked pro-bono to create a new playground in the City, and community centers in low-income areas. I have also volunteered as a role model in organizations that strive to close the gender and minority achievement gap in the STEM field including: “Techbridge Girl”, “Scientific Adventures for Girls”, and “Tech-women” ( a program managed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to mentor to young women from Africa and the Middle East through exchange).

Q5:  Do you serve as a mentor?  What does mentorship mean to you?

Mentoring to me means teaching and coaching. I strongly believe that if we allow others to build on our foundation of knowledge, we will reach higher levels of sustainability from which we will all benefit.  I have been a mentor and lecturer on green design and construction at Stanford University for the past 17 years to students from all over the world, and I am an official instructor at UC Berkeley Extension since 2009.  My mentorship to many students has continued to date through email, and in person with some that followed me throughout my professional career as new employees.

Q6:  What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received to help you with your career?

Always move forward. Do not set yourself back, not even to get impulse!

Do not give up, work hard, and show confidence. If you do not believe in yourself, none else will.

Q7:  What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself 5 years ago?

Do not be afraid to explore new possibilities. It took me many years to venture into opening my own firm, and now I could not be happier with my decision. Yes, managing your own company takes a lot of work, a learning curve, and making some mistakes. Learn from them and move on!

This profile is published as part of Pledge 1%’s Women Who Lead series, which celebrates women in the Pledge 1% community who are creating change within their workplace and communities.

Morgan McMillan is the Executive Director of Pledge 1% Colorado.  She was hired as the first E.D. (and paid staff) for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado (EFCO) in 2012. After partnering with Salesforce, Atlassian, and Rally for Impact in 2014 to launch the global Pledge 1% platform, the EFCO board decided to rebrand and expand to Pledge 1% Colorado to better align our work with the global movement.

Read the full interview below to learn more about Morgan’s experience and what inspires her to give to her community.

Q1:  What inspired you to work in this industry?

I had been working in the nonprofit sector for a decade and observed the struggle to connect nonprofits with the startup community in a meaningful way. Often participating organizations from both sides of the aisle were left feeling dissatisfied from their interactions. EFCO sought to positively impact community nonprofits in a way that aligned with startup culture. Ryan Martens’ (founder of Rally Software) passion and vision for how startups could intentionally establish a culture of giving at the earliest stages was also really inspiring! You could really see how that commitment drew employees to Rally and sparked a deep loyalty to their company.

Q2:  What would you tell women who are looking to work in tech?  Any advice on how they can build their career?

I respectfully acknowledge that my role is more on the periphery of technology companies so I can’t directly speak to the challenges women might face – but my experience working with Pledge 1% companies demonstrates an authentic desire by many tech companies to be inclusive of a broader workforce. Leadership matters. A company may have an HR department that values inclusion but if it isn’t shared broadly by the leadership team, the culture won’t reflect it. I’ve also seen the importance of establishing a network of support. Connecting and meeting regularly with other women in tech and the broader startup sector provides emotional support – but it’s also a great business strategy.

Q3:  Is your company a Pledge 1% member or do you personally give back to your community? If so, how do you give and to what cause?

I’ve been a longtime volunteer with Intercambio Uniting Communities, a local organization that teaches English to adult immigrants and works to build cross cultural understanding.

Q4:  Do you serve as a mentor?  What does mentorship mean to you?

I’ve mentored people formally and informally over the years. Sometimes that looks like advice or bouncing around ideas – and sometimes it means intentionally inviting a mentee to a meeting or a network gathering. Professionally and personally I’ve realized that so much of success depends upon strength of network and that too often our networks look just like us – ethnically, economically, education level, and sometimes gender. I look for opportunities to mentor and include people who aren’t currently ‘at the table’ to expand their network – and mine, too!

Q5:  What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received to help you with your career?

Your priorities shift at different times in your life. You do the best you can and try not to feel guilty about the things that get put on the backburner. (This was particularly poignant for me as I had two children after joining EFCO and while launching Pledge 1%.)

Q6:  What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself 5 years ago?

Work to maintain focus. You will be pulled in many directions. Listen, reflect, and filter out those that don’t align with your purpose. And enjoy all the new stuff you’re about to learn!

This profile is published as part of Pledge 1%’s Women Who Lead series, which celebrates women in the Pledge 1% community who are creating change within their workplace and communities.

Named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by U.S. News and one of TIME’s 100 “Innovators for the 21st century,” Linda Rottenberg is among the foremost experts on entrepreneurship, corporate innovation, and leadership.  Dubbed the “Entrepreneur Whisperer,” Rottenberg has won acclaim for her pioneering work, with profiles in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, and appearances on GMA, The Today Show, Morning Joe, and more.  For years, Rottenberg was known as “La Chica Loca” (the crazy girl) for insisting that scalable entrepreneurs existed in emerging and growth markets.

As co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, Rottenberg has led the global entrepreneurship movement for two decades. Headquartered in New York, with 50 offices worldwide, Endeavor rigorously selects, mentors, and co-invests in innovators with the greatest potential to grow their businesses and move the needle of their economies.  Currently, the 1,500 Endeavor Entrepreneurs, screened from over 50,000 candidates, provide nearly 700,000 jobs and generate $10 billion in annual revenues. Today, Rottenberg also leads Endeavor Catalyst LP Funds I and II, rules-based funds that invest in Endeavor Entrepreneurs.

Rottenberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller, CRAZY IS A COMPLIMENT: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags.  Additionally, Rottenberg serves on the boards of ZAYO (NYSE: ZAYO), the world’s leading bandwidth infrastructure group, and Olo, a premier online ordering platform. She is a member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) and served on the entrepreneurship steering committee of the World Economic Forum.

A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, Linda Rottenberg lives in Brooklyn with her husband, author and New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler, and their identical twin daughters.

Read the full interview below to learn more.

What inspired you to work in this industry?

The idea for Endeavor was born—of all places—in the back of a Buenos Aires taxicab! My driver, I learned, had a PhD in Engineering, but could not find any other job. When I suggested that he become an entrepreneur, he looked at me dumbfounded—“A what?” he had never heard of the term, so foreign was the concept there of someone successfully launching and running a new venture, outside the purview of government cronies and private business tycoons. I did some digging and found that there was a pervasive donut hole in investment for entrepreneurs that neither qualified for microfinance nor private equity funding.

I connected with an old friend, Peter Kellner, and at my parents’ kitchen table we started mapping out our vision for an organization that would help for-profit entrepreneurs in emerging markets get started and go to scale. Twenty years later, that hazy vision is now a global network of over 1,400 entrepreneurs leading 900 companies that have collectively created half a million jobs and generated $8 billion in annual revenues.

Is your company a Pledge 1% member or do you personally give back to your community? If so, how do you give and to what cause?

Endeavor is thrilled to be part of Pledge 1%’s Escrow UP initiative, alongside other great organizations working on entrepreneurship. Likewise, “paying it forward” is truly at the heart of Endeavor’s mission, and many of our entrepreneurs become Endeavor mentors or board members, multiplying their impact by inspiring future generations of founders within their local ecosystems and around the world to innovate and take risks. 

Do you serve as a mentor?  What does mentorship mean to you?

Yes. Running an organization “of, for, and by entrepreneurs,” I can’t presume to support and mentor high-impact companies if I’m not one myself! As such, at Endeavor we’re hyper-conscious to practice what we preach on thinking big, taking risks, doing the unexpected and disrupting the status quo. The idea behind Endeavor was always to nurture people with big ideas and big dreams, starting with my own team.

I want people to know that they don’t need a hoodie or a Silicon Valley zip code or a rolodex of impressive contacts to be an entrepreneur. The most important thing entrepreneurs can do for their businesses is to surround themselves with a circle of mentors who can offer a rotating mixture of tough love, wise counsel, fresh insight and clear direction. In a survey we conducted, our entrepreneurs overwhelmingly found that the most valuable contribution to their success was not financial investment but rather mentor capital. As one put it, “There’s lots of money out there, and it’s all worth the same. But there’s not a lot of good advice.”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received to help you with your career?

The best piece of advice I ever received came from a 5 year old – my daughter! With sage wisdom, she pulled me aside just as I was leaving for a business trip to caution, “Remember, you can be an entrepreneur for a short time, but you’re a mommy forever.” Since that day, the business trips have lessened and thankfully so have the schoolings from my children!

What’s the one piece of advice you would give to yourself 5 years ago?

“Go big AND go home!” For years, I, like many others, had adopted the mantra “Go big OR go home,” a rallying cry I delivered to myself, to our entrepreneurs and to our staff. If we were to keep growing we had to keep pushing.

In 2004, I was pregnant with identical twin daughters but I was determined not to let this slow me down. I kept up my demanding work travel schedule, setting off for Mexico, Chile and South Africa, until my doctor had to impose a mandatory no-fly zone and three months of bedrest. It worked—the girls arrived, healthy and happy, at 38 weeks—and I walked away with a valuable lesson: to go forward, sometimes you have to take a step back; to go big, you have to go home.