Things have changed since the early days when women were just supposed to be at the backstage of anything big. Gender is becoming less of an issue in today’s business world. While many women have fought their way to the top, there are still many hurdles that women have to cross.
Let us appreciate such women entrepreneurs who have faced many hurdles but have paved their way to the top.
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Table of Contents
Paola De Leo
This co-founder of Brightwide.com formerly belonged to Amnesty International. This female entrepreneur started a platform where you can watch the best social and political cinema online. Her motto is to Watch, Think, Link and Act.
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Diane Heavin
She founded the popular fitness chain, Curves in 1992. Since then the fitness chain has grown into the world’s largest fitness franchise with 10,000 in over 70 countries. Her motto is about strengthening women, and by far she has been more than successful in doing so by serving about 4 million members.
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Genevieve Thiers
Thiers started the $5 million Inc. 500 company, SitterCity.com that provides basic services like babysitting, housekeeping and tutoring. Her company, based in Chicago, provides services to a million people. She has been helping families by providing services coast to coast.
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Rhonda Byrne
Not only was she listed among Time Magazine’s 2007 roll of 100 people who shape the world, but she is also the founder of a television production company called Prime Time Productions. The Author of a globally successful book, “The Secret” and producer of the movie going by the same name, she is recognised everywhere. She has been shaping futures and is a very influential woman, making her one of the most successful female entrepreneur.
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Suze Orman
She is America’s most recognised expert on personal finance. This one-woman financial powerhouse is New York Times best-selling author of numerous books, a renowned writer and producer and one of the top motivational speakers. Suze Orman has done it all.
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Gina Rinehart
This female leader is the world’s first female billionaire and has been credited with several business achievements as well. From being the recipient of 2009 commonwealth Bank Business Owner Award to the 2009 Telstra West Australian Business Woman of the Year award. She is the chairman of Hancock Prospecting, which is one of Australia’s leading mining companies.
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Maxine Clark
Before starting the popular store Build-A-Bear Workshop, which has 340 stores all over the world, she served as the President and Chief Merchandising Officer at Payless Shoesource, Inc. Her stores have an annual turnover of over $120 million. Maxine Clark has always stood as a motivational figure for all the female entrepreneurs over the globe.
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Julia Aigner-Clark
Julia decided to start Baby Einstein in 1998, when she failed to find educational videos for her young daughter. So after finding a need and filling it, she has helped a lot of parents around the world to educate their kids in a better way. Her company saw revenues of nearly $10 million in2000, after which she sold her company to Walt Disney.
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Ashley Qualls
Ashley is an inspiration for all the teens out there. At the age of 14, she started a website called WhateverLife.com, which mainly was mainly targeted at designing MySpace layouts and gave away HTML tutorials for young adults. This website, which was founded in 2004, is still very popular and sticks to its original theme. Her website gets an average of 60 million page views per month for about 7 million unique visitors.
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Caterina Fake
Before she became the co-founder of Flickr, a photo sharing service, she was the co-founder of Hunch.com, a website aimed at connecting people online with their affinity for things through personalized recommendations. Flickr was later sold to Yahoo for a whopping 8 figure amount. Caterina has not only received a multiple of business awards, but she was listed by Time Magazine as one of the world’s most influential people in 2006.
The number of female entrepreneurs has been increasing globally, but still the percentage is less compared to that of their male counterparts. Women still face a lot of hurdles compared to men and are constantly discouraged from starting their own businesses. We need to create a place where our girls get to show their talents and grow as a person.
About Carson Derrow
