Sheryl Kara Sandberg is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org. In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company's second-highest-ranking official. In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook's board of directors, becoming the first woman to serve on its board. As head of the company's advertising business, Sandberg was credited for making the company profitable. Prior to joining Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google and was involved in its philanthropic arm Google.org. Before that, Sandberg served as research assistant to Lawrence Summers at the World Bank, and subsequently as his chief of staff when he was Bill Clinton's United States Secretary of the Treasury.
Heather Richardson Higgins is an American businesswoman, political commentator, and non-profit sector executive. She is the CEO of Independent Women's Voice and chairman of its sister organization, Independent Women's Forum, organizations that are designed to promote traditional, conservative values.
Susan Davis is an author, public speaker, consultant and expert on international development and social entrepreneurship. She is the Chairperson of Solutions Journalism Network, an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University Stern School of Business, a coach to social entrepreneurs and active on many boards and advisory councils.
The phrase women in business refers to female businesspeople who hold positions, particularly leadership in the fields of commerce, business, and entrepreneurship. It advocates for their increased participation in business.
Gloria Feldt is an American author, speaker, commentator, and feminist activist who gained recognition as a social and political advocate of women's rights. In 2013, she and Amy Litzenberger founded Take the Lead, a nonprofit initiative with a goal to propel women to leadership parity by 2025. She is a former CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, directing the organization from 1996 to 2005.
The Women & Politics Institute (WPI) is a research institute located in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. Their mission is to close the gender gap in political leadership. The institute provides young women with academic and practical training that encourages them to become involved in the political process. It facilitates research to enhance the understanding of the challenges women face in the political arena.
Laila Rashed Iskander Kamel is an Egyptian social entrepreneur and politician. She is formerly Egypt's Minister of State for Environment Affairs in the interim government of Prime Minister Hazem El Beblawi.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is an author who has written on the role of women and girls in foreign policy. She has held private sector roles in emerging technology for national security as well as financial services. She serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Women and Foreign Policy Program with the Council on Foreign Relations and has written the New York Times bestsellers The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015) and The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice (2021). A graduate of the University of Missouri and the Harvard Business School, Lemmon has covered a variety of topics such as women's entrepreneurship, women in the military, forced and child marriage, Syria and Afghanistan. She has also served as a board member of the Mercy Corps and the International Center for Research on Women, and as a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. She speaks Spanish, German, French and is conversant in Dari and basic Kurmanji.
Jennifer Pahlka is an American businesswoman and political advisor. She is the founder and former Executive Director of Code for America. She served as US Deputy Chief Technology Officer from June 2013 to June 2014 and helped found the United States Digital Service. Previously she had worked at CMP Media with various roles in the computer game industry. She was the co-chair and general manager of the Web 2.0 conferences. In June 2023, she released the book Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.
Susan Horowitz Cain is an American writer and lecturer.
Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead is a 2013 book encouraging women to assert themselves at work and at home, co-written by business executive Sheryl Sandberg and media writer Nell Scovell.
Courtney E. Martin is an American feminist, author, speaker, and social and political activist. She is known for writing books, speaking at universities throughout the nation, and for co-editing the feminist blog, Feministing.com. Her work also appears on numerous other blogs and websites. She is also a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics. She is known for promoting feminism by integrating storytelling and solutions into her writings and talks. According to Parker Palmer, she is “one of our most insightful culture critics and one of our finest young writers.” In 2013 she helped found the Solutions Journalism Network with journalists David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg.
Women's Entrepreneurship Day (WED) is a day on which the work of women entrepreneurs is observed and discussed, held every day of each year. The inaugural event was held in New York City at the United Nations, with additional events being held simultaneously in several other countries. 144 nations overall recognized the first WED in 2014, which included the presentation of the Women's Entrepreneurship Day Pioneer Awards. The organization behind WED also has an ambassadorship and fellowship program.
Sally R. Osberg an American business executive who formerly served as president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, where she partnered with founder and chairman, Jeffrey Skoll. She was the founding executive director of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.
The Super-chicken model refers to a manner of team recruitment that favors bringing together highly driven overachievers. It is argued that this can be counterproductive because of the negative effects of hyper-competitiveness on a group's dynamic, and that recruitment that emphasizes collaboration over individual excellence can result in greater productivity. The name makes analogy to the interactions among chickens observed in a study by Purdue University evolutionary biologist William Muir.
Nina Vasan is an American psychiatrist and author of the Amazon #1 best-selling book Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action and Innovation. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is currently the Founder and Executive Director of Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation at Stanford University. She won the 2002 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Elizabeth Elting is an American businesswoman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. She co-founded and served as co-chief executive officer of TransPerfect, the world's largest translation services provider, for 25 years. She has been named to Forbes magazine's list of the Richest Self-Made Women since 2016, with a net worth of $420 million.
Sucheta Subash Nadkarni was an academic in the field of management. She was born in India but spent most of her academic life in the USA and UK. She was known for her research on upper echelons and behavioral strategy. Her most heavily cited papers explored the "people side of strategy" by seeking to answer questions such as how do CEOs and top management teams shape key strategic behaviors such as innovation, entrepreneurship and strategic flexibility. Her later work centred on gender diversity and gender representation on corporate boards.
Michelle Penelope King is a white South African born journalist, writer, women's rights activist and advocate for gender equality. Since December 2019, King has been director of inclusion at Netflix, a department responsible for inclusion and diversity among corporate employees.
Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril is a non-fiction book by businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan. The book was first published in 2011 by Walker & Company.
