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.
Karen Irene Tse. She is Swiss and American, of Chinese descent, and lives in Geneva. Tse is a human rights defender and social entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of the global non-profit International Bridges to Justice, that fosters legal rights in more than 50 developing countries, building systematic early access to legal representation, in order to avoid the use of torture by law enforcement, and prevent other due process rights violations around the world.
Solitaire Townsend is a female entrepreneur, sustainability expert, TED speaker and author. She co-founded the change agency Futerra in 2001, now one of the leading sustainability agencies in the world, working with the world’s most influential organisations to activate social justice and environmental restoration.
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.
Janice Bryant Howroyd is an entrepreneur, businesswoman, and author. She is founder and chief executive officer of The ActOne Group, the largest privately held, minority-woman-owned personnel company founded in the U.S. Howroyd is the first African-American woman to build and own a billion dollar company.
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk, and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones.
Pamela Hartigan was the Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She was the founding partner of Volans Ventures and was also an advocate for the global non-profit social enterprise Cambia, at the World Economic Forum Davos meetings, and became a Director of Cambia in 2009 until her death.
Vanessa Kirsch is an American social entrepreneur widely recognized for her work in public and civic service. Kirsch is currently the Founder and Co-Ceo of New Profit, a venture philanthropy fund based in Boston, Massachusetts. She also founded and formerly led Public Allies, a national youth service organization, and the Women’s Information Network, an organization that provides support, training, and political access to young women.
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.
Karen A. Linder is an American business leader, investor, author and artist. She serves as CEO and president of Tethon 3D, a 3d printing company, and as principal of Linseed Capital, a private investment firm. Her book, The Women of Berkshire Hathaway, was published in 2012 by John Wiley & Sons.
Beverly Schwartz is an American behavioral scientist, business executive, non-profit leader and author specializing in social marketing and social entrepreneurship. From 2004-2016 she was the Vice President of Global Marketing of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Her book Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World was honored with the 2013 Silver Nautilus Book Award and the 2013 Axiom Business Book Award. It has been translated into 4 additional languages - Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean (Eijipress).
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.
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.
Martine Liautaud is an international financial executive and entrepreneur who has been an active advocate for the mentoring of women in the business world. She was appointed a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2011.
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.
