Her Story:
Lynn Tilton, through her private equity firm Patriarch Partners, owns more companies than any other woman in the United States, with a combined value of more than $8 billion. A Bronx native and graduate of Yale and Columbia Universities, Tilton’s career escalated through several Wall Street investment firms before she founded her own business “on the investment principle that making money and making the world a better place are not mutually exclusive concepts.” She does this by investing in distressed companies whose failure would result in significant job loss. In the highly competitive and predominantly male world of finance, she has grown Patriarch Partners’ portfolio to include more than 70 companies and is committed to providing debt and equity investments in those industries that regularly face the threat of liquidation, most notably in the manufacturing sector. Through her acquisition strategy, she is credited with saving more than 250,000 American jobs.51
" }, { "id" : 44, "slug" : "chaundra-smith", "category" : "2000-2013", "title" : "Chaundra Smith", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Smith_Rise-of-the-Everyday-Entrepreneur.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Smith_Rise-of-the-Everyday-Entrepreneur_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Microsoft.", "text" : "“In the end, I'm devoted to people and trying to take value that would be lost and keep people from going home and telling their families they don't have a job. That's what keeps getting me up in the morning and continuing to like myself and what I do. If the worst somebody says is that you are using your sexuality, I'd like to think I'll be remembered for my intellect and that I got up each morning and got my fingernails dirty.\"
Her Story:
When her children began experiencing skin irritations and rashes, Chicagoan Chaundra Smith got busy seeking alternative products that were affordable and natural. When Smith was laid off from her in 2008, she transformed her quest into a business, and launched Naturally Me, which makes handmade, natural vegan home and beauty products. Within three years, Naturally Me expanded dramatically, offering products through a website, directly to boutiques and spas, as well as through consultants who sell at in-home demonstration parties. Smith’s team of half a dozen sales and PR consultants are based in three states, covering two time zones and working multiple shifts. Making it all come together for this small company are cloud technologies that let Smith connect with her team and clients via videoconferencing and document sharing. 50
" }, { "id" : 43, "slug" : "allison-okelly", "category" : "2000-2013", "title" : "Allison O’Kelly", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/OKelly_Moms_Corp.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/OKelly_Moms-Corp_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Allison O'Kelly of Mom Corps.", "text" : "“The best piece of advice I have is to have patience and do lots of research. Success does not happen overnight. It may seem like a business just popped up overnight, but believe me when I say that they have been working hard at it for years before it became a big hit.”
Her Story:
Allison O’Kelly was a hard-working woman with a top management job in Atlanta, GA when the arrival of her child changed everything. Her need for a flexible schedule so she could juggle her career and family led her to switch jobs and start working on a freelance/contract basis as a certified public accountant (CPA). But once again, the assignments piled up and the flexibility she hoped for seemed elusive. Her solution: she started to subcontract assignments from clients to her CPA friends. In the process, she realized that many companies needed flexible and short-time workers and O’Kelly converted her contract business into a flexible-staffing company called Mom Corps. The company relies on a talent pool of individuals who want to work and maintain their careers but also need a nontraditional schedule. Starting with just five moms, O’Kelly’s business has expanded nationwide with 15 franchises, 40 employees and franchise owners, and a pool of 150,000 candidates. O’Kelly pairs her creative business model with powerful cloud technologies that enable workers to complete assignments within deadlines but on their schedules.49
" }, { "id" : 42, "slug" : "caterina-fake", "category" : "2000-2013", "title" : "Caterina Fake", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Caterina_Fake.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Caterina_Fake_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Courtesy of Robert Scoble.", "text" : "“The long-term success and sustainability of a business rests largely on its human element. Bravo to the organizations looking for creative ways to attract new talent -- especially from the largely untapped and highly-skilled formerly professional pool.”
Her Story:
Caterina Fake is the ultimate success story among women whose early careers in Internet-driven businesses of the 1990s catapulted them to unprecedented levels of success in the twenty-first century. She served as the art director of the popular web-zine, Salon.com during the 1990s, and then in 2004 cofounded Ludicorp, a company that produced one of the first web 2.0 sites of the century, Flickr. Yahoo acquired the popular photo-sharing site Flickr in 2005 for an estimated $35 million. After a stint on staff with Yahoo, Fake returned to the world of entrepreneurship, launching another startup in 2008 called Hunch, which E-Bay acquired for approximately $80 million in 2011. Fake continues to be a prominent presence in the world of online service-driven sites, as chairperson at Etsy and a member of the board of directors at Creative Commons. She followed in 2012 with Findery.com (initially named Pinwheel), which allows users to leave virtual notes on a worldwide map for others to see. A serial entrepreneur, Fake’s intuition and talent for understanding how online users want to interact has placed her at the vanguard of twenty-first century women entrepreneurs who thrive in the world of Internet based companies.48
" }, { "id" : 41, "slug" : "emily-and-elizabeth-dell", "category" : "2000-2013", "title" : "Emily and Elizabeth Dell", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Dell_Bio_2000s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Dell_Bio_2000s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Emily Dell and Elizabeth Dell. Credit: Grace Oh.", "text" : "“Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.”
Their Story:
When aspiring filmmaker Emily Dell received a film-writing grant at the University of California-Berkeley, she drafted her sister Elizabeth to help manage the project. That partnership soon grew into Two Camels Films, a movie production company that eventually found a home in Los Angeles. Emily is the writer and director while Elizabeth is the producer, and they collaborate on every step of production. Two Camels Films gained attention in 2010, when Showtime picked up their feature film “B-GIRL,” about a female breakdancer. In 2012, the sisters launched a Kickstarter project to create a documentary about young women entrepreneurs, called She Means Business.
" }, { "id" : 40, "slug" : "nina-vaca", "category" : "1980s-1990s", "title" : "Nina Vaca", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Vaca_Changing-Contexts.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Vaca_Changing-Contexts_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "", "text" : "Her Story:
Nina Vaca was 25 years old in 1996, when she established Pinnacle Technical Resources in Dallas, TX. In a $20 billion industry, the company is an information technology service provider and staffing agency to Fortune 500 companies. Born in Ecuador, Vaca was two years old when she immigrated to the U.S. with her parents, who were both entrepreneurs. She regularly credits her parents’ entrepreneurial efforts during her childhood as her main inspiration. Despite the impressive size of her business, Vaca she still refers to Pinnacle as a family company since she works alongside her sister, brother, and husband. In 2011, Pinnacle acquired Provade, a vendor management software firm, which made the company “the largest woman-owned and Hispanic-owned vendor management software firm in the world.”47
" }, { "id" : 39, "slug" : "laurel-touby", "category" : "1980s-1990s", "title" : "Laurel Touby", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Touby_Mediabistro.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Touby_Mediabistro_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Permission of Gary He.", "text" : "“Whatever your strengths, leverage them to the fullest toward reaching your goal. Hire everything else, and never be afraid to fail.”
Her Story:
In 1994, Laurel Touby was a freelance writer seeking to end the isolation most writers experience by hosting monthly get-togethers for media professionals at New York restaurants. Two years later, she added an online component and launched mediabistro.com, a web site that grew to include job listings, career development courses, industry news and other resources. With venture capital financing and building her software “from the ground up,” Touby’s mediabistro quickly became the premier social networking site for people who work in the media business. The after-work cocktail parties Touby started – donning a colorful assortment of her trademark feather boas – continued, expanding to such cities as Boston, Washington and San Francisco. As of 2013, the site has an international base of more than 2 million members and an expanding library of resources, including several blogs. Jupitermedia acquired the company for $23 million in 2007, and Touby remained with the company until 2011.46
" }, { "id" : 38, "slug" : "brenda-garrand", "category" : "1980s-1990s", "title" : "Brenda Garrand", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Garrand_Bio.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Garrand_Bio_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Brenda Garrand.", "text" : "“Don’t be afraid to ask what you may consider a dumb question. So many entrepreneurs stumble because they fear looking stupid. But they should have asked the dumb questions to avoid even dumber results.”
Her Story:
Just two years out of college, in 1979 Brenda Garrand was already the country’s youngest public television information director.45 After receiving a prestigious Women’s Training Grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Garrand began her career working for WCBB in Maine, managing advertising placements and creative direction. She raised funds, hosted programs, organized events and served as the youngest member of PBS’s national brand development council. Recognized as a talent in the field, she fielded offers from national agencies and major market PBS affiliates, but her desire to remain in Maine put her at a cross roads. Not yet thirty years old, she realized she was likely as high as she could be in her career in the Maine market. So, she created her own opportunities, and at age 29, with a supportive family and young child, Garrand opted to take a risk and launch her own full-service communications agency. To fund growth and operations, she took out a home equity loan for $25,000, which gave her the leverage to scale her business immediately. She grew Garrand from an office of 2½ staff to 35 employees in 2010 and with it a coveted ranking by Advertising Age as one of the top thirty places to work in marketing and media in the nation. As a nationally recognized branding expert, Garrand expanded her company’s clientele to include such companies as Osram/Sylvania, the H.P. Hood family of brands, Fairpoint Communications, Lion Brand, Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams and L.L. Bean.
" }, { "id" : 37, "slug" : "patricia-r.-miller-barbara-bradley-baekgaard", "category" : "1980s-1990s", "title" : "Patricia R. Miller and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Barbara-and-Patricia---Vera-Bradley_032013.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Barbara-and-Patricia---Vera-Bradley_thumb_032013.jpg", "credit" : "", "text" : "“If you listen and pay attention to what you really love to do, pretty much everything else follows..”
Their Story:
Longtime friends Patricia R. Miller and Barbara Bradley Baekgaard got the idea for their company, Vera Bradley, while on vacation and were struck by the lack of feminine luggage available. Each woman contributed $250 in 1982 to start the business of quilted handbags, luggage and giftware, which rapidly grew a loyal following of customers. The Indiana-based company was named after Barbara’s mother, who had been an Elizabeth Arden model in her youth and worked at the company bearing her name until she died in 1990. The Vera Bradley company currently employs more than 2,000 people. The company’s success resulted not only from the co-founders’ sense of style and market demand for feminine travel gear and accessories, but also on their ability to finance, manufacture, and deliver an ever-evolving assortment of new designs and patterns. 44
" }, { "id" : 36, "slug" : "sara-blakely", "category" : "1980s-1990s", "title" : "Sara Blakely", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Blakely_Gaining-Widespread-Acceptance_1980s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Blakely_Gaining-Widespread-Acceptance_1980s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: David Shankbone.", "text" : "“If you have an idea, run with it. Don’t think twice, just go with it like I did.” - Barbara Bradley Baekgaard, co-founder, Vera Bradley, Inc.
Her Story:
In 1998, 29-year-old Sara Blakely emptied her savings account of $5,000 to develop a line of shapewear that would make women look slim and trim. Blakely, whose employment history until that moment consisted of ride-greeter at Walt Disney World and fax salesperson, came up with the idea because, as she has frequently said, she “didn’t like the way [her] butt looked in white pants,” and she was certain other women shared her frustrations. The result: her company, Atlanta-based Spanx, became one of the hottest selling body shaper lines worldwide, with 2011 sales estimated at $250 million dollars and an estimated corporate value of $1 billion.43
" }, { "id" : 35, "slug" : "diane-von-furstenberg", "category" : "1960-1979", "title" : "Diane Von Furstenberg", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Furstenberg_Bio_1960s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Furstenberg_Bio_1960s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Ed Kavishe, Fashion Wire Press.", "text" : "“My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don't be afraid to fail.”
Her Story:
If a single garment could symbolize women’s independence in the heyday of the 1970s women’s movement, it would be Diane von Furstenberg’s iconic wrap dress. Von Furstenberg was an unlikely entrepreneur; a Jewish immigrant who married a German prince, she was barely out of her twenties when her simple cotton jersey wrap dress took off, selling over one million dresses in the 1970s. The marriage was short-lived, but as a designer, von Furstenberg became an emblem of feminism and femininity, celebrated in the press and making the cover of both Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal in 1976. In the mid-1980s, she stepped back from her wild success, licensed various aspects of her business and relocated to Paris. She returned to the U.S. in 1990, and in 1997, she rode the wave of nostalgia around her vintage wrap dresses, re-launching her company with an updated version. In the 2000s, she continued to expand her brand, including a housewares line in 2011. As of 2013, DVF products were sold in 70 countries and 45 freestanding stores. In 2005, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America and was elected the CFDA president in 2006. Her wrap dress was worn by Michelle Obama in 2009. In 1999, von Furstenberg and husband Barry Diller established the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, to support and provide opportunities to organizations and individuals worldwide, and in 2010 von Furstenberg launched the DVF Awards to honor female leaders.42
" }, { "id" : 34, "slug" : "jean-nidetch", "category" : "1960-1979", "title" : "Jean Nidetch", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Nidetch_Weight-Watchers.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Nidetch_Weight-Watchers_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "", "text" : "“I became the woman I wanted to be.”
Her Story:
She’s been voted one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century, but all Jean Nidetch wanted in 1961, as a 38-year-old wife and mother, was to finally find a way to lose weight—and keep it off. That’s how she stumbled onto the formula that two years later became Weight Watchers, Inc. After years of failed diets, she went to the New York Department of Health for help and was given a diet plan. She enlisted several friends who similarly wanted to shed some pounds to join her. The group met weekly, talked about their successes and struggle, and measured their weight loss. Within a year, Nidetch lost 72 pounds (which she never regained). She wanted to share her success, and in 1963 she opened her first Weight Watchers in Little Neck, NY; a year later, Nidetch began franchising the concept. The company went public in 1968, and a year later there were 72 franchises. Today approximately 1.3 million members attend over 40,000 Weight Watchers meetings around the world each week, which are run by more than 12,000 leaders—each of whom lost weight on the program.41
" }, { "id" : 33, "slug" : "rose-morgan", "category" : "1960-1979", "title" : "Rose Morgan", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Morgan_Movements-for-Change_1960s_032013.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Morgan_Movements-for-Change_1960s_thumb_032013.jpg", "credit" : "", "text" : "“It's choice—not chance—that determines your destiny.”
Her Story:
As owner of the largest and most visible African American beauty salons in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, Rose Morgan became a symbol of achievement in the civil rights era. The 1955 opening of her second and grandest salon – Rose Meta House of Beauty – in Harlem was heralded in the black and mainstream press alike. The event drew a crowd of more than 10,000 people, including New York City elites such as Susan Wagner, the wife of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Morgan’s marriage to boxing champion Joe Louis in 1955 only furthered her celebrity status, though it lasted only a few years. Morgan worked to dispel white standards of beauty and encourage African American women to celebrate their features. Toward that end, in the 1960s, she wrote a column for the New Pittsburgh Courier called “The Beautiful Truth: Rose Morgan’s Beauty Tips.” During her years in business, she trained 3000 employees, launched her own products (including an unsuccessful cologne bearing Joe Louis’s name), and in 1965 was one of the founders of the African-American owned Freedom National Bank in New York. Morgan also fought for better wages and conditions for beauticians and was the first black beauty shop owner to become a member of the New York State Wage Board. She retired in the 1970s. Sales figures for her business vary, with some estimates reaching as high as $3 million during its heyday.40
" }, { "id" : 32, "slug" : "ruth-fertel", "category" : "1960-1979", "title" : "Ruth Fertel", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Fertel_Bio_1960s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Fertel_Bio_1960s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Ruth's Chris Hospitality Group.", "text" : "Her Story:
In 1965, Ruth Fertel was a divorced mother of two, working as a lab technician at Tulane University and worrying about how she would pay for her sons’ college education. One day, while flipping through the newspaper classifieds, she saw a restaurant for sale – Chris Steak House – and something clicked. Without any restaurant experience, she trusted her instinct to pursue that opportunity. While banks did not like to lend to women, she convinced a local bank to give her the $22,000 she needed to buy the business by putting her home up as collateral. She added her first name to the business, making it the tongue-twister she later joked about, Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Fertel had to learn everything – including how to butcher meat at the high-end restaurant. In 1976, she began to franchise the restaurant while continuing to open more herself. As of 2013, there are more than 120 Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses worldwide (including Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mexico), along with 20 restaurants bearing the company’s Mitchell’s Fish Markets, Mitchell’s Steakhouse and Cameron’s Steakhouse names. Ruth’s Chris Steak House became a publically held company in 2005.38
" }, { "id" : 31, "slug" : "lillian-vernon", "category" : "1940-1959", "title" : "Lillian Vernon", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Vernon_Bio_1950s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Vernon_Bio_1950s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Public Domain (with permission of Annie Watts).", "text" : "“The restaurant staff was expecting me to fail, just like the others who had bought the restaurant before me, especially since I was a woman. Actually I never had a doubt that I would make it.”
Her Story:
Lillian Vernon started her business at age 24, while a newlywed and pregnant with her first child. A German-Jewish immigrant whose family fled Nazi Germany in 1937, she wanted to make sure her children had a comfortable life growing up. She took $2,000 of wedding gift money and placed an ad in Seventeen magazine for monogrammed belts and handbags, which were popular in the 1950s. She expected a few thousand dollars in sales; she received $32,000 in orders. Vernon, whose married name was Hochberg, redubbed herself after the town she lived in, Mount Vernon, New York. After the couple divorced in 1968, she divided the business with her ex, giving him the $5 million wholesale side and keeping for herself the $1 million mail order segment. By the 1970s, her famous catalog was a familiar sight in homes across America, generating $60 million in sales of its gifts and decorating items by 1982.37
" }, { "id" : 30, "slug" : "pauline-trigere", "category" : "1940-1959", "title" : "Pauline Trigère", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Trigere_Bio_Patterns.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Trigere_Bio_Patterns_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Vintage Patterns.", "text" : "“One reason women make such great managers in business is that they have experience dealing with multiple distractions. Time management is an invaluable skill, and I honed mine running a household and a business simultaneously.”
Her Story:
In many ways she was America’s Coco Chanel. Pauline Trigère was sophisticated, elegant, and never afraid to speak her mind – a larger-than-life woman who embodied the essence of American haute couture. Husky-voiced and donning her signature dark glasses, Trigère dominated the New York fashion scene for more than 50 years. The daughter of Russian-Jews, Trigère and her husband left her native Paris in 1937, concerned about Adolf Hitler’s growing power and venomous assaults on Jews in Europe. The pair ultimately landed in New York, and Trigère, the daughter of tailors, worked with her husband in a small tailoring business. When he ended the marriage in 1942, she launched the company that would become her fashion empire and became a US citizen. Like Chanel, Trigère created her designs by draping fabric rather than sketching, and her clothes were the favorites of celebrities, as well as ordinary people. She also blazed her own trails: in 1961 in the midst of the civil rights era, Trigère was the first designer to hire an African American model; and she thumbed her nose at accounts that consequently canceled orders. In 1992, she celebrated her 50 years in fashion at a benefit at Lincoln Center and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America – one of many accolades she earned during her career. In 1994, Trigère scaled down her business and in 2000, facing health concerns, she finally retired.36
" }, { "id" : 29, "slug" : "mary-c.-crowley", "category" : "1940-1959", "title" : "Mary C. Crowley", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Crowley_Bios_Home-Interirors.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Crowley_Bios_Home-Interirors_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "", "text" : "\"People always say to me, 'Aren't you French?' and I say, 'No, I am American.' I found in this country everything I wanted. This country made me Pauline Trigère.\"
Her Story:
Business, faith, and opportunities for women were all compatible to Mary C. Crowley, the maverick behind one of the largest direct sales companies in decorating and gift items, Home Interiors & Gifts. A single mother of two in Sherman, Texas, Crowley was recruited by her friend and future cosmetics entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash into direct selling in the 1940s. Although she liked the work, Crowley was incensed by her employer’s policy that limited commissions for its female sales team. In 1957, with savings and a $6,000 bank loan – unusual for women in that era – she launched Home Interiors, and incorporated the party-selling techniques popular at the time. A devout woman of faith, Crowley was famous for incorporating Biblical principles into business meetings, to which she attributed her success. She saw the company as a way to aid women, urging the mothers in her sales force to schedule work around their family obligations. She also wrote several inspirational books, advised two U.S. Presidents, and received the Horatio Alger award recognizing her example of the American ideals of perseverance and hard work. The company was sold in 2008 and became part of Celebrating Home based in Carlile, Texas.34 One of her lasting legacies is the Mary Crowley Cancer Research Center, which she founded to pursue innovation toward a cure for the disease that took her life.
" }, { "id" : 28, "slug" : "clara-and-lillian-westropp", "category" : "1910-1939", "title" : "Clara and Lillian Westropp", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/westropp.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/westropp_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University.", "text" : "Their Story:
On February 1, 1922, a new bank opened its doors in Cleveland, Ohio. The event might have been regarded as just another new financial services company launching in the midst of what many at the time understood to be a booming economy, except that the new bank was started by two sisters, Clara and Lillian Westropp. Not only were women entering a traditionally male-dominated field, but their vision for Women’s Savings & Loan included an all-female board of directors and a mission to educate women about money. Clara, the bank’s secretary, had worked in financial services; Lillian, its president, was a lawyer who later became a judge. The bank, which accepted male and female clientele, not only survived, it thrived: it weathered the difficult years of the Great Depression, obtained a federal charter and reorganized as Women’s Federal Savings & Loan in 1935, and by 1950, had assets exceeding $20 million, making it the second largest bank in the county. After the deaths of the Westropps, various men held leadership positions in the bank. In 1983, it was renamed Women’s Federal Savings Bank with assets topping $576 million; in 1992 it was bought by and absorbed under Charter One Financial. 32
" }, { "id" : 27, "slug" : "carrie-crawford-smith", "category" : "1910-1939", "title" : "Carrie Crawford Smith", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Smith_The-New-Woman-Entrep_1910.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Smith_The-New-Woman-Entrep_1910_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Shorefront Photographic Archives.", "text" : "“We give our clientele our ability, our integrity, and our Experience, to aid them in their financial problems, and they in turn give us their confidence and patronage just as they would give it to any sound financial institution, whether it is run by men or women.” (Clara and Lillian Westropp)
Her Story:
Not long after moving to Evanston, IL, Carrie Crawford Smith, an African-American woman from Tennessee, opened an employment agency in 1918. During the era of mass migration of African Americans from the South to the North, Smith saw her business as a chance to help new arrivals find work. Her business catered to both black and white clients, but mainly focused on African Americans, who were moving to the Chicago suburb in great numbers following the First World War. Smith grew her company by becoming the go-to agency for domestic help. But her business was about more than just jobs – she also saw her venture as a way to promote racial advancement and dignity, especially in the face of ongoing racism. She became a well-revered figure among African Americans when she instituted “standards” which anyone who wished to employ one of her clients had to accept. These standards, mainly intended to protect black women’s reputations, also insisted that employers treat her clients with dignity and respect.31
" }, { "id" : 26, "slug" : "elizabeth-arden", "category" : "1910-1939", "title" : "Elizabeth Arden", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Arden_Bio_1940_50s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Arden_Bio_1940_50s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Library of Congress.", "text" : "Her Story:
Elizabeth Arden was not just a leading beauty entrepreneur; she was a pioneering New Woman, suffragist and maverick. Born Florence Nightingale Graham in Canada, she trained and briefly worked as a nurse, where she was inspired by the use of creams to treat burns. She moved to New York in 1909, took a job at salon, and a year later opened her Fifth Avenue spa with what would become her trademark red door and her new name Elizabeth Arden. A staunch advocate for equality, Arden joined 15,000 women in a suffrage demonstration in 1912, with the marchers all donning red lipstick as a sign of fortitude. In 1914, she hired chemists to develop the first of hundreds of skincare products. Arden also mastered new, modern marketing techniques to promote cosmetics – which had previously been associated with prostitutes and other lower status women – to a respectable, upscale market. Her strategy worked. By 1922, Arden’s company became one of the first global brands when she opened a spa in Paris. Her longtime rivalry with Helena Rubenstein further sparked her ambition. Arden’s business not only survived the Great Depression, but in the 1930s was hailed as one of the three best-known American brands in the world (the other two were Coca-Cola and Singer Sewing Machines.) Arden shared the secrets of her success with would-be women entrepreneurs at seminars after World War II and in 1946 was the first woman on the cover of Time magazine. There were over 100 Elizabeth Arden Salons worldwide at the time of her death in 1966; the company was sold in 1971 for $38 million. 28
" }, { "id" : 12, "slug" : "sandra-kurtzig", "category" : "1960-1979", "title" : "Sandra Kurtzig", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Kurtzig_Bio_1960s-1.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Kurtzig_Bio_1960s-2_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Courtesy of Sandra Kurtzig", "text" : "“It is remarkable what a woman can accomplish with just a little ambition.”
Her Story:
She’s been called “a legendary figure in the tech world” and “the first lady of computers,” and it’s no wonder. In 1974, at a time when women were barely beginning to consider careers in high-tech, Sandra Kurtzig was founding what would become one of the fastest-growing computer software companies in America, ASK Computer Systems – and she started it in her spare bedroom with just $2,000. What began as a part-time venture developing inventory control software while she started a family quickly grew into a full-time vocation. Kurtzig used some creative negotiating in her early days, talking Hewlett Packard into letting her programmers use their minicomputers after hours and then, once the product was developed, convincing HP to bundle it. In 1981, she became the first woman to take a technology firm public. Not bad for a woman who ten years earlier was selling computer time for General Electric. She stepped down from ASK in 1985 (though remained chair), but returned as CEO in 1989 to revive the company and help it reach the $450 million mark by 1992. Shortly thereafter she stepped down and the company was acquired for $311 million. By 2010, Kurtzig used $10.5 million in venture capital funds to launch Kenandy, Inc., a cloud-based manufacturing software company. 39
" }, { "id" : 13, "slug" : "bette-nesmith", "category" : "1940-1959", "title" : "Bette Nesmith Graham", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Nesmith_Bio_1950s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/bette-nesmith.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Permission of LiquidPaper.", "text" : "“I’m willing to take risks. If you don’t have some fear of failure, then you’re not taking enough risks.”
Her Story:
Bette Nesmith Graham was a divorced, working mother in Dallas, TX, in the early 1950s, who found her typing skills put to the test when her boss replaced her manual typewriter with a new, electric model. She worried that all the mistakes she made on the more sensitive machine might cost her the job she needed to support her young son Michael. So, in 1954 she tapped into her training as an artist to develop “Mistake Out,” a white liquid that could paint over typing errors. Other secretaries started asking to buy her product; by 1958, she focused full-time on her fledgling company, which was selling 100 bottles a month. In 1962, she married Robert Graham, and the pair hit the road promoting her brand, which she renamed “Liquid Paper” in 1968. By that time, she was selling 40,000 bottles a week; nine years later in 1977, her firm had 331 employees worldwide selling 500 bottles a minute. Success enabled Graham to apply her feminism and Christian Science faith to her business; her corporate headquarters included a library, day care center and art showcase, and she launched a foundation helping other women succeed. 35
" }, { "id" : 11, "slug" : "hattie-gray-austin-moseley", "category" : "1910-1939", "title" : "Hattie (Gray) Austin-Moseley", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Austin_Bio_1930s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/miss-hattie.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Courtesy of Hattie's Chicken Shack (photo by Michael Noonan).", "text" : "\"I didn’t have a fellow at the time, so I had to do it all myself. I had to …appreciate that as a woman, I was strong, complete, adequate.\"
Her Story:
Hattie Austin Moseley was newly widowed in 1938, living in Saratoga Springs, New York and looking for a way to provide for herself during the difficult years of the Great Depression. Born in Louisiana, Moseley, whose mother died in childbirth, had held jobs as a domestic and restaurant worker. Using her savings, she launched Hattie’s Chicken Shack, a food stand serving southern-style fried chicken, biscuits and other treats that was open 24 hours a day, to cater to the horse-racing and night life scene that made the town famous. Her food and sense of humor drew crowds; within a year, she earned enough to expand to a full-scale restaurant, frequented in its history by such celebrities as Jackie Robinson, Cab Calloway and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Moseley continued to work until age 92, when she sold the restaurant. As of 2013, it remains a popular and historic restaurant that still uses Hattie’s original fried chicken recipe, named best by Food and Wine magazine. 29
" }, { "id" : 10, "slug" : "joyce-chen", "category" : "1940-1959", "title" : "Joyce Chen", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Chen_Bio_1940s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/joyce-chen.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Joyce Chen family collection.", "text" : "“Whenever anybody comes to the door, give ‘em something to eat. That may be Jesus.”
Her Story:
Chinese restaurants may be a common sight across America today, but such eateries were hard to come by when Joyce Chen opened her restaurant in 1958 near Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, MA. Chen, who left Communist China with her husband in 1949, was a mother of three. Her egg rolls were a hit at school bake sales, and she often taught cooking classes in her home. Chen was encouraged to start the restaurant by Asian students from Shanghai who were at MIT who were so homesick for the kind of food she prepared that they lent her the start-up money. Chen is credited with introducing Americans to Mandarin style food not only through her highly successful restaurant—popular during its heyday with notables such as Henry Kissinger—but also through her 1966 PBS series “Joyce Chen Cooks,” and her cookbooks. She developed the flat bottom wok after becoming frustrated with trying to use traditional round woks on the flat surfaces of American stoves. Chen’s name also appeared on food products and kitchenware. Her restaurant closed in 1998; as of 2013, food products bearing her name are still available through a Joyce Chen brand business run by her son. 33
" }, { "id" : 9, "slug" : "margaret-rudkin", "category" : "1910-1939", "title" : "Margaret Rudkin", "image" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Rudkin_Bio_1930s.jpg", "image_thumb" : "http://entrepreneurs.womenshistory.org/images/uploads/Rudkin_Bio_1930s_thumb.jpg", "credit" : "Credit: Library of Congress.", "text" : "Her Story:
Margaret Rudkin had enough on her hands in the 1930s: her family’s finances took a tumble after the stock market crash of 1929, and she was eagerly seeking ways to make a living from the large farmhouse property that was her home. She had already sold off horses, cars and other belongings. As if that wasn’t enough, her son’s asthma and food allergies made mealtimes a challenge, since he could not eat most commercially-processed foods. Along with a diet of fruits and vegetables, she created a recipe of stone-ground wheat bread that seemed to bolster her son’s health, so much so that the family doctor recommended it to other patients. Before long, Rudkin was filling orders for her bread, and by the end of 1939, she sold more than a million and a half loaves and found herself featured in Reader’s Digest. In 1940, she moved her business from her garage to its own factory. Although supplies of whole wheat led her to cut production during World War II, she was back in high gear once it ended. In the 1950s, inspired on her trips to Europe, she added cookies; and in 1961, she sold the business to Campbell Soup for $28 million, becoming the first woman to serve on Campbell’s board of directors. 30
" } ]“There isn’t a worthwhile thing in the world that can’t be accomplished with good hard work. You’ve got to want something first and then you have to go after it with all your heart and soul.”