This Women’s History Month, We’re Celebrating Groundbreaking Female Founders
By Sarah Koch, Vice President of Social Innovation at the Case Foundation
In honor of Women’s History Month, we wanted to give some extra glow to the female founders we’ve highlighted who bring business with a conscience to a new level. Through our #FacesofFounders hub on Medium, we’ve learned about and highlighted many of the women leaders changing how we think about entrepreneurship, acknowledging both the successes and unique obstacles they face.
These five founders are some of the many women breaking ground and bringing new solutions across industries. Learn more about them below and meet even more entrepreneurs building problem-solving businesses across race, place and gender by visiting FacesofFounders.org.
Shazi Visram launched organic baby food brand and B Corp, Happy Family, on Mother’s Day in 2006. She’s since gone on to raise $23 million for the sustainable healthy baby food brand that was acquired by Danone in 2013, showing that social impact can be successfully achieved alongside financial returns. Visram recognized a gap that needed to be filled in the baby food industry, and she set out to fill it, but her journey was far from easy.
Certified B Corporations like Happy Family Brands meet the highest standards of positive impact on society and the environment. Learn what it means to be B Corp certified.
We loved learning about how she worked to build support for her product and is now investing in other progress-driven companies like her own. We encourage you to read her profile to get the full story, but we’ll leave you with this powerful quote she shared:
“After about 300 conversations with investors, I realized that you’re basically a salesperson. They have to believe in you, your vision and your ability to see it through. And even if you don’t know the answer, you have to respond with confidence and be compelling.”
Dyan Gibbens brings her Air Force training and science expertise to the energy sector as part of a team that launches drones to collect data and help mitigate oil and gas leaks that can have detrimental environmental impact. Through Trumbull Unmanned, Gibbens is using her expertise for environmental conservation, as well as empowering even more veteran, Latinx and female leaders like herself through her work with the White House and with students at Rice University. And the Houston-based company is expanding internationally, with plans to open in Canada and Australia. Gibbens is a great example of an entrepreneurs blazing a trail and uplifting others to follow her path.
Kristen Sonday and Felicity Conrad founded Paladin to more effectively match lawyers with pro-bono cases. Conrad, a lawyer, and Sonday, an international-affairs specialist, had both seen the need for increased access to appropriate and specialized legal support. In the weeks after their launch, the federal government issued a travel ban that brought a massive and unprecedented demand for pro bono legal counsel. Their user base quickly grew from 50 to 1,500 members, all looking to bridge the gap between people who need lawyers and those who can help them. The journey that led Sonday and Conrad to Paladin, and to each other, is truly inspiring. And the two women have exciting plans for expanding the company and deepening their commitment to social impact.
Stephanie Lampkin set out to solve a problem she’s witnessed firsthand: unconscious hiring bias. Despite having an impressive set of tech skills, experience going all the way back to her early teens and degrees from two top-tier universities, Lampkin was getting turned down from jobs for not having the necessary “tech credentials.” Her response to this problem was building Blendoor, a blind hiring recruitment app that helps companies eliminate unconscious bias in their decision-making and provides them with a diverse pool of candidates. Despite a growing and high-profile group of clients interested in the service, Lampkin is facing an uphill fundraising battle. She had this to say about it:
“It would be incredibly naïve to assume that the same unconscious bias that Blendoor is designed to mitigate in hiring doesn’t exist in the venture capital world.”
While every entrepreneur journey is distinct, the facts about the barriers facing female entrepreneurs are stark and we encourage you to read the stories of Shazi, Dyan, Kristen, Felicity, Stephanie and the many other “her stories” of women and people of color in business who come face-to-face with these real world challenges every day. These stories remind us of the valuable contributions women bring despite the disproportionate challenges they face and hope they remind you of the importance of supporting women in the world of entrepreneurship.
Who are some women entrepreneurs who inspire you? Tweet at @CaseFoundation and @BCorporation using #FacesofFounders to tell us about them!
B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
