Female Heroes
Either
the entrepreneurs are getting younger or I am just getting older. Truth
is the key to Curisma is having a smart, focused, trend
spotter, gadget geek at the head of this company. I first met Fatma at an
event that matched entrepreneurs with angel investors. The concept of the
company piqued my interest and I went home and played around with the
site. You can get a little addicted discovering new products.
Female Internet Hero Andiara Petterle is an experienced entrepreneur in the Brazilian digital market.
Currently Digital Strategy and New Business Director at Grupo RBS and previously CEO Bolsa de Mulher, the largest online women's communications group in Brazil.
Andiara
has MA and BA degrees in Social Communications from PUC-Rio, was a
guest researcher at Brown University, studied Interactive Media
Development at the University of British Columbia, and participated in
the Women's Leadership Program at Harvard Business School. She is
co-author of the book "Poderosas Consumidoras: o que quer e pensa a nova
mulher brasileira".
We spoke to Andiarra about how to target women through digital media; the most common piece of advice she gives to start-ups; and how her journey in tech started on her 15th birthday.
Nellie Akalp is a passionate entrepreneur, small business
advocate and mother of four.
As CEO of CorpNet.com, an online legal document filing service, Nellie helps small US business owners form an LLC or incorporate a business to start their ventures off the right way.
Nellie has been in the industry since 1997 and throughout her career has created over 100,000 business formations. Nellie and her husband (who is also her business partner) founded MyCorporation.com, which they sold to Intuit in 2005. They started CorpNet.com in 2009.
You can find Nellie on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
We spoke to Nellie about why she's passionate about helping entrepreneurs; about why small business owners should form a business structure; and why as CEO she still loves answering the phone.
In the words of Fast Company, Nora
Abousteit is a "rare leader who can pull together technology,
publishing, and fashion, and inspire people".
Nora recently founded Kollabora.com, a social marketplace for craft and hobby supplies with multiple maker communities. Kollabora will launch in the first quarter of 2012 with fashion forward DIY projects in jewelry, knitting, and sewing.
With a love for interaction and innovative technology, before starting Kollabora, Nora reinvented an old sewing magazine into the DIY fashion community BurdaStyle.com, with over 700,000 members; now an icon in the sewing community.
Nora began her career at German power-publisher Hubert Burda Media and is part of the founding team of the DLD (Digital Life Design) conference.
Silvia de Tommaso is the President of A ITAARTE, a stone, interior décor and jewellery company in São Paolo.
The
UK’s largest female business community, everywoman, has announced the
2012 finalists in the everywoman in Technology Awards, once
again uncovering the UK’s most successful and talented
women working within the technology sector. And our own founder Simone Brummelhuis of The NextWomen is again part of the jury.
These
awards, now in their second year, highlight the achievements of women excelling
in this industry, in order to encourage more to see it as a rewarding career
choice.
Despite increases in the number of women entering the workforce over the past few decades, recent figures show that the number employed within the IT and telecoms sector has decreased. Although 47% of the UK workforce is female, only 18% of IT & Telecoms professionals are female, down from 22% in 2001*.
Most of Facebook Inc. (FB)’s more than 800 million users
are women. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the board, whose seven directors are all men.
The disconnect puts the social-media company at odds with others in the industry that have at least one female director, including LinkedIn Corp. and Google Inc., and from most big public companies in the U.S.
Just 11.3 percent of the Fortune 500 had male-only boards last year, according to Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit that researches women and business issues.
“We’re long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better,”
said Anne Mulcahy, former chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corp. and a director at Johnson & Johnson Co., Target Corp. and Washington Post Co. “It’s unfortunate when companies with a large percentage of women constituents don’t reflect that in their boardrooms.”
Virginia Poly
is the founder and President of Poly Placements, one of Canada’s
fastest-growing recruitment solutions companies.
Poly Placements has earned a lot of recognition in the past couple of years –the PROFIT HOT50, PROFIT W100, Branham300, the RBC Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Deloitte Startup Award 2010, and, most recently, one of the Toronto Star’s ‘10 To Watch in 2011’.
Before starting Poly in 2006, Virginia spent more than 10 years as a top-producing sales professional and trainer in IT, getting to know a wide variety of organizations from the inside out.
Virginia launched Poly Placements with a simple mandate: The ROI of Happiness. Happy clients and happy candidates means reduced time-to-hire, reduced recruiting costs, reduced turnover – and, ultimately, a better bottom line.
Elizabeth Galton is a celebrated British creative talent. Creative Director of Links of London for two and
a half years, Elizabeth was credited with successfully modernising the
brand’s design direction and steering the company through the next stage of growth and design evolution at the
forefront of the
British jewellery retail
scene.
As a Board member she contributed to taking the turnover from £45 million in 2006 to £79 million in 2009 and was responsible for directing store design, advertising campaigns and the full creative portfolio.
In 2010, Elizabeth was named in ‘Who’s Who of Britain’s Business Elite’ and was nominated for the ‘Women to Watch’ Award; a cultural leadership programme celebrating the achievements of some of the most ambitious and talented women in the cultural and creative industries. Her reputation grew globally as Creative Director of Links of London with profile pieces in publications such as Elle Japan and Vogue.
Moonfruit.com, the UK’s largest
DIY website builder, is one of the first businesses selected to take part in a
major new campaign by the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. The
campaign is aimed at inspiring people to start or grow their own business.
Based on the concept that there is "a business in everyone" and that all businesses can realise their ambitions, the campaign, launched by the Prime Minister in Yorkshire last week, sees the Government and the private sector coming together to highlight the support available to small firms and budding entrepreneurs.
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