10 Women Leaders Who Are Breaking the Glass Ceiling

June 10, 2020

Nicole Stiles

A local group of women who helped each other not only become successful in their careers but also have made the world a better place.

When Julie Abrams was a student at St. Pius X Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she describes herself as “precocious.” In middle school she was the student, who would be taken to the nearby high school for math classes–a born leader–Julie was the captain of the swim team and constantly organized group activities. In other words, her role in How Women Lead is a natural fit.

“I only had minor gender role concerns as a kid,” says Julie, “As a good athlete, I was one of the first girls to get the benefit of equal investment in athletics for girls, title nine, however, I started realizing how critical it is for women to have their own financial means as I watched a lot of my parent’s contemporaries get divorced when the guy went off with a 25-year-old and didn’t have a requirement to give his family anything. These women were destitute, and I said that was never going to be me.”

Her grades and athletic abilities served her well, as she attended both Northwestern University, where she studied human development and social policy, and then University of Chicago for a degree in social service administration. “I had a real awakening at Northwestern,” she says. “I took classes on racial and gender justice and really began to build a lifelong commitment to addressing bias and inequity.” One of her first real jobs was as an intern for the Chicago Foundation for Women. Working with women philanthropists was a seminal experience, she explains, “I saw how you could create something with a vision and take powerful action.”

Abrams eventually became CEO of Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment, an organization that has trained over 6,000 women to start their own businesses and helped with funding through micro loans.

This experience fueled her next step: “I sent out an invite to a few colleagues for lunch and 60 top women CEOs and leaders not only showed up but we’re so jazzed to be together that they put a LinkedIn group together and asked me to do it again. That was really the genesis for what we are doing now.” She realized there was a demand, or as she describes “a hunger for senior women to be around other women like themselves, because they were always the only woman in the room at that level.”

After casually bringing people together for a few years, they created a 501(c)(3) for a giving circle and to give grants to women and girls organizations. They wanted to be a lever where there was power and glass ceilings. And focusing on issues of inequity in the boardroom was perfect.

As they formed How Women Lead, Julie created a four-part credo: Be fierce advocates for each other, say yes to helping each other, reinforce “her” voice and be unabashedly visible. And it’s working.

Julie was named a Queenmaker by San Francisco Magazine last November, dubbed “The Connector” for her deep networks of women who move into action. In 2018, Julie and How Women Lead supported the passage of California legislation requiring public companies to include women on their boards. They have prepared over 400 women for corporate boardseats, do searches for companies seeking great women directors and Julie chairs the California First Partner’s (Jennifer Siebel Newsom) Initiative to roll out the legislation in California and inspire other states to do the same.

For this issue, Julie has selected 10 women in our community, “It’s this theme of connection that aligns these leaders, who though they represent a diverse set of backgrounds, specialties, and spheres of influence, all demonstrate the benefits of working together,” she says. “Every one of the women we’re profiling has the values in our credo at the core of their modus operandi.”

Stacey Kelly Egide

Beauty and Wellness Champion, Founder With a Heart

How Women Lead Board of Directors, How Women Give Grants Executive Committee, Women Leaders for the World Executive Committee and Honoree

Stacey Egide is one of our country’s most successful entrepreneurs: she has successfully founded and sold five Marin-based brand/companies: Andalou Naturals 2010, Avalon Organics in 1999, Alba Botanica in 1999, San Francisco Soap Co. in 1990 and Beauty without Cruelty in 1989. Each business was the number one brand in their category globally when she sold them. Stacey brings her serious business acumen and intuitive vision to creating authentic natural products with meaningful cruelty-free, organic, and non-GMO standards. Such devotion to values shows in the bottom line: Stacey’s most recent venture, Andalou, had a specific product line that generated income to specifically be donated to help women and girls. And when she sold the company, her investors made 15 times their original investment. Stacey proves that doing good and caring for your employees is a winning business strategy.

Stacey credits her success to a passion for making a difference for the planet along with an ambition to build mission-driven companies. When asked how corporations can best support women leaders, Stacey points towards a fair equity structure: in all the companies she’s founded, Stacey intentionally builds in pay equity, and ensures that every member of the company owns shares. That way, “everyone wants the business to succeed and everyone is involved with building the brand, how we participate in the community, how we donate funds… everybody has a hand in it.”

Nancy Sheppard

Entrepreneur and Activist for Natural Wellness Board, Journey Coach

Women on Boards Committee and Corporate Board Readiness Trainer

Nancy Sheppard founded Women2Boards in 2014 and is an early thought leader in the movement to bring gender parity to corporate governance. Nancy is a core strategist and leader at How Women Lead, where she leads the training programs that have propelled over 500 top executive women into the boardroom journey in the past two years. Nancy was a key player in driving the successful California legislation requiring gender diversity on public boards. She is also the Chief Board Journey Advisor for The Athena Alliance, a nonprofit with a similar leadership goal for women, where she has coached more than 125 board-bound women.

Her current passion to move the needle on boardroom diversity was born after she served as CEO of Western Independent Bankers, the largest regional banking association in the US, for 24 years. When she announced her decision to “graduate” from her leadership position, she was approached to serve on several boards. Although she elected not to pursue those positions, she recommended other women for the spots and voila! the idea of doing this kind of matchmaking for a new career emerged.

Lisa Bougie

Retail Pacesetter, Measuring Success by Helping Women Leaders

Global Advisor for Women Leaders for the World

Lisa drove a seismic shift in her work two years ago. From the C-Suite at Stitch Fix, an online personal styling service, to supporting founders and businesses that dwell at the intersection of her values and deep consumer experience, Lisa now works exclusively in support of gender equality, wellness and climate action. With this choice, also came the realization that her measures of success needed to change too. “I’m a big fan of aligned incentives.” From decades of corporate driven metrics with dollar signs attached, Lisa now measures her personal success by how many women she supports achieving their goals.

“Throughout my career,” she says, “I’ve been fortunate to have strong mentors who have fortified my sense of who I wanted to be as a leader. Now, it’s a privilege to pay that forward to women as a mentor myself.” Lisa currently serves as a member of the Boards of Directors of Eileen Fisher, Cora and Boon Supply; has co-developed and launched a Corporate Board Readiness program at Santa Clara University; and advises and invests in a number of founders and companies whose missions serve to prove that “Business can and should be about a whole lot more than just making money.”

Erika Cramer

Venture Capital Investor and Disruptor

General Partner for How Women Invest, Speaker, Corporate Board Readiness advisor

Erika cites family inspiration for her success, saying, “My parents live by example – if one works hard, anything is possible.” Like many children of immigrants, Erika is fueled by the work ethic, gratitude and commitment to give back.

She remembers graduating into a recession and Wall Street hiring freeze, but quickly worked her way up from administrative assistant to analyst to the firm’s youngest partner by age 26. Erika created one of the country’s only women owned investment management firms during the last recession and has the grit and vision to lead the How Women Invest Venture Fund formation during this complex environment as a GP, General Partner.

Like many others, Erika’s career is marked by the importance of strong connections over time. An early client who believed in her when she was a 25-year-old analyst recruited her a number of years later to lead corporate development at another organization. Erika notes that she “always had mentors who gave me enough rope to prove myself.”

Photo by Marc Olivier Le Blanc.

Wendi Norris

Art Gallery Maven, Bringing Art to Tech

Donor, arts experiences to support leadership

For Wendi, the power of connection manifests when people come in contact with creations by artists she represents. “Art heals, creates space to have conversation, educates, and provides pleasure,” she notes.

Wendi doesn’t label hers as a “women’s” gallery, nor any of her represented artists as “women” artists. Rather, her reputation as a strong feminist and female-oriented program has been born out of her commitment to finding high-quality art.

Wendi and her team curate and manage major public art installations, including Salesforce Tower, Avery Lane (San Francisco), and the New York MTA stop in Harlem. In 2015 Norris co-founded Sites Unseen, a renowned public art project in little-traveled alleys in San Francisco. She also founded the San Francisco Artist Award in 2009, providing an emerging local artist a solo gallery exhibition in an established gallery.

Lata Setty

Legal Service Disrupter, Founding Legal Tech

Investor and Advisor for How Women Invest

Lata Setty says she never pictured herself becoming a serial entrepreneur, but her ability to form connections over time has helped her succeed across industries. An investor, entrepreneur, patent litigator and ecosystem builder, Lata speaks and advises on companies at the intersection of technology and newly powerful, emerging consumer groups.

Lata takes the lessons learned from building and selling startups to help other women, with a special passion for women and girls of color. She’s a tireless advocate for leveling the playing field for girls, especially in science and technology, ensuring every woman has opportunities to reach her full potential.

And as Chair of the Minority In-House Counsel Association, a trade association for corporate attorneys, Lata leverages close connections among legal practitioners to advance the goal of greater diversity within corporations. Her activism reflects her understanding, developed over years, of the “critical aspect of having people to champion you and to tap for advice.”

Kathryn Johnson

Healthcare Impact Leader, Global Health Connector

Global Advisor and historical leader for Women Leaders for the World

Nearly every leader working on impacting women around the globe has been touched by Kathryn Johnson. Her name is ubiquitous with connections, strategy and getting things done. In fact, she envisioned and co-chaired the Collective Impact Partnership (CIP) where How Women Lead is a key partner with the Gates Foundation, Global Fund for Women and others.

At retirement, Kathryn set out to chart a path forward, melding her love for data and analysis with her internal ethical compass. She interviewed dozens of peers as part of a strategic plan, concluding that the biggest lever for a more peaceful and prosperous world…is gender equity. Kathryn stresses the importance of “developing and using your network,” advising that her years of experience have proven that “working to develop…relationships can be a very valuable part of business.” She echoes the comments of other leaders in this group when she discusses the importance of finding work that follows values. “I believe that leading your life with strategic intent can unleash greater purpose and meaning. Be very clear on your true North,” she says. Energized by the “role that women are playing around the world in deciding what this New Normal will be,” Kathryn notes that the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affects women, and that acting to impact new high-level leadership is ”not just a nice thing to do, but an imperative, knowing that results improve when women are in leadership roles.”

Linda Abraham, Tech

Innovator, Data, Women and Venture Investor

Women Leaders for the World Global Advisor, Speaker on Corporate Board Readiness

Linda Abraham is the co-founder of two companies: Paragren Technologies, (now owned by Oracle), and comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR). She is also an investor and/or advisor in a range of early stage companies, spanning many tech sectors. She sits on both public and private company boards, and was named a “Great Mind” by the Advertising Research Foundation and is an expert speaker in media outlets such as CNBC, The CBS Evening News and NPR.

Linda attributes her success to “supportive parents, marriage to the right life partner, and a major dollop of Irish luck. Anyone who has been successful has had a dose of it, which is why it’s so important to try and help people who might be short on it at the moment.”

Asked to reflect on what has galvanized her commitment to women’s leadership, Linda recalls, “Ironically, I didn’t see a lot of out- right discrimination against women when I was going through my career. It wasn’t until I got into that last five or six years…that I really realized how the playing field wasn’t level.”

The lesson, she says, is that “It’s important to look outside of your own personal experience and realize others may be having very different experiences. One area that’s very important to me is getting women at an early age involved in data science. There are a lot of lost opportunities for women if they don’t get exposed to it early on. Women have to see possibilities before they can rule them out.”

Lisa Carmel

Healthcare Strategy Leader, Innovating for Health

Designs programming for health care, advisor and Chair of film events

Lisa acts as an advisor to How Women Lead and California Life Sciences Institute’s FAST health accelerator. “I joined FAST because 50 percent of the founders in the portfolio are female, and 40 percent of the advisors are female. Traditional VCs look for serial entrepreneurs, but women have a harder time achieving that status. You can pick winners without using ‘serial entrepreneur’ as a gating criterion.” She also participates with CARB-X accelerator, UCSF Health Hub, Medtech Innovator and Red Crow angel investing platform. “I like to work with people who share big ideas and visionary goals,” she says.

Kristin Hull, PhD

Impact Investing Instigator

Women on Boards Committee, How Women Invest Founding Limited Partner

Kristin Hull is leading the country’s ESG efforts with financial results that far outpace other investments. Kristin is founder and CEO of Nia Impact Capital, a Registered Investment Advisor changing the face of finance by hiring and training women and people of color in sustainable and transformative investing. Nia believes a well-designed shareholder engagement program considers which environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) changes will be most beneficial to long-term share value. In 2010 Kristin founded Nia Community, a 100 percent mission-aligned impact investment fund focused on social change and environmental sustainability in her hometown of Oakland.

Kristin attributes her success to her boundless curiosity about the systems change and her determination to help to build a better world. “Learning to trust my instincts, plus being willing to be out in front and go first have been essential to building a women-led business using finance to achieve social and environmental impacts.”