10 Great Women Business Leaders Reshaping Business

 Some of the most incredible women leaders I’ve met aren’t just “successful” based on traditional metrics — they’re redefining work, leadership, and success on their own terms.

In honor of International Women’s Day this week, here are 10 great women business leaders changing the game: 

1. Alfa Demmellash, co-founder and CEO, Rising Tide Capital

After graduating from Harvard, Demmellash felt pulled to “go to the places people were trying to escape from” and help them. As a result, she co-founded Rising Tide Capital, which provides business and leadership training, as well as social and financial capital to underserved entrepreneurs. To date, over 10,000 entrepreneurs have gone through their programming, and 95% of them have increased their business revenue as a result.

2. Cat Perez, co-founder, Famm  

After co-founding Health Sherpa, which actively enrolled more than 15 million people with health insurance, Perez decided to address an issue closer to home: connecting, highlighting, and supporting LBGTQ+ founders. With less than one percent of U.S. businesses being LBGTQ+ owned, Perez and her wife, Marianna Di Regolo, launched Famm, a first-of-its-kind platform to help people buy from queer-owned companies and connect founders.

3. Deepa Purushothaman, author, The First, The Few, The Only: How Women Of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America

After becoming one of the youngest partners ever at a major global consulting firm, Purushothaman decided to leave it all behind to follow her heart. She felt called to start a new type of conversation around women of color in the workplace, which she captured in her best-selling book in 2022. She leveraged the book’s success to launch Re.Write, an unconventional think tank advancing a new story of work. She also produces original research and writes for major outlets like HBR, continuing to drive thought leadership around helping women of color redefine their power and find success.

4. Eileen Fisher, Founder, Eileen Fisher 

While building her namesake company, Fisher refused to take on outside capital to give her the freedom to grow the company consistent with her and her employees’ values. Just some of the decisions she’s made as a result include becoming employee-owned, creating a leadership institute for up-and-coming women, working to make the company’s products as sustainable as possible, and sharing profits with her team.

5. Erin Wade, co-founder, Homeroom Restaurant & author, The Mac-n-cheese Millionaire 

Not only did Wade leave her role as a corporate attorney to pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, but she did so with the vision of bringing dignity back to food service workers. Homeroom restaurant pioneered new models for workplace culture, including open-book management with everyone on staff, involving the more than 100-person team in key decisions, soliciting daily feedback, and pioneering a first-of-its-kind system to prevent sexual harassment from customers — a model later recommended by the EEOC. 

6. Gayle Jennings-O’Byrne, founder & CEO, Wocstar Capital 

As VP of Global Philanthropy for J.P. Morgan Chase, Jennings-O’Byrne had climbed to the peak of corporate success. Yet, when she was diagnosed with cancer and reflected on her life, she realized her true passion was helping entrepreneurs of color. Following successful treatment, she followed her dream and launched Wocstar in 2018, which highlights, supports, and funds underrepresented voices to ensure they’re heard. She forges deep connections with the entrepreneurs in her portfolio, choosing not to take a board seat and instead acting as a ‘big sister’ to her community.

7. Jane Wurwand, co-founder, Dermalogica

Growing up with a single mother in the U.K., Wurwand intimately understood the importance of autonomy when it comes to human well-being. So, when she and her husband launched Dermalogica in 1986, she didn’t just want to sell skincare; she wanted to create a brand that bolstered people’s autonomy. Through their International Dermal Institute, they trained skin therapists on how to establish and run their own businesses. To date, they’ve trained over 100,000 women entrepreneurs and provided small business loans across 80+ countries.

8. Melanie Dulbecco, CEO, Torani 

When Dulbecco took over Torani syrups more than 30 years ago, no one expected she’d sustain 20% year-over-year growth for the next 30 years running. Her secret? She focuses on growing her people, meaning creating opportunities for her team and helping them evolve into who they want to be. Just some of her practices include employee ownership, training managers to see themselves as coaches, and flipping compensation packages around so hourly employees are paid far above market rate while reducing executive pay.

9. Susan Griffin Black, co-founder and co-CEO, EO Products 

When Griffin-Black and her co-founder imagined starting a business, they began with the question, “What would it look like to build a business that everyone would love to work for?” For thirty years, they’ve brought that vision to reality, building a thriving workplace where employees feel valued, engaged, and satisfied. One key element Griffin-Black brings to her leadership is active listening, saying that a good leader should “listen from a place of reducing suffering.”

10. Vanessa Roanhorse, founder and CEO, Roanhorse Consulting

After making a name for herself in the climate resiliency space in Chicago, Roanhorse felt called to return to Navajo Nation, where she grew up and where a significant portion of the population lives below the poverty line. She started by reaching out to her network for consulting work — eventually scaling it into a full-time venture that now employs nearly a dozen people on Navajo Nation. Not only is she creating economic opportunity, but everyone on her team works to shift power dynamics in the health and wealth spaces to create a better future for us all.

Who are the women in business that you admire?