An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Living & Leading
We’ve been fortunate to hear so many powerful stories of leadership, challenge, and evolution from entrepreneurs, leaders, and difference makers on What I Wish I Knew. Many of these stories had two things in common: they’re relevant to people across all walks of life and they came from women. In honor of International Women’s Day, we’d like to share a few with you.
The success of everything is about the people.
Across the globe, Hannah Ingram-Moore has worked with companies such as Whittard of Chelsea, Gap, Fortnum & Mason, Swatch Group, and Mulberry to create and deliver omnichannel strategies, improve the customer journey, and boost international distribution and sales. She currently serves as co-founder, director, and workplace strategist with Maytrix Group, a company dedicated to helping clients achieve step changed revenue growth, effective strategy execution, and maximizing people engagement. Now based near London, Hannah and her family have been honoured to be part of the global phenomenon of fundraising by her father, Captain Sir Tom Moore. Little did they know that the simple gesture of her family sponsoring Tom to walk around the garden would lead to near £39 million being given to NHS Charities and the creation of The Captain Tom Foundation. Captain Sir Tom was the recipient of the George H.W. Bush Points of Light Award, with the whole family receiving ambassadorships of the World Health Organisation. In this segment, Hannah describes that challenges of female leaders and her belief that "the success of everything is about the people."
Listen to the full conversation with Hannah here…
Tell that little voice to shut up.
Tea Colaianni has never feared setting bold goals. As a child, she decided to become the Italian ambassador to Singapore. While her law and business career took her in a different direction, impact has always been the means by which she measured what she does. Following an executive career with organizations like Hilton Hotels and Merlin Entertainments, Tea set perhaps her boldest goal of all: to make a positive difference to 5 million women and people of color across the hospitality, travel, and leisure industry globally.
Tea is the Founder and Chair of WiHTL – Women in Hospitality, Travel and Leisure, an organization whose mission is to increase women’s and ethnic minority representation across all levels of leadership in the industry. WiHTL has been joined in the effort by companies like Airbnb, Aramark, Compass, Deliveroo, EasyJet, Hilton, IHG, McDonalds, Nandos, and Virgin Atlantic. Tea is the Senior Independent Director on the Board of Watches of Switzerland Plc. She also serves on the boards of SD Worx and DWF Group. She has served on the boards of Bounty Brands, Criticaleye, Poundland, and others. In this segment, Tea describes her technique for overcoming self doubt: "Tell that little voice to shut up."
Listen to the full conversation with Tea here…
Graced by grit defines me.
Kate Nowlan is founder of premium women's athletic apparel brand GRACEDBYGRIT, member of the boards of directors of Hylete Inc, San Diego Sport Innovators, Girls on the Run, and the GRACEDBYGRIT Foundation, and author of Graced by Grit: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Starting a Business with Power, Passion, & Purpose. Her unique perspective was forged as a lifelong athlete, swim coach, parent, and entrepreneur. As brand creator, Kate thought she knew what her brand really meant…until she met a cancer patient who helped her truly understand. In this segment, Kate describes what she learned.
Listen the full conversation with Kate here…
From ready to be perfect to ready to learn…
Ann Hiatt’s first job was with a startup. At age 16. “Leaning into doing hard things,” she joined Amazon out of college and became Executive Business Partner to Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. Her arrival at Amazon coincided with the dotcom bust. Amazon’s focus on securing customers rather than profit was considered risky at the time but proved to be visionary. A helicopter that Ann arranged for Bezos turned out to be a bit risky too. Listen to hear the story.
She left Amazon to pursue a PhD at UC Berkeley but the lure of tech remained. She was recruited to Google and worked alongside Marissa Mayer on new technology and became Executive Business Partner and Chief of Staff to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Her 15 years in leadership of the two tech giants has given her a unique perspective on the enormous role and responsibility of transformative business models.
Ann now consults with executives and companies across the globe to reverse engineer their moonshot goals and get results. Ann is a sought-after international speaker, angel investor and sits on several boards in the UK. Ann is the author of Bet On Yourself which will be published by HarperCollins this year.
Listen to the full conversation with Ann here…
I know that I’m doing something really impactful and, along the way, spreading the good.
Dr. Debbie Chen has many roles in life: parent, founder, advocate, scientist…and Muay Thai fighter. It was in her role as a fighter that she faced the personal struggle of hydrating properly for her sport. The rule of thumb 8-glasses-of-water-a-day is just a guess and not one that works for all. Armed with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Tufts University, Dr. Chen set out to solve the problem and build a business around hydration monitoring. Her company, Hydrostasis, was granted a patent.
Starting any company is a hard thing. As a female founder, it’s even harder because of the lack of access to capital and to potential investors. In 2019, female founders received 2% of venture capital funding in the US. For context, one male-founded company, Quibi, which shutdown in 2020, raised $1.7 billion – more than the entire funding for all female-founded companies. In this segment, Dr. Chen describes her entrepreneurial journey.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Chen here…
It’s not easy being in a partnership with anyone.
We believe the best brands are the ones that are based upon - and build - community. Andrea Faulkner Williams and Brian Williams have done exactly that. Their company, Tubby Todd Bath Co., has 276,000 followers on Instagram, 100,000 followers on Facebook, and even a private Facebook group called Tubby Todd Mamas with 20,000 members. In just a few years, Tubby Todd has become famous for great products and for bringing a sense of fun to a daily chore for young families. The Tubby Todd slogan: “Good Clean Fun” is a realistic capture of what they do. Andrea and Brian share lessons of how they built their brand while also raising a family with four kids. Theirs is really a story of faith, family, and figuring things out. If you've ever wondered about starting a company, this is conversation you'll want to hear. And if you've ever thought about starting one with your significant other, listen to what this duo has to say. In this segment, they describe how they navigated serving as business partners. In this segment, they discuss how they navigate their roles as business partners.
Listen to the full conversation here…
We're grateful to Hannah Ingram-Moore, Tea Colaianni, Kate Nowlan, Ann Hiatt, Debbie Chen, and Andrea Faulkner Williams for sharing their insights with our audience on the What I Wish I Knew podcast.