The founder and CEO of Madison Reed, Amy Errett, started her career in finance, and before long, was managing large teams through sizeable changes. She’s become known as a leader who creates, and navigates, organizational change. Her secret isn’t in strategy–it’s in leading with love, and with an open heart. She explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how building a fast-growing company is like putting the right variables into a Petri dish and letting it flourish.
Jul 11, 2022•11 min
Amy Errett might be a natural leader, and an expert team-builder–but she wasn’t always a founder. She spent her early career in banking and investment companies, before turning to venture capital. But once she was at the table with startup founders, making decisions on who deserved funding infusions…she realized she wanted to be not in her seat…but rather, the CEO’s seat. She founded Madison Reed in 2013 out of San Francisco as a hair-color subscription brand. She’s grown it–even as the pandemic...
Jun 27, 2022•49 min
The co-founder and chief executive of Strava explains how storytelling is wrapped up in being able to take risks. He first ventured into the unknown in 1995, wanting to build a community of athletes. He didn’t know how that story would end–and it certainly wasn’t immediately successful. His company has grown to 100 million athletes in 200 countries–and he tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin that along the way he’s learned to take chances to “get to create the story.”
Jun 20, 2022•9 min
When Michael Horvath, the co-founder and CEO of Strava, meets with employees, he doesn’t just start saying what he’s thinking. Instead, the first thing out of his mouth is: “what’s on your mind?” His company, Strava, is an app that serves 100 million athletes, to help motivate their movement, connect them with a community, and improve their safety. And these days, it’s a company of more than 400 people–which has both informed, and necessitated, Michael’s leadership style–which is a lot about lis...
Jun 13, 2022•46 min
The co-founder and chief executive of Colossal Bioscience is setting out to de-extinct the 4,000-years-extinct woolly mammoth. As his company grows fast, he has a goal to be totally transparent about the company’s audacious moon-shot mission–one that a lot of people think is impossible. To that challenge, he brings his skills as a diligent student, and a marketer, who can translate complex systems and concepts to a broad audience.
Jun 06, 2022•10 min
By the time he teamed up with Harvard geneticist George Church to found Colossal Biosciences, Ben Lamm had founded, built, and sold five companies. This one would be the most audacious yet: Its goal is to create disruptive conservation technologies, including, to de-extinct the woolly mammoth. Yes, it is actively working to edit elephant genes to create a cold-hearty herbivore to help decelerate melting of the arctic permafrost, and, thus, prevent release of 600 tons of carbon a year. It’s also ...
May 30, 2022•51 min
The co-founder and chief executive of Full Circle Brands manages three sustainability-minded international brands out of New York City. He tells host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how he boost productivity by keeping his meetings short, and cramming them all into one day. Plus: When his team is in the office, he plays jazz–and orders comfort food.
May 23, 2022•8 min
He and his co-founder dreamed up their company over an unconventional Thanksgiving dinner in Shanghai. In 2009, they launched Full Circle, a line of sustainable household goods–and set out to change consumer perception about “eco” products. Today, they run three brands, including Full Circle, For Good, a line of household disposables, like compostable bags, and Soma, a line of filtration, pitchers, and bottles. He spoke with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about building a sustainable supply chai...
May 16, 2022•44 min
If there was a super-simple way to tweak the whole way you think about an experience…would you do it? Serial entrepreneur Toni Ko, the woman behind NYX Cosmetics, Perverse Sunglasses, and, most recently, Bespoke Beauty Brands, explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she changes her wording to change her perspective.
May 09, 2022•8 min
Her family emigrated from Korea when she was 13 years old, and serial entrepreneur Toni Ko has since founded three different–each totally fascinating–companies. Her first, NYX Cosmetics, made $4 million in its first year, and, within a decade, was in beauty aisles of Target nationwide. But with growth, came some sacrifices–and, within years, she sold it to L’Oreal for a reported $500 million. A non-compete agreement meant Ko was locked out of the beauty industry for five years, a time during whi...
May 02, 2022•46 min
Trinity Mouzon Wofford founded superfood company Golde in 2017, and has grown it into a national brand that sells its drink mixes and face-mask blends direct-to-consumer and in national retailers like Target. She bootstrapped the business for years, doing everything from formulation to sales herself. One skill that helped her along the way was her ability to connect with others–to see things from a different perspective. She explains the radical empathy it takes to truly connect with someone new...
Apr 25, 2022•10 min
There’s Silicon Valley’s playbook…and then there’s Trinity Mouzon Wofford’s radical bootstrapping. The founder of Golde, the maker of superfood powders that can be blended to make lattes or facemasks, and which is sold at Target and Goop, as well as direct-to-consumer. Trinity explains how she built her company herself, mixing turmeric lattes in her kitchen, and pounding the pavement of New York City trying to get her self-designed pouches of blends onto cafe shelves. As a super-small, scrappy, ...
Apr 18, 2022•42 min
Delane Parnell’s $400 million startup, PlayVS, builds a platform on which high school students can compete against one another in team-based video games, also known as esports. Host and “Ahead of the Game” author Kevin Ryan talks with Parnell about his journey from a violence-ridden neighborhood on Detroit’s west side to building one of the most important companies in the rapidly growing gaming industry.
Apr 11, 2022•41 min
Payal Kadakia, the founder of Classpass, which was valued at $1 billion before its acquisition by Mindbody in 2021, wasn’t always great at keeping track of her priorities. Sure, she had a calendar, and a schedule–but sometimes the big-picture goals would get pushed aside. She came up with a 20-minute-a-week way to stay focused–by setting her priorities for the week. And, as a bonus, she finds the whole thing pretty meditative.
Apr 04, 2022•9 min
Growing up in New Jersey, Payal Kadakia found a passion for Indian dance. As an adult living in New York City, she founded her own dance troupe, Sa Dance. But when it came to finding fitness classes, she was at a loss. She created a boutique-class-search-engine–which went through many, many, iterations, before becoming the $1 billion company ClassPass. Christine Lagorio-Chafkin speaks with Payal about all the ups and downs along the way to building one of New York City’s unicorns–and her difficu...
Mar 28, 2022•40 min
The founder and CEO of autonomous vehicle company Cruise is busy testing his company’s driverless robotaxis on the streets of San Francisco. And managing more than 1,000 employees. But that doesn’t mean he’s too busy to get into the back seat. Here’s how he allocates his time every week to put himself in a user’s shoes–and why he thinks it’s so important that leaders make the time to understand even the smallest pain points for customers in using their product.
Mar 21, 2022•8 min
The founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise has finally done it: His company’s robo-taxis are picking up passengers in San Francisco. It’s been almost a decade since he founded his company with the audacious vision to take on Google and create autonomous driving vehicles. He and cofounder Dan Kan pursued that vision–one small step at a time. He spoke with host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about his lifelong passion for robotics, the “leap of faith” he took when deciding to sell Cruise to...
Mar 14, 2022•54 min
The Golden Globe Award-winning actress is also a three-time founder of companies. More than a decade ago, she launched Fabletics, the membership-model activewear brand, and more recently, she’s launched King St. Vodka and wellness-supplement brand In Bloom. But before becoming an entrepreneur, Hudson did plenty of endorsement deals–and wanted more out of them than just being a salesperson. She thought: “What happens if I bet on myself?” and began taking a stake–and an active role in–the companie...
Mar 07, 2022•38 min
On this week’s episode of Woman Inc., I sat down with Tala Akhavan, COO of Pietra, a platform that makes it possible to launch the brand you've always dreamt of. Tala, a former Uber executive, joined the creator economy platform with the mission to democratize access for female entrepreneurship via the platform’s capabilities. As a first time mother, Tala talked about the struggle of wanting to give her all to motherhood as well as her professional trajectory. While giving birth in the height of...
Mar 04, 2022•38 min
The author of The Awesome Human Project and CEO of Happier is a natural at public speaking. Known for her TED talks and corporate speaking engagements, as well as coaching, she’s not one to usually experience stage fright. But she does have a secret to calming nerves before large speaking engagements, which she explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. First: Don’t tell yourself not to be nervous. Second: Do tell yourself this one key thing.
Feb 28, 2022•7 min
Stacey Abrams is known as a politician, a lawyer, and a voting rights activist. Her voter rights organizing in Georgia has been credited with increasing turnout in the state, including during the 2020 presidential election, in which President Biden narrowly won Georgia. Abrams is also a three-time founder–and author of three New York Times bestsellers. In her latest book (Level Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back), she puts together the lessons she’s learned in business–a...
Feb 22, 2022•37 min
The five-time founder and author of Happier and The Awesome Human Project is known both for her public speaking and her research into what truly makes us happy. But when she was building her last company, she herself was anything but happy. Instead, she was prioritizing everything and everyone aside from herself–and that led to her spiraling into a really dark place. She speaks to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin about how she learned to rebuild her emotional health–and what other founders can lea...
Feb 14, 2022•48 min
The bestselling author and business advisor Daniel Pink has written about everything from human motivation to the powerful negative emotion, regret. He has lots of ideas. The one for his latest book, The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, came to him while he was already contracted to write an entirely different book. How does he keep track of his ideas? He explains his system to our host, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.
Feb 07, 2022•6 min
The bestselling author didn’t intend to write about the powerful negative emotion, regret, but then he experienced it himself and dug in. He explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin what his worldwide study on regret illuminated–and how it has a place in your company, both culturally, and in the way leaders connect on a personal level.
Jan 31, 2022•38 min
The co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite is a visual thinker. She tells Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she uses her abilities to visualize data points to solve problems or find places to innovate within her online event-ticketing company.
Jan 24, 2022•9 min
She co-founded the event-ticket site Eventbrite in 2006, took the role of CEO 10 years later, and then did what few women leaders have done: took her company public. Then, the pandemic hit–and with live events canceled globally, she stared into a terrifying future. Julia Hartz explains to host Christine Lagorio-Chafkin how she led her team through a harrowing crisis, as well as her unique view of company culture as “more of a living, breathing organism than a bug stuck in amber.” She explains th...
Jan 18, 2022•48 min
The founder and CEO of Lively left Victoria’s Secret–and took it on with her inclusive intimates brand. These days, she does a lot of media and big meetings, and her secret to preparing is to not overdo it. She explains to Christine Lagorio-Chafkin.
Dec 27, 2021•4 min
In order to launch her intimates and loungewear brand, Lively, Michelle Cordeiro Grant decided to do everything a little differently. In fact, some of her strategy turned convention on its head. She built up a community of fans and advocates before she had a product to sell–and made several other counterintuitive business decisions along the way to an $85 million acquisition very early in her startup’s life. She explains her motivations, inspirations, and the company’s turning points to host Chr...
Dec 20, 2021•50 min
The co-founder and President of LTK, the influencer-shopping ecosystem, Amber Venz Box, works with a personal assistant. But that hasn’t always been seamless, she tells Christine Lagorio-Chafkin. Her simple collaboration tool was right under her nose.
Dec 13, 2021•6 min
Christine Lagorio-Chafkin talks with Amber Venz Box--co-founder and president of LTK--about being an introvert, founding a company with her significant other, and the power of delegating.
Dec 06, 2021•47 min
