This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Pioneers: 8 Principles for Building a Business That Lasts with Neri Karra Sillaman | 383

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

If you’ve ever wondered how some people build businesses that last—this episode is your blueprint. Nicole sits down with Neri Karra-Silliman (author, advisor, entrepreneur, and Oxford entrepreneurship expert) to unpack what immigrant entrepreneurs can teach all of us about confidence, courage, resilience, and creating businesses that thrive for generations—even when you’re not starting with privilege, connections, or a trust fund. In this episode, we get into: Why immigrant-founded businesses often endure longer—and why nobody’s been asking the right questions The difference between an entrepreneur and a pioneer (hint: pioneers build what didn’t exist before) How companies like WhatsApp and Duolingo started with impact-first problems  The 8 principles of business longevity inspired by immigrant entrepreneurs, including: Cross-cultural bridging (innovation happens when you live in more than one world) Community as currency (relationships are the wealth) “Frying in your own oil” (aka self-sufficiency before outside money makes you lazy) Shared values over growth-at-all-costsRejection as fuel (“no” is the beginning of negotiation) Luck as a skill (recognizing moments and playing your hand) Faith as the foundation for risk, reinvention, and resilience And the most overlooked glue of all: kindness Immigrants aren’t the problem—they’re the blueprint. This conversation will change how you think about risk, reinvention, and what it really takes to build something that lasts (with profit and purpose). Thank you to our sponsors! Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/pd2550-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Connect with Neri: Website: https://www.nerikarrasillaman.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Pioneers-Principles-Longevity-Immigrant-Entrepreneurs/dp/1394304056/ref=  Related Podcast Episodes The Hard Truths Of Entrepreneurship with Dr. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon | 313 The Power Of Instinct In Business And Life with Leslie Zane | 214 From Small Business to Big Impact: Leadership, Confidence, & Community at the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Businesses Summit | 362 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means to be doing woman's work. And today, we're talking about the courage, confidence, and resilience it takes to build something that lasts. And we're doing that by looking through the lens of what immigrant entrepreneurs can teach us about creating businesses that thrive for generations. And let me say upfront that this one is deeply personal for me. I'm I'm the daughter of immigrants. My dad came to the U.S. from Mexico, my mom from Germany. And from them, I learned what it means to build something from nothing.

I learned tenacity, grit, and believing in yourself even when nobody else does. I learned how to stand up for yourself and for others and how to turn rejection into momentum. My parents built their success through taking risk, through failure, through getting knocked down and picking themselves back up. up again, not because it was easy, but because they believed effort and integrity mattered more than shortcuts or even profit. So when our guest reached out with the topic of the eight principles of business longevity inspired by immigrant entrepreneurs, it hit home for me, because these are people who often start with less and somehow create more, who build not from privilege, but from persistence, who remind us that lasting success isn't about where you start, but how you reinvent,

build community, and turn adversity into advantage. Our guest today has spent her career studying and living these truths. Neri Kara Silliman is an author, advisor, and entrepreneur whose work centers on innovation, longevity, and impact. She's the author of pioneers, eight principles of business longevity from immigrant entrepreneurs, which is recognized by Thinkers 50 as one of the top 10 best new management books of 2025. A child refugee turned Oxford entrepreneurship expert and founder of her own zero-waste luxury brand that's been thriving for over 25 years, Nettie blends research with lived experience to show what it really takes to build something that endures. Nettie, thank you so much for being here. Before we get into those eight principles,

I'd love to start by asking you, what made you make the distinction between pioneers and entrepreneurs? Why center your work on immigrant business owners? And what do they teach us that we're not already hearing from traditional business advice? Well, it was the statistics that really made me stop and basically say to myself, wow, I can't believe no one has ever looked into this. because one day, I mean, I have been studying ethnic entrepreneurship starting with my PhD at Cambridge, and I was 20-something-year-old at the time. But fast forward to 40-something-year-old.

One day I come across this statistic, which is nearly 50% of Fortune 500 companies have been founded by immigrants. And immigrant-founded businesses tend to last longer, statistically, last longer. than those founded by their counterparts. So if you look at the academic literature, everyone, this is a very well-studied topic. Why are immigrants more likely to become entrepreneurs? Because they are. Immigrants tend to become entrepreneurs.

This is statistically proven. And the academic literature really studies that. What makes them more entrepreneurial? But nobody asked the question, Why are they building businesses that endure? And my book is the first one to do that. My research is basically a pioneering research in this area. I think pioneers, because, well, the name just came to me because they start something new.

There is nothing that exists there. They have, as you very well put it, they don't come from privilege. They have to make it themselves. And almost all the businesses that I've studied, they come up with these ideas. They are businesses of impact. They are businesses that are pioneering. They are businesses that didn't exist before. They are originals.

So that's why the name pioneers. And I think you asked a very good question because for me, I make the distinction between making an impact when it comes to business longevity. as well. It's not about how long your business will last because no business lasts forever. Even the businesses that lasted longest are in Japan, but even they didn't endure forever and ever. There is no such thing, just like humans. We don't live forever, just like businesses also, you know, maybe you lasted for 300, 400,000 years, but you still die as a business as well. But the difference is what impact did you make? And that was something that during my research that really took me by surprise

and something I didn't expect to find, they didn't chase profit only. When they were starting their businesses, they were not driven by how fast can I grow this business, how much money can I make. But it was more about the impact that they were going to make. And that doesn't mean you do not become a profitable business. That actually what I found was the opposite. They weren't chasing profit. They were chasing impact.

They were very much driven to create something of value. What value do they create for their customers, for their ecosystem? And as a result, they come up, the businesses lasted longer. Yeah. Okay. So this is fascinating. And I would love to maybe talk through a few examples. So what are some companies or businesses that we might all know that are enduring,

started by immigrants, and kind of encapsulate the stories that you share in your book? So I can give you a very good example, which is the story of Yang Kum. He was born in Ukraine. and he remembers very clearly growing in, you know, it was communism at the time, I also grew up in communism myself. So I remember this fear as well of being monitored during phone conversations. And then Jan, around the age of he's a teenager, him and his mom immigrate to US to California. And they live on stamps, foot stamps. He doesn't have that much money.

And in California, in U.S., when he becomes an immigrant, he encounters new problems, which is the high cost of calling home. So as a result, he creates a business that is a service, a free service, that allows you to call internationally for free. And there is no advertisement because when he moves from communism to U.S., He's bombarded and very much with this advertisement culture in US. And the business that he creates is something, how can I make cost of calling home free? And by the way, I was an immigrant as well.

And I remember buying these jetons and trying to call Bulgaria, trying to call our relatives like this. It was so costly that you could only do it once a month if you were even lucky. So the business that I'm talking about, you probably guessed it's WhatsApp. So that's an enduring business and it didn't start with the idea of let me make some quick buck. It started with how can I solve this problem. Duolingo is another very good example of that because Luis Vonnan, who is the founder of Duolingo. He was born in Guatemala during civil war and he grew up knowing. seeing that you can only get education if you are privileged.

And he wanted to make education free. So he actually came to US as a student, as a PhD student, I believe. His idea was not to be an entrepreneur. In fact, he's the creator behind the annoying capture that we, you know, that asks you if you are a computer or not that you have to select this. he created that, but he didn't even make any money from it. He didn't do it for money because he was fascinated by solving a problem and he gave it away for free.

He started Duolingo with the idea to make education, and it's the greatest, as we know, education is the greatest equalizer because he himself talks about it today. He says people are able to get, better jobs because now they have a, they can put on their resume. I can speak Spanish. I can speak Italian and so on. So I think those are two very good examples and for a long time resisted at Duolingo getting advertisement money. So you are not as a user bombarded with advertisement when you use Duolingo. Every January, women feel pressure to fix themselves, be smaller, be smaller,

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but if we could start by sharing what the eight are and then maybe let's dive into a few of them, does that work? That works. The first one has to do with cross-cultural bridging, because often what I found was interesting. The entrepreneurs, you obviously come to a new country, but you also carry the past with you. You are not complete. You don't start from zero. But because of that exposure to different culture and because you come from different culture,

you tend to view the problem in a different way. And you tend to create a business that bridges to different cultures. And sometimes this can be an innovative distribution model, supply chain, or even a product in the book where I give the example of Kronat which is from Dominica Ansel he created Kronat which is a combination of croissant and a donut

and which this is what made him become a household name and put his business on the map so he's French but he immigrated to US the second one has to do with homophilic ties

because the immigrant entrepreneurs use these ties in a very strategic way. So they use storytelling in order to say, you and I come from the same culture. They bond over shared values, and they use that to strengthen their business. And oftentimes this can even allow them to create a new business. To say to someone, I mean, I give a lot of examples from my own past,

from our own story. So how we created our own business. The third one has to do with community. Oftentimes, immigrant entrepreneurs will, in the process of immigrating to a new country, they tend to lose a love of their social ties. And in some ways, that's actually their biggest wealth. Because as you yourself put it very beautifully in the beginning of our podcast, they don't come from privilege, but their relationships, their friendships, their friendships,

their community is what is their biggest wealth. So in the new country that they immigrate to, they tend to want to recreate those ties. So any tie that, any friendship, any relationship that they build, there's a lot of emphasis put on that. community is a very important factor. I give Chobani as an example, Hamdi Ulukaya, who is a Kurdish immigrant from Southeast Turkey.

He immigrated to New York and he started Chobani. And he was able to turn around the defunct craft factory with the help of the community, the Ithaca, I think is the name. He was able to create. a billion dollar business today. And community, he continues to do that.

He invests incredibly into the community. He shares profits with his employees, the profit from the company with his employees. So those are some very beautiful examples. And frying in your own oil is another example, which means to be self-sufficient. I give my, that's actually my grandfather's advice who has the same last name as you.

Oh, wow. So my late, yes, my late grandfather's name was Halil. And growing up in Bulgaria, he would instill in us the idea of frying in our own oil. It's a Turkish saying. It means to be self-sufficient. And this applies, especially in the early days of the business, but even later on as the business starts to grow. what I see again and again, I work with startups, I am an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford,

there is a tendency to immediately want to raise money without first frying in your own oil. And I think that process carries so much wealth in it, so much gold in it, because it allows you to really understand what are your capabilities, what is your sustainable, competitive advantage, what is your wealth, really. But if you bring in the external wealth, if you bring in the external injections, first, you don't really, you tend to get lazy. And when you inject this money,

you are not able to immediately see where the problems in the business are. So in the case of immigrant entrepreneurs, during my research, it came out that they do that very well. They don't waste their resources. They fry in their own oil, oftentimes because they have no other choice. Right.

They don't come from privilege. They don't have this extended social capital. So they have to do the very best they can in the early days. But that allows them to really hone in their skill, allows them to really clarify what their biggest advantages. and even during challenges, then they are not easily shaken, which allows them to adapt, much quicker, allows them to be resilient as a business. And this to me is a very, very important principle.

Yeah. I talk about shared values because, and I did touch upon that at the beginning of our conversation because they are not interested, they are, I'm not saying don't make any profit. This is business. Of course, you are going to be concerned about profit, but they put shared values at the heart of the business. It's not about becoming the most profitable company.

It's not even the highest growth company. In fact, they don't tend to grow, they don't have this wish to grow as big as possible, as fast as possible. It's more, how can we grow together better? and what is our shared value? How can I be of use to you? How can my business benefit you? What problem can I solve?

But in the meantime, this is not a, I'm not, this is another, it's not a non-profit business where you say, let me just, but it's very much connected because they are in the business of solving problems and growing sustainably. And we are in some very turbulent times at the moment. And I think if you follow these principles, whether you are immigrant or not, your business benefits. And I think one of my last principles was about luck. And this one took me by surprise because as I was doing my interviews, I was very, I'm doing my coding.

I still have, you know, the training of the researcher and I'm doing the coding and I thought my book was going to be seven principles and then I realized every single immigrant entrepreneur I interviewed and these are some exceptional people. Each one of them, without me prompting, talk to me about luck. I was lucky I moved to New York. I was lucky I met my wife. I was lucky, you know, my business took off.

I was lucky consumers responded in this way. I was lucky I met Stefano. So I thought, oh, there is something in here. I need to have a look. And it became the eight principle in the book because ultimately, even though they mentioned to me luck, when I ask more questions, it turned out they don't define luck as something that happens to them as an outside event. It's more of a capability.

It's a risk. It's a capability. And they are able to recognize when luck happens. They are able to, I call that chapter there to play your hand because they are able to take on that risk. It's actually a risk that they are. are willing to take on. So I thought, and that became my eighth chapter. Oh, and I think I forgot about rejection,

because it's, I think, connected to luck in some ways because obviously, Nicole, they come from such challenge, not every single one of them, but most of them come from very challenging backgrounds, and they've been through a lot in their lifetimes. when they start to build their business, they are faced with tremendous amount of rejection. And at the same time, basically a friend of mine said to me recently,

oh, nothing was sent it to you on a plate. Absolutely not. But they do not see rejection the way other, or they don't hear the word no the same way that other people would hear. In fact, I have it as a quote, no is the beginning of negotiation. I think Isaac Larian said that no is the beginning of negotiation. And Haim Saban says, everyone kept telling me that's a really stupid idea. And I knew I was on to something.

I knew there was a gold mine there. If everyone was saying, that's a really bad idea. They have of course faced failure, but again, they don't see failure. It was Toppe Awatona, who is the founder of Calendly. Before he started Calendly, he has failed multiple times. But when you interview him, he will say that I don't see that as a failure. You know, it was just what led me to Calendly. And it's interesting because with Toppe, to go back to my earlier comment about value, he wanted to be an entrepreneur because his father was and he saw his father gun down in front of him, which is why him and his mom immigrated to Atlanta from Nigeria.

He really, really wanted to be an entrepreneur. During the summers, he sold, I think, security equipment it was, instead of going the trusted internship route and going to the Coca-Cola type of company. And he will start a business just for the sake of starting a business because he really wants to be an entrepreneur, but it would fail. However, it wasn't until he faced a problem that he really wanted to solve for himself and other people that Callandley took shape. So I think that's also an interesting point as well. So I've talked a lot.

I hope that's okay. No, it's so good. I mean, every time, everyone, I was like nodding my head and it's such incredible lessons and incredible examples to back it up. I love that the eighth one is luck. And as you were talking about luck, a few other words popped into my head. I think gratitude popped up. It's a spirit of being grateful for what you have

and what happens and when it happens and the connections you make. You know, you can be dismissive about those things. They're flippant. And I think when you're grateful, you have a tendency to feel luckier, to see things as luck. And you said this with both luck.

and rejection is I've found from my personal experience that immigrants often have a different relationship with risk, maybe because of context or it's all relative, right? Like I think of my dad, he grew up shining shoes on the streets of Mexico and having, getting into real estate and having somebody say no or putting himself out there or whatever. It didn't, I'm not saying it wasn't hard or that he didn't face challenges or that he didn't overcome failures, I just think he had a different relationship with risk because of the hardships and the experiences and the moving to a different country and learning a different language and all the things that happen. Am I on par with what your research shows or is that just my unique experience? No, you are absolutely, you are describing

one of the fundamental reasons that is conclusions as well that is in the academic literature, when I said the academic literature to a great extent and detail studied why immigrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs, one of the conclusions they make is they say, someone who leaves a country and starts anew, is willing to start anew in a new country, is by nature a risk taker. And that's very much correlates with being an entrepreneur, because you have to have a different relationship when it comes to risk. So when you are an entrepreneur, because it is a risky thing to do, you are basically jumping into the sea, not knowing, are you going, you hope you will swim, but you don't know.

I've heard people describe it as jumping out of a plane and building your parachute on the way down. And that is often how it feels. So, okay, when we take words like risk or rejection or resilient. What can we learn from immigrants that we can apply in our own lives? So somebody might be listening and going, well, that's amazing, but I didn't immigrate here. I was born and raised here. How do I apply some of these principles? How can I learn from these immigrants, how to face risk, rejection, reinvention, resilience, all these big words? I will answer this in in two steps. One, I've often heard during, you know, my discussions after my book was published, a lot of the times I will hear, oh, but I'm not an immigrant. Well, I actually didn't write the book

for immigrants. I use immigrants as an example, and it means there is so many lessons that we can all apply from it. But second thing I want to say, Nicole, I think in my opinion and the way I define immigrant, anyone is an immigrant, all of us are immigrants. You know, we go yesterday I was talking to a former colleague of mine who has been through some very, very challenging experiences recently in the last six months. She lost her father. She's going through a divorced. She lost her home and she was fired from a job. To me, that's a form of immigration because something ended and now you have to rebuild. And all of us, all of us, whether we left a physical country for another one, go through experiences that to me I will liken to immigration. You have to restart from scratch. You lose a job.

You have to find another job. You become a parent. That's a whole form of immigration, if you ask me, as a mother of a six-year-old. Yeah. No kidding. A whole new language and you have no idea what you're doing. Exactly. But I think as I'm talking to you, I will say the common denominator of all of this rejection, resilience, is faith. Faith, having faith. Because you take one step after another, not knowing what the next thing will be. But you have to have faith and you have to keep going. And I have experienced that again, and I still do.

I still do because I'm building my career. I'm reinventing myself for the last several years, and you don't know what the next steps are. You are putting one block after another, one step after another. And you may say to yourself, I really want X to happen. I really need to get A. But then you get a phone call. They say, I'm sorry, you're not getting a, the door to X's shut.

And in that moment, I think it's very important to remember there is a reason why these things happen. There is a reason why someone says no to you. There is a reason. It means you may have to try another way. So during the process of writing pioneers, I have endured two years of rejections from agents, literary agents from publishers for two years. One door after another was shutting at my face. But I just believe that I believe in my message.

I know there's something important here. But I have to say I started with the idea of writing about resilience. My topic wasn't immigrant entrepreneurs. So it doesn't mean you have to keep banging your head at the same exact door. It means there is a redirection and you have to have faith, but also be able to change

maybe the way you are approaching a certain thing. But I think ultimately having faith is incredibly important. And I think I didn't write about it in the book, but I think without that morsel of faith, no entrepreneur I interviewed, would be where they are today because they have faced challenges when they were building their business and they still face challenges. Yeah. It reminds me of how I define confidences as firm and

bold trust and self. And that doesn't mean that everything works out all the time, every way you think or that, you know, my experience confidence isn't everything works. Confidence is I trust that I'll figure it out no matter what. And as you said, this reframe. things like failures, seeing one door close as an opportunity for many others to open, being willing to pivot. There's just so much in there. But I couldn't agree more that the foundation of all of it is faith, belief, confidence, whatever you want to call it, this trust in yourself, in what matters most, in your idea, whatever it is. That's the thing we can all hold on to. And I couldn't agree more. So my next question is, what do you?

you think of all of the things you uncovered, what do you see as the one that's being overlooked most currently in our current society or all the business advice we get? Of all of the eight principles, what do you think we're overlooking the most? Kindness. It's kindness. And I ended my book with that because I think without kindness you can't practice any of the principles. And, you know, when we think of these leaders, whether it's the founder of WhatsApp, Biontec, Chobani, Kalendli, you may think, of course, they must be ruthless businessman or business leaders and businesswoman. But Dermalogica, for example, as well.

But what I found at the end of my research, it's the glue that holds all the principles together is kindness. You have to have that. And without it, you can practice any of the principles that I talk about in my book. And I think another thing that surprised me, none of the immigrant entrepreneurs

saw themselves at the center of their business. They didn't say, I am the leader and I am the son that shines out from this business but it was they put people and humanity and giving at the center of the business. It wasn't about them. It wasn't about them. And I think that's something that surprised me because we are talking about business.

I went to business school. So, you know, immediately at every single business school, you are going to talk about the business, the health of the business, the nature of the business. It's the center of it. But that's not at all what my research showed me. It was not about the leader. It was about who that business impacts. Yeah. Yeah, what I'm hearing is it's a both and, right?

Both kindness and profit. And I think so much of what we're being told directly or indirectly is that you have to trade one for the other. If you choose to be kind or others focused, your values oriented, well, then you're going to sacrifice profit. Or if you choose to focus on profit, then you've got to be an A-hole in order to be as successful as possible. And that messaging is so frustrating. And I'm so happy to hear that your research showed that both and is what really works. If I make this about individual longevity, we are all going to one way or another die.

But it's not how long you lived. It's what kind of impact did you make as a human being? And I feel the same is true for a business as well. You may have a company that is a hundred-year-old, but what kind of impact did that company make? That's the question here. Yeah. One last question, and I have a million more,

but I'd love to ask this one because these topics, I think, are kind of hot topics right now, vision and manifesting. As you have talked to these uber successful business owners and entrepreneurs, where does vision or does it play a part? And what about manifesting and how do we distinguish that from wishful thinking? Where does feature casting, vision, manifesting, whatever you want to call it, where does that fit in or do. Does it? That was my, you see, I missed one principle. I think that was my second principle, and I go into a lot of details. It's very much linked to the values of the founder.

Having the vision where they are going, it's very much linked to the values. And I go into detail on how they can decide, you know, you don't have to know exactly where you are going. You may not. but hopefully I have outlined a whole set of questions that a leader, an entrepreneur, can ask themselves on where to go, how to get that vision, how to be very clear. And usually they tend to, I call it, building from the future back. So someone recently at a conference said, oh, having a very clear vision,

that's a very male version of looking into the world, but I disagree. Because I myself had a very clear vision for my own life when I ended up in a refugee camp at the age of 11. I knew where I wanted to go. But it doesn't mean you have a clear vision, but it doesn't mean you're not going to get redirections. It doesn't mean it's going to be smooth sailing. but you have to have an idea of where you are going, how you want to feel when you get there. And it doesn't happen in the future.

It happens every single moment and you take one step after another to that, but you leave it as it's happening right now. That's why this future back thinking is something I observed. And they told me when I did my interviews. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying all of that. And as somebody who struggles with knowing exactly where I want to go, it was refreshing because I am very clear on my values. And also, you said it how you want to feel. I know the experiences I'm looking for. When I think in the future, I know how I want to feel. I have ideas of how I want to impact. Do I have it all clearly outlined and articulated and what it's going to look like and the details? No. But I'm very clear on my values. I'm very clear on my values. I'm very, very clear, the experiences that I'm looking for and the impact that I want to have.

And I feel like that keeps me open to possibility and a little bit more willing to pivot than I would if I had it all totally figured out. So to give you a personal example around the age of 35, now I am 47, I decided to completely reinvent myself, started from scratch, from scratch. and I knew never in a million years I thought I would live in France. That wasn't in my bingo card. But I knew I wanted financial freedom, financial independence. And I sent out a CV to all the academic institutions from Australia to Asia to US to Europe.

And I ended up getting a job offer from a university in France. This is almost 10 years ago now. But you see, I never could have imagined being here, but I knew the essence, financial freedom. Yeah. I love all of this so much. I could ask you one million more questions, but Neri, thank you so much for being a guest on our show,

for doing this work and for writing this book. A reminder to our listener, the book is called Pioneers, Eight Principles, of business longevity from immigrant entrepreneurs. And you can also find every way to find and follow Nerri on Nerikala Siliman.com. We'll put all the links in show notes so that you can connect with her and follow her in whatever way works best for you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being our guest and for doing this work and for writing this book. I could not be more grateful. Thank you, Nicole. It was a pleasure to speak with you. The pleasure was all mine.

So, friend, when I think about the principles that drive immigrant entrepreneurs, things like resilience, reinvention, kindness, community, I can't help but think about my parents. They came here with different stories, different backgrounds from different continents, and built a life not just for themselves, but for everyone who came after them. And I couldn't be more proud or more grateful. In my experience, immigrants are some of the greatest contributors to our society, our culture, and our communities. Outside of indigenous peoples who are here first and whose impact we should never overlook, every other generation that's shaped this country has been or descended from immigrants.

If you listen to the news today, you might think immigrants are responsible for all the problems, every crime, every crisis, every headline. But the reality is the vast majority are out there working, building businesses, raising families, fueling innovation, and expanding what's possible. often while being told that they don't belong. And sure, not every immigrant is a good person, but neither is every American or every human. So if you ever refer to an immigrant as an illegal person around me, please be prepared to be told to fuck all the way off. Because here's the truth. Immigrants aren't the problem. They're the blueprint. They remind us what it means to dream audaciously, to work relentlessly, and to create something that lasts.

The future belongs to the pioneers, the ones who know how to start over to turn struggle into strategy and who build with purpose. That's not just good business. That's humanity at its best. And as far as I'm concerned, all of that, every bit of it is woman's work.