After Forbes magazine published its list of 100 Innovative CEOs and included 99 men and just 1 woman, award-winning journalist Diana Kapp thought hell no. So she penned an Open Letter to the magazine’s executives, enlisted 100+ innovative female CEOs to sign on, and launched #InnovationForAll, a movement to make sure we don’t see another list like that again. Diana’s new book Girls Who Run the World: 31 CEOs Who Mean Business aimed at inspiring girls and young women to grow up expecting to be CEOs, is an ideal “antidote” to Forbes’ list. She will interview exciting female CEOs overlooked by Forbes: Lisa Sugar of POPSUGAR, Rachel Blumenthal of Rockets of Awesome, and Sarah Paiji Yoo Co-Founder & CEO at Blueland. They will offer a lively conversation on turning ideas into realities, the importance of finding moxie and embracing failure, how they built their confidence, and what we can do to help shift the balance so that today’s young women have what they need to be tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Following the conversation and q&a, Diana will sign copies of her new book. (Books will be available for purchase on site.)
Diana Kapp is a business journalist with an MBA from Stanford University. She has written about education and entrepreneurism for media outlets such as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, ELLE, O the Oprah Magazine, Outside.com, ESPN.com, and Marie Claire. She lives in San Francisco.
New York-based entrepreneur and mom, Rachel Blumenthal, created Rockets of Awesome in July 2016 to offer parents a simpler and smarter way to shop for high-quality kids clothing. She began her career at Yves Saint Laurent, before launching her first entrepreneurial venture as designer and founder of the fashion jewelry brand Rachel Leigh. The brand was licensed to GlamHouse in 2011. Rachel then lent her hand to Warby Parker, which was cofounded by her husband Neil, before founding and acting as CEO of Cricket’s Circle, the trusted resource and editorial destination for everything baby and toddler. It was the insights and learnings from the Cricket’s Circle community, in addition to her own experience as a mother that inspired the idea for Rockets of Awesome.
Lisa is the co-founder of POPSUGAR, which began as an unhealthy obsession with all things pop culture. Born and raised as an east coaster, Lisa now resides and works on the west coast with her husband Brian (POPSUGAR's CEO). She lives on sugar while raising three daughters and two dogs, whose names might be inspired by one of her favorite TV shows, created by J.J. Abrams.
Sarah Paiji Yoo (CEO, Co-Founder) is a serial retail entrepreneur and C-level executive passionate about building meaningful and innovative consumer brands. Most recently a Partner at LAUNCH, a leading startup studio, she launched and operated several consumer brands including M.Gemi, Rockets of Awesome and Follain. She was previously co-founder and CEO of Snapette, the largest mobile platform for local fashion shopping, which was sold to leading e-commerce platform Pricegrabber in 2013. Sarah attended Harvard College and Harvard Business school, and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Forbes, Time, InStyle and Glamour. She lives in NYC with her 2-year-old son Noah and husband Ken.
