Women Who Lead
Twenty years ago, Melissa Douaire lost her mother and discovered something that would define the next two decades of her work: grief has a language, and almost no one is taught to speak it. That realization, born in hospice rooms and pastoral care settings, eventually collided with another truth she&
Women Who Lead
Melanie Ulle was going door to door for a presidential campaign before most kids learn to ride a bike without training wheels. That early start, shaped by parents who treated current events and museum visits as standard weekend fare, set her on a path that's now spanned more
Women Who Lead
When Ariel Hyatt launched her PR firm from a Boulder apartment in the 1990s, she didn't set out to build a one-woman operation. Within three years she had a team and a roster of 22 bands across the country, built almost entirely through word of mouth and
Women Who Lead
Chelsea Marshall always knew she wanted to build something of her own. As a child, she taught herself to make websites and blogs, chasing one obsession after another - horses, beauty, fashion, photography - and building entire online worlds around them. It took years for her to realize what she actually loved
Women Who Lead
Long before brand partnerships lived on Reels and TikTok, Avyana Chapman was already building a career at the intersection of content, journalism, and communication. That layered background - four years as a freelance journalist, hands-on experience as a content copywriter, and early work as a content creator - gave her a
Women Who Lead
Noor Armando never set out to follow a single career path, she set out to be her own boss. That instinct, paired with a graphic design degree and a chance proximity to a media production course at university, led her to the person who would become both her business partner
Women Who Lead
Edith Wolek built Emperors Media on belief that a lasting brand is created by living your values, not by wearing a carefully crafted image. After more than two decades working in advertising, branding and design for global companies, she realised that helping businesses look good was never the real work.
Unfiltered Wisdom from Women Leading with Purpose
Forthright Advising is a highly experienced public relations and communications firm that works with organizations championing children and families. With more than 20 years of specialized experience in the child and family sector, Forthright Advising’s founder Katie Test Davis established Forthright as a nationwide PR and marketing firm. Our
Long before brand partnerships lived on Reels and TikTok, Avyana Chapman was already building a career at the intersection of content, journalism, and communication. That layered background - four years as a freelance journalist, hands-on experience as a content copywriter, and early work as a content creator - gave her a
Noor Armando never set out to follow a single career path, she set out to be her own boss. That instinct, paired with a graphic design degree and a chance proximity to a media production course at university, led her to the person who would become both her business partner
Edith Wolek built Emperors Media on belief that a lasting brand is created by living your values, not by wearing a carefully crafted image. After more than two decades working in advertising, branding and design for global companies, she realised that helping businesses look good was never the real work.
Mandi Casey started The MindHER Company after her own experience with burnout reshaped how she thought about success. She didn't want to build a business at the expense of her life, she wanted work that brought her joy and supported the life she actually wanted to live. As
We are proud to announce the winners of the Q2 2026 FBW Quarterly Awards. This quarter's cohort spans public relations, financial planning, leadership coaching, and workplace equity consulting, brought together by founders who built their practices around clarity, access, and measurable client impact. Alongside the founders who submitted
When markets move fast, scrutiny is constant, and reputations can be made or broken in a single news cycle, having the right communications partner isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Donna L. LaVoie understands this better than most. As Founder & CEO of LaVoie Strategic Communications,
Change is easy to talk about and hard to actually do. That's the gap Dr. Kei Alegria-Flores has spent her career studying - not just why people resist change, but what it actually takes to help them move through it. As the founder of CatalystIQ, she blends behavioral
Global shipping quietly moves almost everything we consume, from food and medicine to the chocolate, wine and trainers we take for granted, yet the industry produces roughly three times the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. Di Gilpin, founder and CEO of Smart Green Shipping, has spent the last
In her early twenties, Sarah Otto was quietly falling apart. Crushing fatigue, painful joints, anxiety and depression left her limping around her own apartment, all while looking completely fine on the outside. An autoimmune diagnosis gave her a label but no real answers, just a shrug and a statistic. It
Fran Benedict has spent nearly two decades exploring a single question: what if everything you need is already within you? As the founder of Simply Mindful, she has built a practice rooted in mind-body medicine and mindfulness, helping individuals and organizations reconnect with a sense of self that modern
Kaye Moors founded DRUM Studios back in 2006 with a simple goal: to build a digital media agency that offered honest, jargon-free advice. But it was a life-altering health crisis years later that gave her work its deepest purpose. After surviving two strokes and a ten-hour brainstem