20 Founders On a Mission: Meet the Women Building What Matters
This is the first in our ongoing Women's History Month series spotlighting women founders building businesses that matter. Each week throughout March, we're featuring a new group of mission-driven founders from across industries and continents. These are their stories.
Some founders are chasing market share. Others are chasing something harder to measure – impact, meaning, the kind of change that outlasts a funding round.
The women in this series refused to separate who they are from what they do. Their stories span leadership, wellness, communications, education, and beyond. But every one of them starts in the same place: a decision to build something real.
These are 20 founders on a mission.
Know a women founder who belongs in this series? We feature founders year-round. Reach out at hi@foundedbywomen.org
Rakita Lillard-Brown | Holistree
Rakita Lillard-Brown is a wellness strategist, retreat curator, and founder of Holistree, a luxury wellness brand devoted to helping Black women build resourced, sustainable lives. Through immersive retreats and community experiences rooted in The Sweet Life philosophy, she creates spaces where powerful women can rest, reconnect, and expand their leadership without sacrificing themselves. Her work is driven by a commitment to redefining success so that power and care can exist together.
Sana Fatima | MySafeTherapy
Sana Fatima watched professionals silently suffer through stress and burnout for years — first as a global HR leader, then as a psychotherapist. Support was always reactive, hard to access, and rarely built to last. So, she built something different. The MySafe ecosystem combines AI tools, therapy, and weekly progress insights to help people develop genuine self-awareness and build emotional muscle over time - your emotional gym, shifting mental health from a clinical response to an everyday practice. Through MySafeWellbeing, she brings that same approach into organisations, helping leaders move from crisis management to proactive, data-informed care for their people.
Sharise Nance | Vitamin C Healing
Sharise Nance, LCSW, CCTP didn't set out to become an entrepreneur. She set out to help people. As a social worker early in her career, she saw how the people doing the most important work in communities were often the most depleted – carrying trauma, overwhelming caseloads, and systems that expected endless giving without sustainable support. That observation became a mission. Through Vitamin C Healing and the SWAG Alliance Foundation, she helps organisations understand compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and the quiet load that leaders and helping professionals carry. Her guiding belief: you cannot build healthy systems on the backs of exhausted people.
Melissa Sherry | Works Well Consulting
Melissa Sherry works with mission-driven leaders to cut through the noise and turn big-picture ideas into clear, actionable plans for their teams. Her focus is on straightforward training and operations – the kind that makes sure everyone knows exactly how to contribute to organizational success.
That focus is rooted in her own experience. In her early 20s, Melissa worked in corporate environments where she felt she had to wear a mask to succeed – over-performing within rigid structures that stifled who she was, eventually leading to burnout and a mental health leave at 26.
That turning point shaped her approach today. Melissa builds systems that put people at the center – not just for efficiency, but to create clarity and alignment for teams in a way she once lacked. No overcomplicated frameworks. Just clarity, alignment, and work that actually works.
Marcey Rader | RaderCo
In her 30s, Marcey Rader was addicted to more. More work. More travel. More achievement. She travelled 48 weeks a year, competed in over 100 ultra and endurance events, and wore busyness like a badge of honour. Then it cost her her health, her marriage, and her ability to enjoy the life she was working so hard to build. That reckoning became a business. Today, through RaderCo, she helps teams break the cycle of constant busyness – not by doing everything faster, but by doing what matters most, sustainably. A multi-award-winning Certified Speaking Professional and four-time author, her clients include Delta Air Lines, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and the U.S. Treasury.
Emily Bissen | Blue Heron Business Partners
Emily Bissen saw the gap while working at a business coaching firm: the coaches were missing the human element. They weren't seeing that the person and the business aren't separate things. So she built something different. Through Blue Heron Business Partners, she works with solopreneurs and small business owners using Human Design as a framework to help clients understand how they work best, then realigns their offers, marketing, and voice so that selling and showing up start to feel natural instead of forced. Her vision: a full community ecosystem where service-based entrepreneurs can grow without burning out or compromising what matters to them.
Liesl Drought | Liesl Coaching
We spend so much of our lives at work – it shapes who we are, what we feel capable of, and how much energy we have left for everything else that matters. That's the conviction behind Liesl Drought's work. Passionate about burnout and the job search, she helps people build careers that add to their lives rather than drain them. Because everyone deserves work that energises rather than depletes.
Camille L. Miller | Soul Professional Network
Camille L. Miller started with a simple observation: remarkable, purpose-driven people were everywhere – but most of them felt a quiet tension between who they were and what they did professionally. Her response was equally simple: these people should know each other. What began as a coffee club has grown into the Soul Professional Network, now spanning six continents and more than 48 countries and counting. The network operates on an open-access model built around partnerships and affiliations, rooted in a belief that people should be able to bring their gifts to the world regardless of their financial circumstances.
Erika Matallana | Threadwell Studio
After more than twenty years navigating corporate spaces as a Latina communications leader – often the only one in the room – Erika Matallana stepped away from her corporate role in 2024 to build something more aligned. Threadwell Studio is a strategic communications consultancy that helps mission-driven organisations close the gap between what they say externally and what people experience internally. Through the Threadwell Framework™ and the Culture Resonance Engine™, she helps leadership teams align culture, behaviour, and messaging so that communication reflects organisational reality. Her work also champions in-house communicators – the people who often carry the most operational intelligence in an organisation, yet are too rarely given a seat at the strategy table.
Murphy Hopkins-Hubbard | Stamp
Murphy is the Founder of Stamp, a start up on a mission to bring trust, accountability and impact to the creator economy. Driven to create safer online spaces for audiences, creators, brands and agencies Stamp brings trust, transparency, and accountability to the global influencer economy. They are not an agency. Not a marketplace. They are building the first ethical certification and compliance toolkit for digital creators, agencies, and brands. Think of them as the ethical trustmark for digital influence, a layer of infrastructure that verifies creator behaviour, flags content risk, and strengthens brand safety.
Jennifer Chaibet | Excelling in Hospitality
After building a twenty-year career in luxury hospitality and events, Jennifer Chaibet became a multi-award-winning entrepreneur with a clear mission: to help others succeed without losing themselves in the process. Today she mentors hospitality professionals and entrepreneurs to strengthen their mindset, lead with confidence, and build careers they are truly proud of – without burning out along the way.
Georgina Shute | KindTwo
After facing brain surgery at 15, Georgina Shute built an unconventional path that included over twenty jobs, learning Serbian, and spending time living between the UK and the Balkans. She went on to consult with some of the UK’s biggest brands on major technology transformations and share her story at the House of Lords. Today she is the founder of KindTwo, helping leaders rethink how they work so that ambition and wellbeing can exist together – not as opposing forces, but as partners.
Lauren Chiren | Women of a Certain Stage
In her early 40’s, after 18 months of sleeplessness, spiking anxiety, and a loss of the lightning-fast recall that had defined her career as a senior financial services leader, Lauren Chiren believed she might have early-onset dementia. She left her job. It turned out she had experienced premature menopause. That misdiagnosis became a mission. Today, Women of a Certain Stage is a global, evidence-based platform providing menopause education, certification, and workplace culture change. She has worked with 400+ companies globally, trained over 1,800 Menopause Champions and Coaches across 36 countries, and spoken at the Sydney Opera House, in Johannesburg, and across the US, UK, and Middle East.
Lucy Brazier | Executive Support Media
For decades, one of the most influential roles inside organisations has also been one of the most misunderstood. Lucy Brazier set out to change that. Fifteen years ago she launched Executive Support Magazine to give the administrative profession the professional infrastructure it had always deserved – research, development pathways, and recognition. That publication has since grown into Executive Support Media, a global platform she has taken to over sixty countries and six continents. This month, in conjunction with the World Administrator's Alliance, she is launching the next evolution of the Global Skills Matrix – a free resource that builds clear career pathways for administrative professionals worldwide.
Claire Ashton | Inna Health
Claire Ashton founded Inna Health after her own search for answers that conventional approaches couldn't provide. That journey led her to bioresonance, nutrition, light, minerals and emotional healing – and to a deeper understanding of how intelligent the body truly is. At Inna, she helps people step back from the noise, understand what their body is communicating, and reconnect with their innate capacity for health. Rather than treating isolated symptoms, Inna looks at the body as an interconnected system – using bioresonance, bio-energetic nutrition and lifestyle guidance to support the body's natural return to balance.
Autumn Noble | The Lawyer Life Collective
After experiencing domestic violence while navigating the gruelling early years of her legal career, Autumn Noble realised that what society called success felt hollow – and that she had lost her identity to her career. Through mindfulness, meditation, yoga, energy work, and coaching, she rebuilt her life and reimagined her path. Today she works as a career coach, speaker, and attorney helping ambitious women redefine success by integrating purpose, career growth, and holistic wellbeing. She is expanding her podcast toward one million listeners and working on her next book.
Wendy Wollner | Balancing Life's Issues
Raising three children alone – ages 5, 6, and 8 at the time – reshaped how Wendy Wollner saw the relationship between work and life. That lived experience became the foundation for Balancing Life's Issues (BLI), now a global corporate training and consulting company reaching individuals and organisations across multiple countries. Through customised seminars, workshops, and executive coaching, Wendy operates from a single conviction: when people truly thrive, businesses do too.
Dr. Erica Kreismann | OneWild Coaching
An emergency physician turned executive coach, Dr. Erica Kreismann brings a rare lens to leadership development, shaped by years in high-stakes medical environments and a deep commitment to authentic living. Through OneWild Coaching, she helps leaders cultivate self-awareness, courage, and clarity so they can show up fully in their careers and in their lives. Her work is grounded in a belief that personal transformation ripples outward into communities.
Caroline Dowd-Higgins | carolinedowdhiggins.com
After clocking 90-hour weeks as an executive and surviving burnout firsthand, Caroline Dowd-Higgins built a business around a principle she wishes more organisations would adopt: you shouldn't have to choose between doing great work and living a great life. Today she works as an executive coach, keynote speaker, and talent development consultant helping individuals and organisations connect employee wellbeing to the bottom line. Her bestselling book Your Career Advantage is part of a growing platform bringing that message to audiences around the world.
Carolyn Warsham | carolynwarsham.com
With a decade of leadership experience at Salesforce, Google, and Vox Media and three promotions in four years, Carolyn Warsham knows what high performance looks like from the inside. She also knows its cost. A personal awakening mid-career led her to ICF certification as a coach and Reiki certification, and eventually to a new way of working that blends nervous system support, mindfulness, and practical leadership strategy. Today she helps high-performing managers build their own personalised approach to leadership— one that allows them to thrive while continuing to expand their career.
This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org
