Women Who Lead
For nearly 20 years, Helen Burness worked across global law firms, barristers' chambers and one of the UK's first alternative legal service providers, watching the legal sector from every angle. What she saw again and again was a visibility gap: brilliant founders and smaller legal businesses doing
Women Who Lead
After more than a decade teaching law and splitting her life between Portugal and San Francisco, Eleanor Lumsden made a choice many people only dream about: she stepped away from academia to build something entirely her own. Today, from her home base in Madeira, she is the founder and curator
Women Who Lead
After two decades leading ESG departments and shaping diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy for major organizations, Gemma Branney made the leap into entrepreneurship. In March 2025, she co-founded ENVOLV alongside Mhairi Cameron, a woman-owned sustainability consultancy that spans media, tech, recruitment, professional services, events, and the charity sector.
Women Who Lead
Sonia Hunt's career reads like a masterclass in intentional design. After more than 20 years as a marketing executive working with brands like Apple, TiVo, LVMH, Califia Farms, and Sephora, where she won the 2015 WWD Digital Innovator of the Year award, she made the leap from operator
Women Who Lead
When Olivia Hanlon launched Girls in Marketing back in 2019, it wasn't meant to be a business — it was simply a way to connect with other women in the industry and share what she was learning along the way. But the response was immediate, and by 2020 she&
Women Who Lead
Charina Widjaja didn't set out to disrupt the fashion industry - she set out to solve a problem. Watching talented Singaporean designers pour millions into their brands only to shut down for lack of market access convinced her that the issue was never the product. It was the platform.
Women Who Lead
Exercise is often talked about as a universal good, something everyone can benefit from if they simply choose to prioritize it. But for women recovering from abuse, trafficking, or homelessness, access to movement is rarely that simple. Trauma, financial insecurity, low confidence, and unstable housing can all stand between a
Women Who Lead
At 20 years old, Donna Ross-Jones learned the hardest lesson of her career: loyalty and hard work don't guarantee protection. After being blamed for conflict she didn't create, fired, and then assaulted by someone she trusted, she made a decision that would define the next
Women Who Lead
After nearly two decades in HR and executive search, Fay Phillips-Jones kept noticing the same pattern from her seat on the hiring side of the table: talented HR professionals, people who had spent their careers guiding others through change, often struggled to advocate for themselves. She watched capable candidates
Women Who Lead
Joanne Lockwood spent much of her life moving through the world with the privilege of being perceived as a man. In her forties, as she stepped away from a career in IT and began her gender transition, that changed - and so did her view of the workplaces she'd
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