For these amazing women, business is more than a money-making process. It is rather a process of creating new things of great value to make life better. Meet four incredible women who deserve our admiration for what they do. The stories behind their success are truly inspiring
Rose Broome, Co-founder and CEO of HandUp
Rose Broome did something really amazing: along with her partner Zac Witte she found a way to use technology for the greater good by creating a crowdfunding website for the homeless where they can post photos and tell their stories to the world. And ask for donations. The HandUp project gives proof that there are people in the tech industry who care about the less fortunate. HandUp is a very powerful mobile application which came out at the right time - when everyone is extremely passionate about social media, email marketing, and other stuff you can do on the Web via your mobile device. The fact that many people are using HandUp means that technology can do social good after all. And the HandUp creators remain true to theSilicon Valley motto "Make the world a better place". The HandUp app allows everyone to make a donation to people in need via text or email message. Broome, who used to be a data analyst for a self-improvement startup, came up with the idea in a chilling winter evening. As she was standing at the corner of a street in the freezing cold, she saw a homeless woman sitting near the doorway of a real-estate office, wearing thin clothes and shivering. Several months later, the project under the name HangUp was set in development.
Jessica Alba, co-founder of The Honest Company
Jessica Alba is an Academy-award and ALMA-award winning actress best known for her roles in Honey, Sin City, The Eye, Into the Blue and Good Luck Chuck. Evidently, she can offer a lot more than good acting skills. Alba proved she can be equally good with roles of funny and inspiring heroines as well as being a mom. Actually it is the role of a mother of two daughters that inspired her to raise to another challenge: entrepreneurship. In 2011, along with partners Sean Kane and Christopher Gavigan, Alba founded a consumer goods company called The Honest Co. It was her daughter Honor and her childhood illnesses that made the actress launch a company focues on providing parents with eco-friendly and toxic-free baby and home products. The Honest Co. is specialized in delivering non-toxic products for babies (like diapers) that lack of petrochemicals and synthetic fragrances which in most cases cause allergy or further illnesses. The company's mission is to stimulate households for ethical consumerism and make people buy more eco-friendly goods for their kids. In 2013 sales revenues hit 50 million dollars and by November 2014 the number of employees reached 275. The company is fast growing and constantly expanding. In 2012, Alba landed on Fortune's top list counting down the most powerful women entrepreneurs. Later, in 2015 she entered Forbes's list of America's richest self-made women
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos
Elizabeth Holmes is a health technology entrepreneur. She became famous for developing a revolunary approach to the blood test. She proved that clinical laboratory test results can come a lot faster, improved in quality, and at a low price. In 2003, a few months before she drop out of Stanford University (where she studied chemical engineering), Holmes founded her blood diagnostics company Theranos. Impressively, she was only 19 years old at the time. The company made a significant impact invention. By using microfluidics (also called "lab-on-a-chip") technology, Holmes developed an innovative method for examining blood obtained from a finger. Soon her lab testing techniques were proved faster and cheaper than traditional methods. By 2014 as Theranos company had a license to operate in all states of America. It didn’t take long until the company network reached 10 billion dollars. Described by her colleagues as a "tech visionary" and "iron-willed", Holmes prefers to do work instead of giving interviews to magazines and participating in TV shows. She doesn’t find the idea of becoming a common face on TV and social media. Working against the clock all day every day, she pursues health care improvements on a global scale.
Sara Blakely - founder of Spanx
Sara Blakely is another self-made female billionaire who deserves a place in this lits. In 2000, she launched her high-profit company Spanx specializied in women clothing. By 2012 she has already built a fortune and her popualrity was keeping on growing bigger. The same yeat Blakely was announced one of the youngest self-made women billionaires entrepreneurs. Born in Clearwater, Florida and raised in the family of an artist mother and a trial attorney father, she graduated from Florida State University with a degree of communications. Her early career choice was to become an attorney. However, she had to reconsider the idea after performing unsuccessfully on the admission test. Instead going to a law school, she accepted a job offer at Walt Disney World. The idea to run a fashion business came spontaneously. When dressing for a night out, she found out she didn't have the proper clothes to put on, so she decided to design those models by her own image. Today, Spanx is estimated one of the most successful brands in the fashion industry making billion-dollar profit per year, and Blakely remains its sole owner.
