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5 Inspiring Girl Bosses to Follow on Social Media
Names and faces to know and remember
It’s important for the youth to have role models to look up to. For young girls, in particular, these figures are critical. Because while young boys have long seen men before them wield power, take on important positions and make game-changing decisions in various industries, for girls, women have only just begun to gain momentum in these parts—not as the token female in the group or some fluke in the system, but as steady, integral cogs in a much bigger machine.
Backtracking, it’s easy to see that it hasn’t been all that long since women had a piece of the pie through several groundbreaking firsts. It was only in 1946 that a woman, Katharine Graham, became the first female publisher of a major American newspaper. It was regarded a major milestone for Ireland when Mary McAleese succeeded another female president, Mary Robinson, for the first time in the country’s history in 1997. Another prime example is Kathryn Bigelow, who, in 2010, became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. (The Academy Awards dates back to 1929.)
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The glass ceiling has sufficiently been broken. And with the amazing female forerunners who have done the ceiling-breaking, what could possibly be next? It’s the next generation of women who want females to keep soaring, that’s what. It’s the influential women who intend on making sure that seat at the table stays secure, that’s who. Meet the stellar girl bosses of today worth keeping tabs on:
Bozoma Saint John
Apple, Uber and Endeavor: what do these institutions have in common? They’ve all been touched by American-Ghanaian marketing guru Bozoma Saint John, whose career is marked by multiple successful ad campaigns and her ability to cultivate brand love—especially when it’s difficult to.
In 2015, she was named one of the Top Women in Music by Billboard for her work with Apple Music. In 2016, she was named Female Executive of the Year by the same media brand. She has further solidified her place in the male-dominated industry as a whiz at digital disruption and brand building, bagging awards like Ad Age’s 50 Most Creative People, Innovators & Stars 40 Under 40, Fortune’s 40 Under 40 in 2016 and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People roundup.
On her recent trip to Manila for DIGICON 2018, she made one thing clear apart from teaching audiences about branding: the importance of lifting women up. “Special shout-out to my Filipino sisters—whom I had to make sure are being celebrated properly,” she said in an Instagram post. “And my Filipino brothers whom we’re holding accountable!”
Emily Weiss
The founder and CEO of women-led beauty brand Glossier Emily Weiss has consistently been one of the ones to watch in business.
“My job is constantly changing. We are such a rapidly growing company where, every month, I’m focused on something different,” she said in a 2016 interview with Into The Gloss. “This month I’m focused on international, last month I was focused on editorial strategy, so I’m always ducking in on different teams that I think could benefit from my help or I can benefit from for their help. My job is also to be thinking 12 months to two years ahead, so I can seem like a bit of a weirdo because I’m always trying to picture the future and make sure that everyone is on track and able to get there.”
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Rissa Mananquil Trillo
Model-turned-entrepreneur, columnist, beauty mogul, mother and wife: Mananquil Trillo is no stranger to wearing many hats. As the founder of local beauty brand Happy Skin, she also knows a thing or two about the multidimensional dialogue surrounding beauty in the Philippines.
She reckoned, once she introduced Happy Skin to the world with business partner Jacqe Yuengtian-Gutierrez, that it was time to get real, for real this time, about beauty: “What fueled this dream of mine was how hard it was to find good makeup for Filipinas when I first started modeling. Even as a beauty columnist, I always dreamed to create the perfect makeup line that would wonderfully celebrate and care for the skin.”
Julie Zerbo
What began as a hobby for then-law student Zerbo has turned into one of fashion’s most reliable sources for law-related news. Today, her website The Fashion Law serves up “objective fashion law and business analysis for lawyers, business executives, fashion industry insiders and students.”
“Fashion and fashion media [are] in no way removed from the larger scale of our daily existence,” she shared with SSENSE. “Right now, in the United States, it seems like we’ve kind of woken up to the inaccuracy of the news and are demanding more from publications. That’s why The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, their ads are all about real news, accuracy, truth.”
Pamela Mejia
Pamela Mejia, a Filipino millennial with a mission, made headlines last year when she emerged victorious at Rappler’s 2017 #HackSociety event. Her startup project Phinix was all the rage at the Social Good Summit and showed immense promise as a brand that aims to become the pioneer textile recycling center in the Philippines.
“Fashion is the second dirtiest industry and the overuse of textile is a huge environmental problem,” Mejia told ABS-CBN. “What do we do with this textile waste? We should do something about it. This is where Phinix comes in. We collect textile waste such as old clothes from households, fabric scraps from factories and transform them into high-value products such as footwear.”
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With sights set on a greater purpose, a desire to “woman up” for others and to give the world the refreshing new perspective it needs, these ladies only prove that not only is the future female, the present is, too. Get inspired and stay inspired by their stories when you follow them on social media.