Female Business Leaders in Digital Age You Should Follow

This month we celebrate the contributions women have made in history, including the great lengths many have gone on to achieve in women's rights and equality.

For years, in the world of business, women have overcome great odds to gain roles of prominent positions and mere recognition. But this has greatly shifted over the years.

Today, within the age of technology, innovation has certainly provided women with the unique opportunity to launch their own businesses and to build brands in the world through extraordinary and deeply impactful ways.

Within leadership, we frequently focus on the ways female CEOs, entrepreneurs and leaders have made a name for themselves in a traditional business sense. Yet as social media rapidly changes how we do life and take in information, these women are revolutionizing the digital age with their skills and platforms. They are also greatly influential businesswomen who have discovered how to use their platform and knowledge to empower and embolden women across the globe.

Here are a few highly influential female leaders in the digital age you should follow:

1. The Skimm founders, Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, started their careers at NBC at the bottom of the totem pole. Now, they are leading the way in the delivery of daily news — specifically for female millennials. In an interview with ABC News, Weisberg said, "We started off being really cheap labor, we learned a lot, and then when we weren't so cheap anymore and were starting to think about how do we really build a long-term career for ourselves." In 2012, with just $4,000, Weisberg and Zakin left their careers to launch The Skimm, a daily newsletter and brief of daily news written in a way made easy to digest. Today, The Skimm has over 7 million subscribers and has prompted the media to reconsider the most effective ways of delivering the news.
2. Sheryl Sandberg is a self-made billionaire and author of "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead." She has been credited for progressing the movement of equality for women in the workplace. Sandberg first made her name as the chief operating officer of Facebook. In 2018, Sandberg took Facebook from a $56 million loss to profits of $22.1 billion. Sandberg has also truly leveraged her influence to enhance the lives of those who have faced great difficulties. Following the tragic death of her husband, she co-authored the book "Option B," which explores finding joy in grief. Now her non-profit organization Option B assists people in building resilience in the face of any adversity.
3. Brené Brown's famed Ted Talk on "The Power of Vulnerability," with nearly 40 million views, is one of the top five most viewed Ted Talks in the world. Brown's transformative study of human connection and vulnerability has gained the attention of millions. As a best-selling author and research professor at the University of Houston, Brown holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair. After spending the past two decades studying courage, shame and empathy, Brown has addressed deep human vulnerabilities in a way that has captured the minds and hearts of Americans. After endless contributions, this month Brown continues to utilize social media with the release of her new podcast, "Unlocking Us."
4. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist, communication pathologist and author whose work is transforming the world of mental health. Leaf has studied the mind-brain connection and is one of the first within her field to study how the brain can change through the input from the mind. Her works offer practical principles to engage, what she calls, mind detoxing — changing the state of your brain. Much of her work has transformed the lives of those facing brain injuries, learning disabilities, autism and mental illnesses, such as anxiety and depression. But Leaf's transformative work has also impacted the thought lives of individuals across the globe. In addition to her books and podcast, her app, "Switch," offers practical steps and applications of addressing toxic thoughts.

Many prominent female leaders are using innovative ways to impact the information we receive and how we receive it. No doubt this great shift of how women, such as these, are impacting the world is just a glimpse of what is to come.

Dr. Kent Ingle serves as the President of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, and is the author of "Framework Leadership." A champion of innovative educational design, Ingle is the president of one of the fastest growing private universities in the nation. As president, Ingle founded the American Center for Political Leadership at the university and is also a founding member of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Before becoming Southeastern’s president in 2011, Ingle held leadership positions in higher education and the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle. Ingle is the author of several leadership books and the creator of the Framework Leadership podcast. He currently serves on the board of the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.