“There’s a lot of women who serve as the backbone of the country.”
That was one of the closing lines from Indra K. Nooyi, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, at Newsweek’s inaugural Women’s Global Impact Forum on Tuesday, August 5, 2025, at Newsweek’s headquarters in New York City.
The one-day event, sponsored by MyEyeDr., with partners Starz and TriNet, brought together 300 senior executives and rising stars across multiple industries to celebrate the achievements women have made, connect with inspiring women and find practical solutions to overcome some of the biggest challenges they still face in the workplace.
On the stage, leaders from companies like the WNBA, SoulCycle, Nissan, Samsung, Hulken, Coach, Estée Lauder and Girl Scouts of the USA shared personal anecdotes about their professional journeys and the struggles of being women in the workplace.
While the conversations noted the unique challenges for industries like sports, fashion, retail, beauty, tech and health care, the women on and off stage found common ground. Most of the women in the room have experienced discrimination, failures, company reconstruction and imposter syndrome.
At the core of the conversations, each speaker exemplified what it means to be a strong and effective leader today and in the future.
Prioritizing wellness
During the “Prioritizing Wellness” panel, speakers agreed that good leaders take their wellness seriously.
Sakara co-founder Danielle DuBoise stressed the importance of “checking your engine light” by listening to your body to prevent burnout.
“So I’d say the first thing is to really get to this place where you can tell when your body is listening,” she said. “And then second is, once you listen, like I know my throat gets a little funky, I say to myself, ‘OK, I need more rest. I need more greens and plants, or I just needed to tap out for a little bit.'”
SoulCycle CEO Evelyn Webster said leaders “set the weather” for their organizations, so it’s important to be consistent.
“I can tell when I’m not investing in my own wellness because of the way that I start to set the temperature in the organization, and that’s not a good thing.”
“Over time, when I invested in my wellness, I’m happy and a better human,” she said. “When you’re healthy, you are happy and we all deserve to be happy.”
As the leader of an exercise company, she sees every day how endorphins make her clients and instructors happier, think clearly, communicate better and help enable them to better lead and inspire.
Seeking out and being a mentor
Mentorship was an essential tenet that has allowed many of the women to thrive/climb the corporate ladder.
Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Bonnie Barczykowski said it best on the “Shaping an Equitable Future” panel: “Girls achieve what they can see.”
Allyson Witherspoon, the chief marketing officer of Nissan U.S., said on the “Leadership: The New Measures of Success” that she is grateful for the many male mentors she’s had who took a chance on her throughout her career.
But it wasn’t until she worked with a female CEO that she said she began to “understand what it took to be a leader like that, and then what it’s like to be a woman in that role.”
“This was the first time that I saw somebody, I kind of thought, maybe I can be in a leadership position too,” she said.
Clinique and Dermatological Brands general manager Kelly Fanning shared how her parent company, Estée Lauder, has a “reverse mentorship” where junior executives mentor senior leadership. Through that, Fanning said she learned how to look at TikTok, Sephora shopping and AI tools in new ways.
“So the reverse network has been awesome,” she said. “It’s fun to be able to see that executive level, you’re still learning.”
Using experience from other jobs
Both on stage and in the audience, the women in attendance share a lifetime of experiences. But, as with many successful people, their journeys were not linear. Whether it’s a promotion or a complete industry change, a good leader can take all their cumulative experiences and skills and bring them into a new role.
Those soft skills or traditionally female skills have often been seen as a detriment in the workplace, but the women at this event said it is those very things that have allowed them to succeed.
As she built the optometry network MyEyeDr., Sue Downes recognized that women tend to be more attentive to others’ behaviors and have more compassion for other people’s needs. She told the audience that being a leader doesn’t mean forgetting who you are as women.
“Don’t be afraid to be a really great mom,” she advised. “If I’m in a board meeting and my child calls, I’m excusing myself. Do what you want to do and don’t be judged by anyone else.”
Before she was the commissioner of the WNBA, Cathy Engelbert was the first female CEO of Deloitte. When she made the jump from consulting to sports, she said she was apprehensive at first because she knew “nothing about being a commissioner running a sports league.”
“I’ve been a CPA. I’ve been an accountant. I’ve worked in the pharma industry. I worked in banking clients. I’ve worked in consumer products, but I don’t know anything about running sports,” she said.
But after landing the position, she quickly found that a lot of her skills were transferable – including strategy planning to take care of players, fans and shareholders, scenario planning during the draft in the COVID-19 pandemic and executive marketing to transform an under-resourced team into a league with over 100 million fans.
Listening and delivering on stakeholder needs
A good leader is one who listens – to colleagues, customers and trends. This includes leaning into trends that align with company values and goals and starting from a place of learning in the boardroom.
Hulken CEO Alex Schinasi also talked about how her bag company turned the “really unsexy” task of schlepping things around into New York City’s hottest accessory. From makeup artists to grandmas getting groceries to moms carpooling to soccer practice – Hulken thrives on user-generated content and authentic reviews.
“Shlepping is universal,” she said. “By leaning into that, we actually created a sense of authenticity, of honesty, that our audience can really relate to. So this feeling of relatability is actually hugely impactful.”
When entering a new company or board, it is also crucial to observe and learn as much about the company as possible from the jump.
Bridget Ryan Berman, member of the board of directors of the Asbury Automotive Group, Newell Brands and Tanger Inc., spoke on the “Women on Boards” panel about how making an impact comes in a variety of forms and strengthens with time and experience. Good leaders, she said, don’t lead with ego.
“Oftentimes, people try to oversell themselves,” she said. “You see that often in a boardroom, you read about people who come in and they want to take the oxygen around the room,” she said. “It’s really about becoming a student of that company and of the business and the industry they’re in and leaning into that really from day one.”
Deconstruct the myth of having it all
Finally, in a room of accomplished and powerful women, there is a lingering pressure to “have it all.” But at the final chat of the day, Indra Nooyi shut down the myth of being perfect.
“You can’t just be average at being a mother, average in being a wife and average at being an executive … you’ve got to be good at the job, and the burden falls on us [women],” she said. “So I look at all this and say, we are lying to women that you can have it all. Let’s be honest and say it’s that difficult. It’s a juggling act. Just hope the most important balls don’t drop.”
Part of deconstructing the expectation of having it all is being authentic, even when things are tough.
Melody Lee, chief marketing officer at Mercedes-Benz USA, said in the leadership panel that she wished the previous generation of working women could have been more vulnerable and honest about when they failed.
“Women before felt pressure not to see the cracks… but it’s not a linear path,” she said.
Dismantling norms is not only reserved for the office – women are also working to get rid of stigmas about their health and bodies.
During the “Female Founders: Navigating the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem” panel earlier in the day, Megababe founder Katie Sturino shared how her own struggles with body acceptance and thigh chafing inspired the launch of her company that aims to alleviate the physical problems women face but are often too embarrassed to discuss.
Additionally, both Dr. Jessica Shepard, the chief medical officer of Hers, and Jannine Versi, co-founder and CEO of Elektra Health, discussed how there is still a lot of shame and a lack of information surrounding menopause.
By being authentic, attentive, adaptable and open to building connections, women in all industries and experience levels can thrive in the workplace. Women have made incredible strides in the professional world, but there is much work to be done. And hopefully, the women at the Women’s Global Impact Forum were inspired enough to take these lessons back to their organizations and start fostering change.
As Girl Scouts of the USA CEO Bonnie Barczykowski put it in a statement to Newsweek, “If the energy in the room is any indication of mobilizing change – we’re on our way!”
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