8 Successful Women Business Owners Who Give Back… And LYT too!

As you know, we consider giving back an important part of doing business. It’s long been a tradition in the Black community, and women have also focused on philanthropy over the centuries. For Women’s History Month in March, we wanted to highlight some women business owners who also consider giving back to be a critical piece of doing business.

Your mind might go immediately to Oprah, and her charitable intentions are pretty well known. You can see more about her in a post we wrote for Black History Month here.

However, as they say on the infamous late-night TV ads - But wait! There’s more!

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx

You’re probably familiar with her story, selling printers out of her car while she developed the women’s shapewear brand now known as Spanx, which was recently acquired by Blackstone, one of the largest investment firms in the world.

Well before Blackstone bought a majority stake in her firm, Ms. Blakely created the Sara Blakely Foundation dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs worldwide. She’s also signed the Giving Pledge (organized by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates) to give away half of her wealth.

Sarah Kauss, founder and CEO of S’well

You may not be as familiar with this Sarah. After she learned about the clean water drinking crisis, she was hiking with her mom in Arizona and drinking out of a poorly-insulated cheap metal bottle. (We live in the desert and can confirm that bottles like that heat up VERY FAST in the sun!)

That experience led her to create the S’Well line of double-insulated bottles, which help cut down on all the plastic pollution as well. Not to mention they’re pretty to look at, with new designs released every year.

Some of the proceeds from the sale of each bottle go to her charity partners: UNICEF, American Forests, and Drink Up.

Abbigale Comfort, founder of Be of Good Comfort Designs

Her firm is focused on boutique branding and web design for women entrepreneurs. The company’s work is designed to enhance the visibility and visual presence for women-led companies.

She has partnered up with Pitch Better Canada and Found Hers on a research project that will identify the problems that Black women entrepreneurs experience across Canada. Her team will design a dashboard that will help venture capitalists and other institutional investors find Black women-led Canadian firms.

Trina Spear and Heather Hasson, cofounders of Figs

These two women revolutionized the scrubs industry. Instead of scratchy fabrics and oversized silhouettes, their apparel is designed in high-tech fabrics and to have a better fit. The fabric is durable and repels liquids, stains, and is anti-microbial. All this is at the level of the yarn, so the fabric isn’t sprayed with a coating that’s typically pretty itchy.

In their Threads for Threads program, for every set of scrubs sold, a pair gets donated to medics in need in less developed countries. Clean scrubs reduce hospital infection rates significantly, so it’s not just the medics who benefit!

Angela Benton, founder of Streamlytics

She’s one of the few Black women in tech, and her company is a data analytics and machine learning platform that provides marketing information. It’s one of the leaders in the community-driven data category which puts the ownership of the data into the hands of those (consumers) who create it.?

The company is focused on data that better represents the experiences of people of color and helps them to make money from their own usage patterns. People can take back their data.

Previously she founded a startup accelerator designed for minorities called NewME. She also gives back by mentoring students of color at Stanford and helping more minorities enter the tech arena.

Judy Falkner, founder and CEO of Epic Systems

This tech billionaire prefers not to give interviews, so you may not have heard of her. Way back in the 1970s (last century!) she founded Epic Systems which is a medical records software firm. Their databases include records from major healthcare systems like Johns Hopkins and Kaiser Permanente, allowing docs to pull up a patient’s full medical history while they’re in the room.

She and her company not only donate to health care and schools, but she also signed the Giving Pledge to donate half her wealth to charity.

Yolanda F. Johnson, president of YFJ Consulting

While she’s risen to success as the president of her own consulting firm, she’s also the founder of Women of Color in Fundraising and Philanthropy. In addition, she became the first Black president of New York’s Women in Development, which is a premier group for women in the NYC area interested in philanthropy and fundraising.

Not only that, but she also created a retail line called Philanthrotees, which celebrates - you guessed it - fundraising and philanthropy.

And a bit about my philosophy (Bethany Smith, founder of Lift Your Table? folding table risers)

We all have a gift, and I believe that each one of us has a special thing that we've been divinely given, entrusted to bring to the world. Some people have great things to bring to the world that everybody is going to notice. I love taking a moment to appreciate the women and black folks who came before me as contributors to making things better for everyone.

When I read stories of other black women, other women, and other people over 50 who have done significant things, it really inspires me to know that it's not too late. I'm not at a disadvantage because I'm a woman or because I'm black. Or because I’m no longer as young as the TikTokers and Instagrammers. I have as much opportunity as anybody else.?

It's just up to each person to find the best avenue to grow.

We’ve talked about Madame C.J. Walker in our articles before, because she just has an incredible story. She was the first self-made woman millionaire at a time when it wasn’t very common for women to be in business, and definitely not black women.?

She came around at a time (1910) when there really weren't any commercially available products to care for black hair. Imagine how much effort it took, in 1910, to make a million dollars, when the thing you were selling was 15 cents.

She really inspires me because she created a company at a time when she couldn't go out and borrow money. She couldn't get a loan or even a grant. She just had to start where she was, and she ended up amassing an empire that created jobs for thousands of people that grew into a brand that exists to this day.

Vision was her gift. She knew that if she could get this hair care product into more people's homes, it would not just help them, but it would provide economic empowerment for people. Even though no one had done that type of thing before, she believed it was possible. Selling one tube at a time, door to door.

I think my biggest gift is never seeing barriers. I never see a limit. Even when something seems impossible in the back of my mind, I feel like there's a way to do it. I know some people get stuck when they feel like something is impossible, and it stops them.?

But you have to get into that abundance mindset? - there’s a way to figure something out. I might not get it right away, but nothing is a question of “Can I do this?” It’s always a question of, “How do I do this?” And maybe there’s someone I know who knows the answer to that question, or who can help me brainstorm the solution.

And I'm always looking to come up with a way to get better, a way to improve. I think that’s how we keep growing and developing, by searching for what we can do differently and better.

No matter if you're black, blue, green, purple, or polka dotted, you can do it. All you need is an idea, a work ethic, and the belief that you can do it. You just need to do it one step at a time.

Entrepreneurship is all about finding a need. We're all inventors, and we can all contribute that special thing that we've been given. Whether it's something artistic, something in business, something in society, something in our faith, or something to take care of our world.

Our product is an ergonomic product that helps save people's backs when the work surface (folding table) is too low. We started as caterers and our people were complaining about their backs hurting. We quickly discovered the surfaces of the folding tables they were working at were just too low.?

Big cans, cinder blocks, and pallets were just some of the methods we saw used to prop up folding tables. But we wanted a product that was safe, sturdy, and professional looking,. We went to work and made our own version. Our people loved them. Other vendors did, too.?

So, we found a plastics manufacturer and retooled our product to be made out of furniture grade PVC and began selling them on Amazon. The rest is history. Now we're sold in all 50 states and two dozen countries all over the world, and we're growing exponentially. But the whole business began from a very small base.

I used to be in sales for consumer products companies. When we got a new item, it would already be packaged and had a marketing plan behind it. The colors were already established. It would already have a basic distribution network ready to go.

But when I developed my own brand, I had to figure out, how do you even package it? What's that number on the back? Where do you get the UPC? How do you get it into actual people's hands? How do you insure it? How do you advertise it? Everything has been a learning process for me. That continues every single day, as I learn more and more.

What it comes down to is that we had a need and saw a problem. We figured out how to solve it, and we just made it available for other people. Surfaces being too low for people to stand at means that people either quit or stop before they're finished or they do something that's not productive.?

Numerous people come up to us and say they had to give up quilting or crafting because they just couldn’t tolerate the back pain and neck strain from crouching over their folding table. After they discovered our product, they were able to resume doing what they loved.?

Those are the types of stories that really warm my heart. Just knowing that our product makes such a huge difference in people's lives really helps me understand how important what we do actually is. People need our product and are waiting for it.?

We now know that businesses also greatly benefit from using our folding table risers. Our biggest client is Nordstrom Rack, which sends four sets of risers to every new store. They know the importance of creating an ergonomically friendly work environment for their employees.?

Our risers help workers work longer, faster, call off less, and file fewer injury and worker’s comp claims. We are so excited about the opportunity ahead of us with the growth of e-commerce because companies who are online use folding tables to pack their orders and sort.

I want to thank people that support our brand by making purchases and recommending our product to their colleagues, friends, church members, and more. Their support of a black-owned, woman-owned manufacturing company helps us create jobs, be a role model in the community, be an asset to society, and to help people.?

While our folding table risers help people directly, we also use the sales indirectly. We recently moved to a new office location that’s right across the road from the town’s high school, because we plan to support local young entrepreneurs. We also give time to local women’s empowerment groups and mentor a variety of entrepreneurs located near us.

In other words, when you buy a set of risers from us, you’re also helping us contribute (in addition to saving your own back.) Check out our full product line here.

Lift Your Table?… SAVE YOUR BACK!