WoVen: Women Who Venture

On this episode of WoVen, Nina Kjellson from Canaan talks to Sue Siegel, who, over 30+ years, has worked as an operator, leading innovator, VC investor, thought leader, and board member of industry-changing companies.

Sue has repeatedly been recognized for her leadership skills, and in 2020 she was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Global Corporate Venture.

Today Sue shares how learning of her mother’s struggle and success encouraged her to fight for her own progress and achievements, and equally to celebrate others’ accomplishments. She imparts wisdom on building and sustaining top-class teams in order to produce the best possible work, and how her five ‘Ways of Working’ principles guide and strengthen the workforce.

Together, Nina and Sue discuss how business has progressed over the course of Sue’s expansive career, as well as a number of silver linings we can glean from the pandemic. These include reaffirming the importance of family time, technological acceleration, and positive, deliberate changes in recruitment, diversity, equity, inclusion, and retention.

Links:

Canaan

Nina Kjellson

Sue on LinkedIn

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Our guest for this episode is Dr. Odette Harris. She made history last year when Stanford’s department of neurosurgery announced she would become professor of neurosurgery — a feat that makes Odette the second female professor of neurosurgery at Stanford’s School of Medicine, and the second African-American female professor of neurosurgery anywhere...some truly remarkable achievements despite some serious headwinds.

She was born in Jamaica and earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Dartmouth College in 1991. When she studied medicine at Stanford University, she was the only black woman in her 1996 graduating class. Then, she was one of two women in her residency. And while Odette has also earned a master’s of public health in epidemiology from UC Berkeley, and has received numerous honors and fellowships for her work — among them, awards from the Western Neurological Society and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and an appointment as the president of Women in Neurosurgery — she is continuously perceived as someone meant to do menial work on the hospital floor, whether it’s taking out the trash or cleaning the bathroom. As Odette puts it, when you’re black and female and working at a mostly white hospital, you’re constantly reminded of that. And asked time and again to defend your credentials.

Odette credits her mentors for encouraging her to keep going. And today, Odette pays that forward as a professor and mentor of students of all kinds of backgrounds, and is vocal about using her own experience to change the norms for both women and people of color. And she does so with poise and positivity.

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Michelle Phan was a creator and influencer far before those were even a thing. In 2007, while working as a waitress and struggling to make ends meet to attend art school, Michelle began posting beauty tutorials on YouTube. Her infectious personality and creativity quickly garnered her millions of subscribers. She went on to found IPSY in 2011, a beauty sample subscription service that was valued at $800 million dollars in 2015. She also was one of the first creators ever to launch her own product line, which she did in 2013, launching EM Cosmetics in partnership with L'Oreal.

Michelle has received countless accolades, including being named to Forbes 30 under 30 and Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People. Yet, the demands of all of Michelle's fans and business partnerships, as well as the vanity as a beauty industry, led her to burn out in 2016. Faced with a choice of her career or her mental health, Michelle chose herself. She took a digital hiatus that shocked her millions of fans.

In 2017, Michelle came back to the public eye, but this time on her own terms. She exited IPSY and purchased EM Cosmetics from L'Oreal, relaunching it with full creative control and ownership. Today, she is completely self-funded and contract free for the first time in her more than decade long career. On this episode, Michelle talks about the importance of creative control and learning to say "no".

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Stayed tuned for the second season of WoVen, with even more stories of inspiring women in science, technology, and venture capital.

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Ginger More was a true pioneer in the male-dominated venture capital world of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, and she is who the next gen want to grow up to be. Born the second of three children to a schoolteacher and a fireman, Ginger attended the University of Bridgeport as a math major, and she married while she was still in school. She began a family as a military wife and also while working full-time at Wright Investors’ Service. She even completed the totally grinding three-year charter financial analyst certificate program on her own time with young kids.

In 1978, she joined Oak Investment Partners and became a partner there just two years later. At Oak, Ginger invested in a number of IT and healthcare companies, and she was responsible for Oak’s investment and board positions in market making companies like Genzyme, Stratus, and Compaq.

Genzyme went on to set new standards for the industry. At a time when rare diseases were completely neglected by the pharmaceutical industry, the company built their business to serve exactly that unmet need.

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