12 Inspiring Female Entrepreneurs

Each year I get the true pleasure of meeting and working with the new class of EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women^TM. It’s so inspiring to talk with these women about how their fast-growing businesses are powerful engines of economic growth.
Launched in 2008, the Entrepreneurial Winning Women program is intended to help women entrepreneurs break through the barriers that keep thriving second-stage businesses from scaling to their full potential. Once selected, the entrepreneurs participate in an ongoing, customized program designed by EY to catalyze their companies’ growth by building and fostering critical relationships, enhancing leadership skills, expanding business know-how and providing increased visibility. They are coached on the five crucial leaps they need to scale up their business:

1. Thinking big and being bold
2. Building a public profile
3. Working on the business, not in it
4. Finding and establishing the right networks
5. Evaluating financing for expansion

According to an independent assessment by Babson College, the program is working. Participant companies have an average growth of nearly 50% per year and a corresponding 26% average growth in the number of jobs they provide.
As we continue to see a growing trend in women owning or operating almost half of all private businesses, I’m happy to say that this year’s diverse class represents some of the best and brightest women in business today. Together, the 12 Entrepreneurial Winning Women from the Class of 2013 employ almost 400 people and have annual sales totaling nearly $150 million.
This year, we are proud to honor:

• Karri Bass, Illumination Research
• Julia Beardwood, Beardwood&Co. LLC
• Jennifer Blumin, Skylight Group
• Adrienne Choma, Saladex Biomedical, Inc.
• Jamie Kern Lima, IT Cosmetics
• Raegan Moya-Jones, aden + anais, Inc.
• Corin Mullins, HapiFoods Group Inc.
• Phyllis W. Newhouse, Xtreme Solutions, Inc.
• Kelsey Ramsden, Belvedere Place Development Ltd.
• Joy Taylor, TayganPoint Consulting Group
• Dr. Lisa Williams, World of EPI, LLC
• Denise Wilson, Desert Jet

Our winners are chosen by a distinguished panel of independent judges, which this year included:

• Cynthia Cohen, CEO, Strategic Mindshare
• Mike Cohen, Managing General Partner, VGPartners
• Laurie Cunnington, President, Ward Williston Oil Company
• Leslie Firtell, President and CEO, Tower Legal Solutions
• Harold Mills, CEO, ZeroChaos

The 12 members of the Entrepreneurial Winning Women Class of 2013 received an all-expenses-paid trip to the EY Strategic Growth Forum® 2013 , an invitation-only gathering of more than 2,300 high-growth, market-leading company CEOs in Palm Springs, California. The Forum presents a one-of-a-kind platform for Entrepreneurial Winning Women to introduce their companies and share their corporate and personal brands with a community of EY Entrepreneur Of The Year^TM winners, top executives, prospective investors and business advisors. The opportunities with which they’re presented are tremendous. Just like our honorees.