This blog is no longer updated but it remains open as an archive.
The 'Women at the Top' blog is part of a series of online and print publications that focuses on women's achievements in business. With up-to-date news and incisive analysis, the blog will provoke discussion on the role of the world's most prominent businesswomen. www.ft.com/womenblog
For more Women at the Top news, video interviews and other features, visit www.ft.com/womenatthetop
Liz Bolshaw
Liz Bolshaw is a business journalist and editor. She has been a successful book publisher, online editor, magazine editor and publisher.
She was launch editor of the Europe-wide online community Entrepreneur Country, has published magazines for PwC, 3i, dunhill and Bafta, and launched The Sharp Edge, a magazine for and about entrepreneurs, with Duncan Bannatyne. She is a regular contributor to Thomson Reuters’ Venture Capital Journal.
Her last project for the Financial Times was as editor of the paper’s Business Education magazine.
Rebecca Knight
Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist based in Boston. She writes regularly for the FT on business education, entrepreneurship, and management.
Andrew Hill
Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He was City editor of the FT and editor of the daily Lombard column on British business and finance from September 2006 to December 2010.
He was the FT’s financial editor from June 2005 to September 2006, with overall responsibility for coverage of companies and markets. Before becoming financial editor, he was the FT’s comment & analysis editor, in charge of the paper’s opinion and features pages.
From 1999 to 2003, he was the FT’s New York bureau chief. He joined the FT in 1988 and has also worked as foreign news editor, UK companies reporter and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.
Pino Bethencourt
Pino Bethencourt is a professor and leadership expert at IE Business School in Madrid. She is also an author and executive coach.
Lynda Gratton
Lynda Gratton is professor of management practice at London Business School.
Linda Tarr-Whelan
Linda Tarr-Whelan, former ambassador to the UN commission on the status of women, is a Demos distinguished senior fellow.
Women entrepreneurs are economic drivers, a report argues
A new paper, published by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation – the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship – argues that women should be actively encouraged to start companies in greater numbers. (more…)
Marvell founder aiming high: Weili Dai talks to Women at the Top
Weili Dai is the co-founder of Marvell Technologies, a semi-conductor company that has grown from a three-person start-up in 1995 into one of the world’s largest chipmakers, with 6,000 employees internationally. As the vice-president of a company with a market capitalisation of $9bn, Weili is often cited as the only female entrepreneur to have created a multibillion-dollar technology company from scratch.
Born in Shanghai, Weili Dai moved with her family to San Francisco in 1978, completing high school there before studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Between the ages of 9 and 14 she played semi-professional basketball in China, and the sport remains her passion. She spoke to Women at the Top:
In focus: 100 female entrepreneurs in 100 days
Once upon a time, female entrepreneurs were hard to come by. Women were not all that interested in starting their own businesses, or so the theory went. They were seen as risk averse, lacking access to start-up capital and saddled with biological timelines that made it difficult to start a business and a family.
But in recent years, female entrepreneurs have become a powerful force in the US economy. Today, more than 9m women own businesses there, representing about 40 per cent of all enterprises in the country, according to data from the US Census Bureau. (more…)
Not enough girl geeks – and it’s getting worse
A few months ago, this blog asked: do you have to be a guy to be a geek? The question has been raised again several times in the past week.
Maija Palmer, writing in the FT, explores possible reasons why fewer women are pursuing careers in technology than a decade ago. “Women accounted for just 18 per cent of UK technology professionals in 2010, down from 22 per cent in 2001,” she notes.
Writing for Edge magazine recently, Clint Hocking, creative director at LucasArts, the gaming company founded by film director George Lucas, makes a plea for more women to enter the games development industry – in particular to provide “balance”. (more…)
Family or career: can women have it all?
Ask any entrepreneur the things he or she has given up for the sake of a business and you’ll hear a long list of sacrifices: sleep, personal time, hobbies and – perhaps most important – time with family. (more…)
Olivia Lum: a rags-to-riches tale
Earlier today I was interviewing Olivia Lum, founder and chief executive of Hyflux, a global water treatment and filtration company based in Singapore. (more…)
On May 11, the Financial Times publishes the next Women at the Top page as part of its flagship project on female business leadership. (more…)
The UK’s Rich List: women on ascent
For all the covetous curiosity it raises, Philip Beresford’s annual ranking for the Sunday Times of the fortunes of the UK’s richest invites anthropological analysis. (more…)
Gender in the world of venture capital
Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of Ebay who failed to get elected as California’s governor last November, is not at home tending her backyard. Since then, she has joined the boards of Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble (which she left during her campaign for the Republicans) and Zipcar. Most interestingly, she has joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a special adviser, helping to evaluate digital investments. (more…)
Sisters are doing it for themselves
Tomorrow in the UK, the Woman’s Hour programme on the BBC’s Radio 4 launches a new thread titled “Women in Business”, which will follow the fortunes of three women entrepreneurs and their mentors. It follows recent reports of a large increase in the number of women starting businesses from home. (more…)
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