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Jenna Park Adler
59 | Music Agent, CAA
Jenna Park Adler has carved her personal lane at CAA: When she bought her first job on the expertise company within the early Nineties, there have been no feminine music brokers. Today, her roster reads like a who’s who of music: Charli xcx, Olivia Dean, Shania Twain, Hilary Duff and extra. She was the pressure behind Green Day’s two-year Saviors Tour (which concluded in 2025 and reportedly grossed $400 million). This yr she has additionally been instrumental in Olivia Dean’s first enviornment tour, Jennifer Lopez’s Las Vegas residency and Doja Cat’s international enviornment tour.
Barbara Banke
72 | Owner & Chair, Jackson Family Wines
Barbara Banke is chair and proprietor of Jackson Family Wines, which she owns along with her and her late husband Jess’s blended household of 5 kids. Together, they constructed the enterprise—finest identified for its signature Kendall-Jackson wines from Sonoma—because the mid-Eighties. Today, the corporate owns La Crema and practically 40 different wineries in California, Oregon, Chile, Italy and past. Banke additionally helps lead the household’s Stonestreet Farms racing stables, with horses on farms in Kentucky and Florida (with Grade 1 winners that embody Curlin, Rachel Alexandra and Good Magic). A former land-use lawyer, Banke met Jess Jackson after they have been legislation companions on the identical agency.
Chanda Bell
52 | Co-CEO & Co-founder, The Lumistella Company
Chanda Bell was working as a center faculty instructor when she and her twin sister, Christa Pitts, turned a cherished household vacation custom right into a enterprise. Inspired by a magical elf that reviews kids’ s conduct to Santa within the North Pole, they created The Elf on the Shelf: a kids’s e book paired with a toy. Today, it has grown into one of many world’s largest vacation manufacturers. The Lumistella Company (the holding firm for Elf on the Shelf) has greater than 100 licensees world wide and sells its wares throughout 36 international locations.
Christal Bemont
55 | CEO, Direct Travel
Christal Bemont took the helm of enterprise journey administration firm Direct Travel in 2024 and nearly instantly supercharged its attain: She spearheaded the acquisition of accomplice firm ATPI to create a mixed journey juggernaut with greater than $6 billion in annual gross sales. She joined Direct Travel after serving as CEO of information platform Talend, which she led by a $2.4 billion take-private deal. Earlier in her profession, Belmont spent 15 years at Concur, the place she rose by the ranks to change into chief income officer, overseeing a $2 billion enterprise.
Robin Brown
62 | Founder & Owner, Magnolia Pearl
A handbag made with kite strings proved to be the unofficial begin to a clothes model that’s beloved for its inventive flare: In 2001, Robin Brown offered that purse for simply $100, and a yr later she formally launched boho model Magnolia Pearl. Today, the corporate has scaled to 1,400 staff with 400 retail companions world wide, and its wares are favored by A-listers together with Taylor Swift (who wore one in every of Brown’s designs within the photoshoot for her Folklore album). “If I lived to be 300,” Brown writes in her 2025 memoir, “I still wouldn’t have time to make everything I’ve imagined.”
Suzan Bymel
71 | Founding Partner, Entertainment 360
Suzan Bymel co-founded Entertainment 360 in 2002 and helped develop it from a boutique administration firm into one in every of Hollywood’s main expertise administration and manufacturing corporations. Long identified for representing stars together with Anne Hathaway, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kiefer Sutherland, Bymel helped broaden the agency’s mannequin past conventional illustration to incorporate producing, model partnerships and long-term enterprise alternatives. In 2025, she led Entertainment 360 by its first outdoors funding in 22 years, a landmark strategic partnership with personal fairness agency Carlyle.
Patricia Chin
88 | Co-founder, VP Records
Known because the “matriarch of reggae,” Miss Pat—as she is commonly referred to as—is chargeable for constructing VP Records into the world’s largest impartial reggae report label. What started as a small music outfit in Jamaica, Queens, that Chin co-ran along with her husband is as we speak a label with workplaces in New York, Miami and London with artist alumni like Shaggy, Sean Paul and Patoranking. Earlier this summer time, VP Records notched its first entry on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart in 5 years with Buju Banton’s “Too Too Bad.”
Annie Chun
69 | Co-founder, Gimme Seaweed
Annie Chun co-founded Gimme Seaweed in 2012 as a method to carry a conventional Korean snack to a U.S. viewers. Fourteen years later, Gimme Seaweed has grown into the highest natural seaweed model within the nation with market share north of fifty%. The firm’s roasted seaweed snacks are distributed by Amazon, Target, Walmart, Instacart and different high retailers. Chun began Gimme Seaweed after promoting her prior firm, Asian meals model Annie Chun’s, in 2009 to Korean meals producer CJ Corp. for $6 million.
Ree Drummond
57 | Founder, The Pioneer Woman
Ree Drummond remodeled life on her household’s Oklahoma cattle ranch into one in every of America’s most profitable meals and life-style manufacturers. She launched The Pioneer Woman as a weblog in 2006, sharing recipes, household tales and snippets of ranch life earlier than constructing it right into a multimedia empire that features a long-running Food Network sequence, bestselling cookbooks, eating places and a well-liked dwelling items line. Drummond continues to movie The Pioneer Woman from the household’s working ranch, the place generations of the Drummond household have raised cattle.
Janet Evans
54 | Chief Athlete Officer, LA28; California Sports Hall of Fame
Five-time Olympic swimming medalist Janet Evans is the first-ever Chief Athlete Officer for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. She is chargeable for designing the athlete expertise on the first U.S. Summer Olympics in 32 years, overseeing every little thing from housing and coaching logistics, to transportation and household help. A protracted-time advocate for equality in sports activities, Evans additionally based the LA28 Olympian and Paralympian Fellowship Program, which helps retired Olympic and Paralympic athletes transition to new careers.
Liz Folce
57 | Founder, Nakery Beauty
Liz Folce based Nakery Beauty at 53 after greater than three a long time within the magnificence trade, constructing a self-funded model devoted to the sweetness and physique care wants of girls over 50. Drawing on years of conversations with prospects as a Estee Lauder counter magnificence advisor, Folce created merchandise designed to deal with actual considerations she believed had lengthy been ignored by the sweetness trade. Since launching in 2022, Nakery has change into HSN’s No. 1 magnificence model, surpassed $20 million in gross sales final yr and likewise expanded into retailers together with Ulta Beauty.
Jennifer Foyle
59 | President & Executive Creative Director, AE & Aerie
Jennifer Foyle remodeled Aerie from a $225 million intimates model right into a $2 billion enterprise whereas making authenticity central to the model’s identification. She championed the retailer’s pioneering 2014 AerieREAL marketing campaign, which pledged to cease retouching fashions in its promoting years earlier than physique positivity grew to become an trade norm. More than a decade later, she prolonged that dedication into the AI period, spearheading Aerie’s pledge to not use AI generated individuals or our bodies in its advertising. As president and govt inventive director of AE & Aerie, she continues to form the model’s inventive imaginative and prescient and long-term technique.
Gabriela Lena Frank
53 | Composer & Pianist
Gabriela Lena Frank gained the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Picaflor: A Future Myth, a contemporary symphonic work impressed by Andean mythology, her Peruvian heritage and the impacts of local weather change. Throughout her profession, Frank has drawn on Latin American folklore, Indigenous traditions and her multicultural heritage in her compositions. Born with profound listening to loss, she has stated that silence is central to her inventive course of, usually eradicating her listening to aids whereas composing with a view to think about new musical worlds.
Amy Freeman
59 | Co-founder & CEO, The Spice & Tea Exchange
Amy Freeman remembers falling in love the primary time she walked into an impartial spice store—and her follow-up thought was that this was a retail idea that would simply multiply. In 2009, she and co-founder Penny Rehling launched The Spice & Tea Exchange. Today, the franchise-based enterprise has 98 places and greater than $50 million in system-wide gross sales (as of year-end 2025). Freeman plans to open one other eight places all through this yr.
Julie Fussner
52 | CEO, Culver’s
Culver’s has taken over the midwest, and Julie Fussner has taken over Culver’s. Named CEO in April 2025, Fussner is the primary girl to guide the fast-growing restaurant chain. Previously, Fussner served as the corporate’s first CMO. With 1,041 places, Fussner oversaw roughly 40 new openings in 2025 and has plans so as to add one other 50+ in 2026. The chain’s signature frozen custard and cheese curds assist generate greater than $4 million in whole annual gross sales per location, outpacing rivals like McDonald’s ($3. 9 million) and Wendy’s ($2.1 million).
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Whoopi Goldberg
70 | Actor; Co-founder, All Women’s Sports Network (AWSN)
After greater than 4 a long time as an leisure icon, EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg cofounded the All Women’s Sports Network (AWSN), the primary international tv community devoted solely to girls’s sports activities. Goldberg spent some 15 years creating the concept earlier than the community launched in 2024, decided to present feminine athletes the visibility she believed that they had lengthy been denied. Today, AWSN reaches greater than 1 billion gadgets throughout 65 international locations, carrying competitions from organizations together with UEFA, FIBA and Athletes Unlimited. This summer time, Goldberg additionally launched a revival of The Whoopi Monologues, the one-woman present she first launched on Broadway in 1984.
Ariane Gorin
52 | CEO, Expedia Group
Since changing into CEO of Expedia Group in 2024, Ariane Gorin has led one of many world’s largest on-line journey corporations whereas advancing its use of AI to rework how vacationers uncover, plan and e book journeys. A longtime Expedia govt, Gorin beforehand led Expedia for Business, the place she oversaw the corporate’s international business-to-business platform, journey know-how community and provide partnerships, serving to enhance the division’s income by 33% in 2023. Overall Expedia income grew 8% final yr, to $14.7 billion, and Gorin is projecting 2026 income will develop one other 6 to 9%.
Jamie McCarthy/Betsey Johnson/Getty Images
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Betsey Johnson
84 | Founder, Betsey Johnson
Nearly 50 years after launching what has change into one in every of vogue’s most recognizable and colourful manufacturers, Betsey Johnson continues to reinvent her enterprise by new retail and philanthropic ventures. In 2026, she returned to brick-and-mortar retail with an immersive pop-up that mixed vogue, artwork and group, and her annual Pride assortment this yr benefited the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Johnson has additionally tapped into new audiences along with her TikTok, the place she has 900,000 followers. “I basically never f—-ing grew up,” she not too long ago said about her appeal to young people. “Getting older-looking clothes and becoming more logical were never interesting to me.”
Teresa Johnson
60 | CEO, Color Me Mine; Co-Owner, Twist Brands
A one-year non-compete settlement in the end remodeled Teresa Johnson’s life: In 2006, Johnson was engaged on the company facet of a ship manufacturing firm and was making ready to launch her personal boating enterprise, however the non-compete was delaying her timeline. Instead, Johnson determined to purchase her native paint-your-own-pottery studio—a $25,000 acquisition she charged to her bank card. Over the subsequent decade and a half, Johnson purchased extra pottery places and likewise grew to become a franchisee with Painting With A Twist. In 2021, Johnson grew to become the CEO of Color Me Mine, the paint-your-own-pottery enterprise; as we speak that enterprise has greater than 130 places within the U.S. and overseas.
Kwanza Jones
54 | Investor, entrepreneur
Kwanza Jones is poised to make historical past this yr with the pending buy of the San Diego Padres alongside her husband, José E. Feliciano. If accepted, the acquisition will make her the primary Black girl to be a majority proprietor of a Major League Baseball crew and would worth the franchise at a report $3.9 billion. But Jones is influential in sectors past the world of sports activities, too: The pop and R&B singer has hit Billboard charts 9 instances with songs like “SUPERCHARGED,” and “Think Again.”
Sally Kim
52 | President & Publisher, Little, Brown and Company
Since changing into president and writer of Little, Brown and Company in 2024, Sally Kim has broadened the vary of tales the historic imprint publishes whereas rethinking how books are acquired, marketed and dropped at readers. A longtime editor and writer, Kim has spent practically three a long time enhancing and publishing acclaimed fiction and nonfiction, serving to launch the careers of bestselling authors. Her roster contains Kiley Reid (Such a Fun Age) and Chloe Benjamin (The Immortalists), and he or she has acquired debut books by Gillian Flynn, John Kenney and others.
Lisa Lockhart
60 | Professional Barrel Racer
Professional barrel racer Lisa Lockhart is among the most achieved rivals in girls’s rodeo. She started barrel racing at age 6 and turned skilled when she joined the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association in 1993. In the a long time since, she’s gained American Rodeo titles in 2014, 2015 and 2023, the 2019 RAM National Circuit Finals Rodeo and continues to dominate at age 60. This yr, Lockhart grew to become the primary WPRA barrel racer to surpass $4 million in profession earnings and has tied the all-time report with 19 National Finals Rodeo {qualifications}.
Katrina Markoff
53 | Founder, Violet Flame Chocolate; Founder, Vosges Haut-Chocolat
Katrina Markoff began her first luxurious chocolate model, Vosges Haut-Chocolat, when she was simply 22 and recent out of Paris’ prestigious Le Cordon Bleu culinary faculty. She constructed it right into a $30 million (2019 gross sales) enterprise, however a sequence of pandemic-era monetary setbacks led to Markoff’s ousting from her personal firm. In 2024, she launched a comeback with Violet Flame Chocolate, a Chicago-based luxurious chocolatier that ships nationwide. Markoff says that Violet Flame’s first yr of income was ten instances that of Vosges’ first yr in operation—proof of each her status within the trade and likewise resilience.
Laura Miele
57 | President, Enterprise Development, EA Entertainment
Laura Miele is leveling up. In June, the longtime Electronic Arts (EA) govt was named president of Enterprise Development, increasing her management function and placing her in command of strategic development alternatives for the web gaming large, which generated $7.5 billion in fiscal 2026 income. Prior to this function, Miele oversaw EA’s non-sports franchises, together with Star Wars, The Sims and Apex Legends, which collectively have generated practically $15 billion. She beforehand served as the corporate’s COO, and led a 2023 restructuring that cut up the enormous into EA Entertainment and EA Sports.
Demi Moore
63 | Actor
Demi Moore’s efficiency in The Substance marked a profession resurgence, incomes the actor her first Academy Award nomination and first Golden Globe after greater than 4 a long time on display screen. The function introduced renewed crucial acclaim, launching a brand new part of her profession and reaffirming her place amongst Hollywood’s main actresses. She has continued that momentum with an expanded function within the second season of Paramount+’s Landman, underscoring a exceptional new chapter in her profession.
Susan Morris
57 | CEO, Albertsons Companies
As the CEO of Albertsons Companies, Susan Morris leads one of many nation’s largest meals and drug retailers, which generated greater than $83 billion in income in fiscal 2025. Morris began her profession with the corporate at age 16, working the customer support desk at an Albertsons retailer within the Denver space. Four a long time later, Morris was named CEO following her predecessor’s deliberate retirement in 2025. Today, she oversees a sprawling operation spanning 2,240 shops throughout 35 states and Washington, D.C., together with 1,708 in-store pharmacies, 408 gas stations, 22 distribution facilities and 19 manufacturing amenities, beneath manufacturers equivalent to Safeway, Vons and Shaw’s.
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Jenefer Palmer
71 | Founder, OSEA
Jenefer Palmer based OSEA in her Malibu storage in 1996, rising the ocean-inspired skincare firm right into a family-owned enterprise producing greater than $100 million in annual income. After constructing OSEA as a self-funded firm for greater than twenty years, Palmer helped information its subsequent part of development when her daughter, Melissa, grew to become CEO in 2015, accelerating the model’s digital enlargement and retail channels whereas conserving the corporate family-led. Today, OSEA merchandise are offered direct-to-consumer and at retailers together with Ulta, Nordstrom and Blue Mercury.
Ann Patchett
62 | Author & Co-founder, Parnassus Books
Ann Patchett printed her tenth novel, Whistler, in June of 2026, extending a literary profession that has produced bestselling works together with Bel Canto, The Dutch House and Tom Lake. Beyond her writing, Patchett has change into one of many nation’s main advocates for impartial bookstores since co-founding Nashville’s Parnassus Books in 2011. Through Parnassus Books and the Parnassus Books Foundation, she has championed impartial bookselling and supplied books to kids in Nashville’s public colleges.
Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images
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Lucia Penrod
69 | Co-founder, Owner & CEO, Nikki Beach Hospitality Group
Lucia Penrod opened the primary Nikki Beach—her pioneering “barefoot luxury” membership—in South Beach practically 30 years in the past along with her late husband as a tribute to his daughter. Today, she owns and runs the $400 million hospitality model, which spans Saint-Tropez, Saint Barth and past. Her 12 seaside golf equipment, some with adjoining resorts or residences, generate an estimated $150 million in annual income. Penrod has additionally launched a brand new eponymous model, Lucia, which not too long ago expanded from its first location in Cannes to a seaside membership in Marbella, Spain. A Nicaraguan immigrant who moved to Miami in 1979, Penrod nonetheless owns 100% of the enterprise. “I make all the decisions,” she says.
Rosie Perez
61 | Actor, Choreographer & Podcast Host
Rosie Perez has spent 4 a long time constructing one in every of Hollywood’s most distinctive careers. She bought her begin as a dancer on Soul Train within the mid-Eighties earlier than Spike Lee forged her in Do the Right Thing, launching an appearing profession that earned an Academy Award nomination for Fearless, Emmy nominations for each In Living Color and The Flight Attendant and a number of activates Broadway. This yr, Perez took on two new roles: host of Futuro Media’s podcast Our Thing: The Birth of Salsa in Nueva York and as a forged member in HBO’s fourth season of The White Lotus. Beyond the display screen and stage, she is a longtime advocate for Puerto Rican communities, HIV/AIDS consciousness and humanities schooling.
Hillary Peterson
59 | Founder, True Botanicals
After a thyroid most cancers analysis in her 30s, Hillary Peterson based True Botanicals to show that prime efficiency skincare may prioritize each efficacy and ingredient security. Under her management, the corporate has grown over the previous decade into a number one clear magnificence model, with merchandise licensed “Made Safe” and developed to fulfill rigorous security requirements. Peterson has helped show that clear magnificence merchandise can ship high-performance outcomes with out compromising ingredient security.
Christa Pitts
52 | Co-CEO & Co-founder, The Lumistella Company
With her twin sister, Chanda Bell, Christa Pitts constructed and runs The Lumistella Company, the enterprise behind Christmas phenomenon Elf on the Shelf. The model—constructed with bank card debt and the assistance of their mother’s cashed-in 401(okay)—started as a easy kids’s e book that offered 1 million copies inside 4 years of its launch. The sisters not too long ago celebrated the model’s twentieth anniversary by increasing into new ventures, together with a partnership with Disney and the preschool digital sequence Scout Elf Squad, which has surpassed 2 million views on YouTube Kids.
Sharon Price John
62 | CEO, Carter’s
After 13 years on the helm of Build-A-Bear Workshop, Sharon Price John was named CEO of baby-and-children’s retailer Carter’s in June 2026. The firm, which recorded $2.9 billion in internet gross sales final yr and has a roughly $1.4 billion market cap, is the nation’s largest retailer targeted particularly on infants and youngsters. Price John has spent most of her profession in kids’s retail, beforehand serving as president of Stride Rite Children’s Group and as a senior govt at Hasbro.
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Mel Raines
57 | CEO, Pacers Sports & Entertainment
Mel Raines grew to become CEO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment in June 2024. Today, she oversees enterprise growth and operations for the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, valued at $4.2 billion, and the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, valued at $500 million and ranked No. 3 on Forbes‘ listing of probably the most precious WNBA groups. One of solely two lively girls NBA crew CEOs, Raines got here to the function after greater than 20 years in politics, together with serving as assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney throughout the George W. Bush administration and as chief working officer of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Tracee Ellis Ross
53 | Actor; Founder, Pattern Beauty
Tracee Ellis Ross has been appearing since her 20s, however at age 53, she reached a brand new milestone: her Broadway debut. In July, she took the stage within the Tony Award-winning play Every Brilliant Thing, a efficiency constructed round a 40-page monologue and dwell viewers improvisation, a problem Ross embraces. “Being connected to humans is my life’s work. It is my purpose. It is what brings me the most joy,” she says. That identical ardour additionally drives Pattern Beauty, the haircare firm she launched in 2019 to raised serve individuals with textured, coily hair. Pattern’s merchandise are offered at Sephora, Ulta, Macy’s, Nordstrom’s and different main retailers. “About 73% of the global population has textured hair,” Ross says. “So it can get as big as that.”
Paula Scher
77 | Designer & Partner, Pentagram
Paula Scher has spent 5 a long time shaping the visible panorama of recent America. After starting her profession designing a whole bunch of album covers—from Cheap Trick to Leonard Bernstein—within the Seventies, she joined the legendary design agency Pentagram as a accomplice in 1991 and has change into one of many world’s most influential graphic designers. Her logos, branding and environmental design have remodeled establishments and corporations together with Microsoft, Tiffany & Co., and New York’s Public Theater and Metropolitan Opera. In 2001, Scher acquired the AIGA Medal, the design career’s highest honor, and he or she continues to guide main tasks whereas mentoring the subsequent era of designers.
Komal Shaw
56 | Philanthropist & Art Collector
Komal Shah left a profitable profession as a Silicon Valley tech govt to pursue a brand new calling: philanthropy and championing girls artists. An engineer by coaching who immigrated to the U.S. from India to check laptop science at Stanford University, Shah started constructing the Shah Garg Collection along with her husband, tech investor Gaurav Garg, practically twenty years in the past, in the end specializing in modern artwork by girls. Earlier this yr, Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, a touring exhibition, opened on the National Museum of Women within the Arts in Washington, D.C. Of gathering, Shah has said, “Women are not only recognizing this as a valid avenue of passion, but also embracing the lifestyle that comes with supporting art and artists.”
Amy Sherald
52 | Artist
Amy Sherald’s main retrospective, American Sublime, concluded its nationwide tour in 2026 at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. Best identified for her iconic portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, Sherald has constructed a profession exploring modern American life by her distinctive work, usually pairing grayscale figures with vibrant backgrounds. The exhibition, which is the biggest presentation of her work so far, marks a milestone in a profession that has established her as one of many nation’s main modern painters.
Kendra Scott
52 | Founder, Kendra Scott
Kendra Scott began making jewellery out of her spare bed room of her Austin, Texas, dwelling in 2002 after struggling to seek out reasonably priced colour gemstone items she liked. In 2024, personal fairness agency Berkshire Partners offered its stake within the firm to Singapore-based 65 Equity Partners in a deal valuing the enterprise at greater than $1 billion. Today, the Kendra Scott enterprise has greater than 170 standalone shops. In July, Scott reached one other milestone when she was named a everlasting “Shark” for the 2026 season of Shark Tank.
Carla Vernón
55 | CEO & Board Director, The Honest Company
In 2023, Carla Vernón took the helm of The Honest Company as CEO and board director, and has since been main a turnaround on the publicly-traded, baby-focused private care model. In December 2025, the corporate introduced it will exit its direct-to-consumer enterprise and give attention to retailer companions, together with Walmart, Kroger, H-E-B and Amazon. One of the primary Afro-Latina CEOs of a U.S. publicly traded firm, Vernón can also be positioning Honest for long-term development by increasing past child merchandise to serve customers at extra phases of life.
Jessica Vogel
54 | Co-founder & Chief Brand Officer, Scenthound
Dog homeowners usually take their pups to the groomers for aesthetics and vet for wellness, however in 2005, Jessica Vogel and her husband Tim launched Scenthound as a method to mix the 2. Scenthound affords hygiene companies and primary wellness checks for canines and as we speak has grown right into a franchising enterprise with greater than 160 places. System-wide income was $40 million in 2024, and final yr, the corporate secured a minority funding from shopper personal fairness large VMG.
Latriece Watkins
51 | President & CEO, Sam’s Club
Latriece Watkins grew to become president and CEO of Sam’s Club in 2026 after practically three a long time at Walmart, the place she rose from an actual property intern to chief merchandising officer of Walmart U.S. She now leads the $96 billion membership retailer by its subsequent part of development, overseeing one in every of Walmart’s largest companies. Watkins helped reshape Walmart’s merchandising technique by increasing its attraction to increased revenue consumers and is now bringing that buyer targeted method to Sam’s Club.
Marie Watt
59 | Sculptor & Textile Artist
Marie Watt is an internationally acclaimed Seneca artist whose monumental sculptures and textile installations—usually primarily created from reclaimed wool blankets by group stitching circles—discover historical past, reminiscence and group. In 2025, she acquired the $250,000 Heinz Award within the Arts as her work continued to look in main museum exhibitions, together with a commissioned set up for the Obama Presidential Center. Her work is held within the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and different main establishments.
Carrie Mae Weems
73 | Photographer
Carrie Mae Weems is among the most influential figures in modern American artwork, utilizing images, set up, textual content and efficiency to look at race, gender, historical past and energy for greater than 4 a long time. Her landmark Kitchen Table Series helped redefine conversations about race, gender and household by intimate scenes of on a regular basis life. A MacArthur Fellow and the primary Black girl to obtain a retrospective on the Guggenheim Museum, Weems created the commissioned set up The Cool Blue Wind for the Obama Presidential Center, persevering with a profession that has explored identification, historical past and American democracy.
Roberta Williams
73 | Co-founder, Sierra Entertainment
Roberta Williams cofounded online game writer Sierra On-Line (now referred to as Sierra Entertainment) in 1979 and helped pioneer the graphic journey sport by landmark titles together with King’s Quest, serving to set up story-driven journey video games as one of many medium’s defining genres. One of the online game trade’s earliest and most influential designers, Williams grew to become one of many first widely-recognized girls in sport growth and later acquired the Game Developers Choice Pioneer Award for her lasting contributions to the trade. After returning to sport design with the 2023 remake of Colossal Cave, her decades-long affect continues to form interactive storytelling.
Emily Wilson
54 | Author & Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Emily Wilson has modified the way in which a brand new era experiences Homer’s The Odyssey. A professor of classical research on the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson grew to become the primary girl to publish an English verse translation of the two,700-year-old epic poem in 2017. This yr, director Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation, impressed partially by Wilson’s translation, propelled one of many oldest surviving works of Western literature again into the general public creativeness, driving a pointy enhance in gross sales, library checkouts and audiobook downloads of The Odyssey, together with Wilson’s version, whereas sparking recent debate over how the Western canon needs to be reinterpreted.
Paras Griffin/Getty Images
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CeCe Winans
61 | Gospel Singer
CeCe Winans launched The Hymns in 2026, persevering with a profession that has made her probably the most awarded feminine gospel artist of all time. An 18-time Grammy winner, Winans has remained one in every of gospel music’s most influential voices for greater than 4 a long time whereas persevering with to achieve new audiences by new albums and nationwide excursions. In 2026, she expanded that legacy with The Hymns and her largest headlining run so far, reaffirming her enduring affect on gospel and Christian music.
Michelle Wong
58 | Producer, Sony Pictures Animation
Michelle Wong was a key determine on the (largely feminine) crew chargeable for altering the zeitgeist in 2025: She served as a producer for KPOP Demon Hunters, a movie that has change into Netflix’s most-watched animated film ever and, in March, acquired an Oscar Award for Best Animated Feature and likewise Best Original Song. An early Sony Pictures Animation worker (she joined in 2002, the yr it launched), Wong’s previous producing tasks have included Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, and Vivo.
Bess Wohl
50 | Playwright, Liberation
In June, playwright and screenwriter Bess Wohl grew to become simply the fourth girl ever to win the Tony Award for Best Play—an accomplishment she earned for Liberation, an ensemble play about second-wave feminism that takes place in each the Seventies and as we speak. Wohl additionally acquired the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for the play. “I want to honor women everywhere who have the courage to use their voice,” she stated in her Tony acceptance speech. “And to all the girls out there, may you speak your truth, and may the world be wise enough to listen.”
Jennifer Yuh Nelson
54 | Director & Animator
Jennifer Yuh Nelson has outlined a few of Hollywood’s largest animated movies whereas breaking limitations alongside the way in which. Born in South Korea, she immigrated to the U.S. at age 4 and earned a B.F.A. in illustration at California State University, Long Beach. She made historical past as the primary girl to solely direct a serious Hollywood animated function with 2011’s Kung Fu Panda 2, which took in some $665 million worldwide, earlier than returning 5 years later to co-direct Kung Fu Panda 3, one other international $520 million hit. Since then, Nelson has expanded into dwell motion with The Darkest Minds and gained back-to-back Emmy Awards as supervising director of Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you possibly can go to the hyperlink bellow:
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