Forbes Power Women’s Summit 2024: Inside The Leaders Shaping Your Health, Wealth And Entertainment

“Let mother vote!” singer and actress Jenn Colella sang with pride at the 12th annual Power’s Women Summit on Wednesday.

After a crowd-pleasing performance from cast members of the Tony Award-winning musical “Suffs,” Forbes Executive Vice President and ForbesWomen publisher Moira Forbes welcomed a room full of women.

“We started this summit 12 years ago as an opportunity to bring together women who don’t normally share the same stage, but care deeply and passionately about similar sets of issues” Forbes said. “The theme of this year’s Summit is taking the lead, and every single woman on the stage and in this room exemplifies that mission.”

Forbes asked of two things from attendees: To be generous with their hellos, and to ask for help. “I promise you, amazing things can happen,” she said.

Gwyneth Paltrow On Letting Go

Like Gwyneth Paltrow has taken on many titles in her lifetime—mother, actress, author, entrepreneur, CEO—her company Goop has expanded from a newsletter she started in her kitchen 16 years ago into a lifestyle brand touching everything from home and travel to beauty and sexual wellness.

Even though Paltrow started her career more than three decades ago, she told Moira Forbes on stage “I’ve never been closer to myself. Turning 50 felt really incredible.” She describes where she is in life as a “metamorphosis” that’s about confronting obstacles, making decisions for herself and letting go of what doesn’t serve her anymore.

Those themes of letting go can be seen with Goop, too. After near two decades of serving women with fresh content—and a fair share of criticism for sometimes promoting fads, like the jade egg—the company has decided to pare down it’s many offerings.

“Where I’ve made mistakes is, ‘Let’s do this in order to go after a new segment of customers.’ I think the best thing to do is embrace your niche and scale will come from there,” the Marvel star said. “A lot of mistakes have come from me not understanding that.”

The company is restructuring to focus solely on three segments: fashion, food and beauty, according to a Sept 5 report from Women’s Wear Daily. This means building out Goop’s clothing collection G.Label, its two beauty product lines, and Goop Kitchen, a healthy meal delivery service that recently raised $15 million from Uber cofounder and CloudKitchens CEO Travis Kalanick.

Although revenues are up, WWD reports, the new look for Goop resulted in layoffs of 18 percent of the company’s staff.

9/11 Tribute: Honoring An Unsung Hero

Marking the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Wednesday, Forbes invited former FDNY captain Brenda Berkman to give her remarks.

“I’m here today to pose the simple question in all that you see and do: Where are the women?,” Berkman, the vice president of Monumental Women, the organization that brought the first-ever statue honoring women, told the crowd before guiding them into a moment of silence.

Berkman, who arrived at the scene just as the North Tower collapsed in 2001, is often noted as an unsung hero. Over forty years ago, she was named the sole plaintiff in a federal sex discrimination lawsuit that paved the way for her and 40 other women to join the FDNY for the first time. As of 2020, 9 percent of all firefighters (roughly 90,000) were reported to be women.

Berkman among the many brave first responders who spent weeks looking for survivors and remains after the attacks—and then she spent weeks pushing the world to recognize the efforts of her and every other female firefighter at the scene, which history often remembers as the work of “firemen.”

“Right pundits argued that the lack of media coverage was proof that women could and should not be firefighters,” she said. “Then I heard President Bush proclaim, as he spoke to us, that he could smell the testosterone in the air, although much of the coverage of 9/11 was reported, edited and produced by women.”

Now retired from her firefighting career, she continues to advocate for expanding the stories of women at 9/11, teaches women’s history, and urges everyone to use their power and in every room, ask “Where are the women?”

Get This: Billion-Dollar Companies Aren’t Following Social Media Trends

“There’s nothing more attractive than an ambitious woman,” said designer and entrepreneur Tory Burch. “Never shy away from the word ‘ambition.’”

Burch has grown her eponymous lifestyle brand to more than 370 locations around the world, giving the chairwoman and creative chief officer a fortune of $1 billion according to Forbes’ real time billionaires tracker.

Joining her on stage in a panel moderated by Lindsay Peoples, Editor in Chief of The Cut and cofounder of Black In Fashion Council, is Emma Grede.

Grede, one of America’s richest self-made women recognized by Forbes, has taken a slightly different approach: Instead of putting herself in the spotlight, she’s the brains helping several of the Kardashians grow their brands—from Kim Kardashian’s Skims (valued at $4 billion today) to Khloe Kardashian’s Good American, of which Grede is CEO.

Grede started her career in marketing, but she says as a business owner, she stays far away from trends. Social media is great for growth, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to have a successful business. Instead, Grede encourages finding the white space and leaning into your brand’s purpose.

Burch agreed: “Purpose is our North Star,” she said. “If you want to do things that are relevant and part of the zeitgeist, it has to be authentic.”

And for women founders, both the power women say to network, seek mentorship and unapologetically ask for help. “No need to be demure in what you’re asking for,” Grede said.

Are We Equipped For An AI Revolution? 86% Of IT Leaders Think Not

The global artificial intelligence market is on track to be worth over $800 billion by 2030. Investors are still pouring heavily into AI, with nearly half of the new unicorns born in 2024 being AI startups.

Companies large and small are hustling to adopt the technology. But there’s a problem at hand: The internet is broken, according to Kate Johnson, the CEO of legacy telecom company Lumen Technologies.

“The internet today is not ready for the AI economy. It’s not big enough, it’s not fast enough, it’s not secure enough,” Johnson told ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath, adding that Lumen is partnering with the largest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, to find a fix. The stats back up Johnson’s claims: A recent study showed 86% of IT leaders surveyed said their networks are not fully ready for AI.

Johnson took over as Lumen’s CEO in 2022, coming over from Microsoft. “This was a company that needed to be transformed fundamentally, and it needed a giant hug. I thought that I could lead it in a uniquely feminine way,” she said. And her success is in the numbers—Lumen boasts a market cap of $5 billion as of Wednesday, after Johnson secured $5 billion worth of AI deals in 100 days.

Her best advice? Building from the “people up.” A proponent of a strong work culture, she says with the rise of AI especially, companies should be teaching their employees to use the technology, learn the right skills and lead with empathy. That’s where the success will be.

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