Ilona Maher is an inspiration to women athletes everywhere. She was on the Olympic Rugby team that won bronze in the 2024 Olympics and participated on Dancing with the Stars. She uses her social media platform, which now has over 7 million followers, to speak about body positivity and issues with being a female athlete. Starting rugby at 17, Maher was found to be talented in that area and won several championships as a collegiate athlete. She juggles not only sport training but graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in business administration. For the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Maher was selected to play on the rugby team, where she scored three times, helping the team grab a sixth-place win. While she was there, she filmed behind-the-scenes videos on TikTok that soon went viral. Fast forward to the summer of 2024, and Maher was selected again to be on the team. She used her videos to show her fans the stadium, what she did for practice, and more inspiring content.

The strength of Mahers’ fan base, and her determination and readiness to learn really came to light during the television series Dancing with the Stars, where she placed second overall. In August 2024 she posed for the cover of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Maher is an inspiration to everyone around the world, in both her athleticism, her humor, her stubbornness and courage, and it really shows what a beautiful message she is putting out in the world. Women can be big and strong, women can play in contact sports, and they can do all these things while gaining support from other women. Maher has a merch collection titled Beast. Beauty. Brans. This shows Maher’s entrepreneurial mind, as instead of using her following to her advantage, she encourages others to spread love to those around them. To learn more about Ilona Maher and view some of her merch, click the link here!

Mitch DeForest co-founded Ramped Careers, a business that helps with job finding for everyone in any kind of circumstance. The business started after DeForest struggled with the process of submitting resumes and interviewing for jobs that he did not get. It is different than other job finder websites as it trains those with different backgrounds on how to seem appealing to companies and others who are hiring. This makes it so that many people have access to their dream jobs, and do not need a specific background to get one. Ramped also helps to make sure that people do not feel like a tool in the hands of the employers, but rather a needed asset to the team. Because it teaches people with different backgrounds how to apply for a job, it also must teach people what their dream job is. To do so, Ramped uses feedback from professionals to figure out content that best fits the user. One of Ramped’s main goals is to treat others the way they deserve, which is with support and respect. DeForest has received $3 million in funding, and his business is growing in popularity. This is a great example of thinking like an entrepreneur as DeForest takes on an already competitive environment and puts his own spin on it. Having options for people with all different backgrounds is really important in the world today as the US is a very diverse country. To find a job is a painstaking task, writing the resume, finding the dream job, getting rejected from the dream job, filling out more paperwork and so on. Ramped was created to make all of it easier, and it does a great job of doing that. To discover more about Mitch DeForest and Ramped, the company he co-founded, click the link here.

Maggie Hewitt created a clothing line called Maggie Marilyn. Her goal was to embrace people, the planet, and prosperity through her fashion. Born in New Zealand, Hewitt learned about the positive and negative impacts that clothes have on the world, both physically and socially, and she wanted to change that. She went to school for fashion and didn’t love the industry, so much so that she couldn’t look at fashion by the end of year. But when Hewitt saw the ways she could fix the fashion problems, she had more motivation to create a fashion line of her own. She came up with an idea that turned into Maggie Marilyn. This line has some side businesses, Somewhere, and Forever, which focus with more attention on the environmental side of things. Hewitt’s line has reduced the carbon footprint by a large amount and seems to be continuing in this positive direction. Hewitt stood in a standpoint that most fashion designers did not come from, a standpoint not from the eyes of someone who loved fashion, but someone who disliked it, and saw the flaws in the industry. Hewitts goal is to empower her customers, to have a positive impact on the environment, and to grow her collection to jewelry, swimwear, shoes, and accessories. Hewitt loves to talk about challenges that others won’t mention. She says that being a designer is very isolating,

and it is hard to go through challenges alone, which is why she is very open about her hardships. Hewitt also heard about how there were people who were interested in her product but couldn’t afford it. Her goal is to spread the word about Maggie Marilyn to bring in more sales to then eventually lower the prices. Hewitt thinks entrepreneurially, and that has brought her business far. You can view her business here!

Isabel Sicat is the co-founder of Toqa, a clothing brand that strives for zero waste and reuses fabric that are no longer in production. This fashion label’s goal is to produce sporty items, like running shorts and jerseys, and add a little bit of island girl aesthetic in the mix. This entrepreneurial spark came upon Sicat when she was at Brown University-Rhode Island School of Design and interning at New York fashion houses.

Her collection was featured in Vogue and the 2022 Hawaii Triennial, and Sicat was named the Forbes 30 Under 30 – Asia. What caught Forbes eye was Sicat’s mission. She did not create her label for the money but for upcycling clothes into fashion, and her commitment to Toqa was what was so attracting. Toqa is not just a fashion label, it is also art. Sicat and Aiala Rickard both remark that they were artists who kind of fell into fashion design after discovering that they enjoyed showing art through fashion. Sicat and Rickard met at college, and from there they displayed their love of clothing and island spirit, as Rickard is from Hawaii, and Sicat from the Philippines. A lot of their work is very skilled, many of the clothes are hand stitched in such a way that requires a lot of precision.

Most of the pieces are more art than clothing, which hails back to what Sicat said before, that she was an artist before she turned to the fashion industry. A unique feature Toqa has is they go to a different island each year, create a fashion collection inspired by the island, do a show exhibiting the pieces, and then move on to the next island. Sicat took on an industry that was already so competitive, and took an existing problem and combined the two, creating something that is unique and resourceful. That is what a true entrepreneur does. You can visit Sicat’s fashion label here

Lisa Qu started her nominative fashion designer career in 2018 as a student at Parson’s School of Design in New York. Her brand, Liza Qu, has a mission to offer people high end fashion for a cheaper price. Lisa was born in Australia and has Eastern heritage, but then moved to New York. Because of this she incorporated all these aspects into her designs, including an origami inspired technique. This technique was started through Lisa’s senior thesis and has since grown into a larger program: in its first year, Lisa Qu’s sales reached a high number, and was expected to increase even more in the next few years.

Lisa is currently 26 and when she started her business she was 20. A unique part of her label is her and her team personally hand check every garment that they ship out, so that the costumer is provided with the correct clothes that are in perfect condition. Lisa Qu states that, “A designer’s job isn’t finished after they conceptualize a design. It’s only finished when the stacks of fabric swatches are sorted through, when the fit is perfected, the threads are trimmed, the garment is checked, and tissue wrapped, and the customer is left smiling…”

Lisa Qu’s designs are based and made in New York City. The styles are focused on sleek ivory and modern black looks, with the origami feature, and is made to appeal more toward the wardrobes of professional women. Some of her designs were showcased at several fashion events. After being featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020, she collaborated with previous Forbes entrepreneurs to create a video series helping empower women by talking through stories, offering tips, and career advice. Lisa Qu is a perfectionist; she is so much so that she will have many iterations of a pair of paints because a lone line of stitches was crooked. She makes everything at her local store, and revises clothing over and over.

Lisa Qu was passionate about fashion, and she made it her full-time job. She took on an industry that was very competitive and branched out, taking on a new challenge of creating a uniqueness to her clothing brand. This is especially inspiring to some because it shows that you can find a way to shine through millions of others. All you have to do is add a little bit of personality, a little bit of you.

Overall, Lisa Qu’s main purpose is to create high end clothing at a cheaper price, maintaining great quality, and making something unique and that stands out, something that is hers. The link to Lisa Qu’s boutique is here.

Anjali Chandrashekar’s artwork is simple and complex, but despite this it continues to bring forth hope, strength, and knowledge to those who see it. Her first organization that she started was called Picture It in 2003 when she was ten years old. This organization used pictures and images to bring to life the struggles of health and the environment. From there Anjali’s work was used to benefit underprivileged kids, as the money from her art went to causes like child abuse, cerebral palsy and rehabilitation. As she got older, she became a cartoonist for The New Yorker and became the first South Asian to get her work published there. Her storytelling covers a variety of subjects: gender, culture, identities and eccentricities of humans. Anjali is very passionate about her work and wants it to raise awareness and further social movements. Her art style is very simplistic, but that doesn’t stop her illustrations from telling a story and her comics are short and concise yet relatable to most viewers. She received awards from the Government of India, the British Council and the World Economic Forum, and in 2016 she was awarded third place for her art piece on nuclear disarmament. Anjali’s artwork is especially inspiring as it shows that people can tell stories through their art, however different the styles might be, and how difficult the topic is. She demonstrates entrepreneurial traits through her process. She started by using her artwork to earn money to give to others who were struggling, and then used her artwork to portray the same struggles. This reveals that though an entrepreneurial idea might change and evolve, that doesn’t mean that it is a failure. Anjali has been doing art and entrepreneurial work since a young age and continues to be an inspiration to others.

You can visit Anjali’s website here!