How The Fortunes Of America's Richest Self-Made Women Grew To A Record $154 Billion

  • 4 months ago
It was a record-breaking year for these queens of capitalism, as their combined fortunes soared by nearly one-fourth to $154 billion and the minimum to make the list jumped more than 35%.

The country’s most successful women have found dozens of ways to prosper. Nearly three-fourths of the 100 women on the list started or confounded a company, while 22 are chief executives or co-chief executives. A healthy stock market helped push the combined fortunes of members of Forbes’ tenth annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women to a record $154 billion, up nearly 25% from last year. The minimum to qualify rose to $300 million, up from $225 million last year, the highest since Forbes started tracking the top 100 in 2020. Seventy-three members are richer than they were in 2023, while just ten saw their fortunes fall.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2024/05/28/a-record-year-for-americas-richest-self-made-women-2024/?sh=6461d697ef63

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Transcript
00:00 The country's most successful women have found dozens of ways to prosper in 2024.
00:04 It was a record-breaking year for these queens of capitalism,
00:07 as their combined fortunes soared by nearly one-fourth to $154 billion.
00:12 Hi everybody, I'm Brittany Lewis, a reporter here at Forbes.
00:17 Joining me now is my colleague, Assistant Managing Editor, Carrie Dolan.
00:21 Carrie, thank you so much for joining me.
00:22 Thanks Brittany for having me.
00:24 Of course, I first have to extend a big congratulations.
00:28 Forbes just released its 10th annual America's Richest Self-Made Women list.
00:33 So, big congrats to you. I know that's a huge undertaking.
00:36 But first, I want you to answer, how does one qualify for the list?
00:41 So, by self-made women, what we mean is somebody who did not inherit their fortune.
00:48 So, we include people who founded their own companies.
00:52 We include entertainers like Taylor Swift and Celine Dion.
00:57 We also include people who maybe didn't found their own companies,
01:02 but were hired into positions at companies like Facebook or eBay.
01:08 Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay.
01:10 Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook. Folks like that are on our list.
01:15 I know that there is a number system to show just how self-made a woman is.
01:20 Can you describe that a little deeper there?
01:22 So, for our self-made scores, we look at just how self-made people are.
01:27 Some people came from poverty. I mean, people like Oprah who came from nothing, right?
01:33 So, they get a 10. And then people who come from an upper middle class family would get something like a 7.
01:39 And then if you're not a founder of their own company, they would get a 6.
01:42 And so, we have a whole post explaining the different scores and who works, who fits into those different categories.
01:48 This year, the cutoff was $300 million. Has it always been that high?
01:53 This is the highest cutoff we've ever had.
01:57 So, yeah, one of the components of making this list is a net worth component.
02:01 It's the richest self-made American women.
02:03 So, last year, it was $225 million to make the cut.
02:07 We have 100 people on this list.
02:09 We started tracking 100 people in 2020.
02:13 This is the highest cutoff we've had since we started tracking 100 women on the list since 2020.
02:19 I'm interested, and I'm sure our viewers are interested as well, in learning more about the careers of these women.
02:24 Are there common roles that these women hold in their companies?
02:27 What industries are they in? Can you dive into that?
02:31 Nearly three quarters of these 100 women have either founded or co-founded a company.
02:37 And 22 of them right now are CEOs or co-CEOs of a company.
02:43 Some of them have been CEOs in the past as well.
02:46 But there's a big entrepreneurial, you know, with nearly three quarters as company founders,
02:51 there's a lot of people who've created their own companies.
02:53 And then a lot of them have then sold their companies to bigger, bigger companies.
02:58 I'm thinking about Jamie Lee Kern, who sold her IT Cosmetics to L'Oreal.
03:03 We have other folks like Nyx, the founder of Nyx Cosmetics, also sold.
03:07 So people have, there's definitely a line in beauty.
03:10 Beauty is definitely a line.
03:12 Finance, there's a number of women.
03:14 We have a newcomer from J.P. Morgan on our list.
03:17 And we have a number of women who worked in finance, hedge funds, that kind of thing.
03:23 But it's really kind of a mix.
03:24 We also have, you know, entertainers.
03:26 And we have people who have come up with, you know, cocktails.
03:30 We have two new people in the alcohol business this year.
03:34 So it's really all over the map.
03:35 Yeah, it sounds like there's a sprinkle of every type of industry.
03:38 But I am curious, who takes the top spot this year?
03:41 If you've been following the list, it's a familiar name.
03:44 Who's number one?
03:45 Yeah, she's not famous, I'd say, globally.
03:48 But if you're a follower of this list, Diane Hendricks is a familiar name.
03:51 She's been number one now for more than six years.
03:55 I think this is her seventh year as number one.
03:57 And she's worth more than $20 billion.
04:01 She co-founded a roofing supply company with her husband, ABC Supply.
04:07 And he passed away in 2007.
04:10 She's been running the company as the chairman since then and has been--
04:15 it's now the largest roofing supply company in the country.
04:18 You know, not a brand name because they sell to--
04:21 they're not selling to customers directly, not selling to retailers,
04:24 but known in the trades.
04:26 $20 billion, Diane Hendricks.
04:28 Who else joins her in that billionaires club?
04:32 So there's 31 billionaires out of--
04:35 there's 100 people on the list, so I'm not going to name all 31.
04:38 One that's probably pretty well known to everybody is Taylor Swift,
04:42 who Forbes declared her a billionaire last fall.
04:45 Her big Eras tour has made her a ton of money.
04:48 We've actually increased our estimate of her net worth since last fall
04:53 because, of course, she continues to tour.
04:55 Her tour is going on in Europe.
04:58 And so we now have her at $1.3 billion, up from $1.1 billion in the fall.
05:04 Other new billionaires, we've got a couple of women in tech.
05:08 A woman named Sarah Liu, who's a co-founder of a company called Supermicro,
05:13 which makes servers and supplies a lot to NVIDIA, the big chip company.
05:19 And semiconductor investor Susan Ocampo, another new billionaire.
05:23 And then from the wine business, we have Barbara Banke,
05:26 who with her late husband Jess Jackson, co-founded Jackson Family Wines,
05:31 known for their Kendall Jackson wines.
05:33 They also own La Crema and something like 40 vineyards
05:36 in a bunch of different countries, including Chile and Australia and Italy.
05:42 You mentioned a very buzzy billionaire who really has had a banner year.
05:47 That's Taylor Swift. She's on the international leg of her stadium tour.
05:51 She re-released albums as well as dropping a new one.
05:54 She became a billionaire this year.
05:56 Where specifically does she fall on this list?
06:00 She comes right behind Rihanna.
06:03 Rihanna's at number 23, and we've got Taylor tied with a couple other people
06:07 ranked at 24th richest in our list.
06:12 Can you talk about some other newcomers who are the newest women,
06:16 the newest American richest self-made women?
06:21 One really interesting newcomer is a woman named Fawn Weaver,
06:25 who founded a whiskey company that's the fastest growing whiskey brand
06:30 in American history, recorded history as best we can tell, called Uncle Nearest.
06:36 And essentially Uncle Nearest was the person who helped Jack Daniel
06:42 learn how to make Jack Daniels.
06:45 So this is a real historical figure that she named her whiskey brand after.
06:50 She set up a whole town and a group of places to visit,
06:57 make it a whole experience to partake in her whiskey.
07:00 We've got a whole story on her in the magazine, super interesting.
07:03 Another cocktail entrepreneur, people may have heard of Buzz Balls,
07:08 those colorful little plastic cocktails with funny names,
07:13 or fun names I should say, that are sold in lots of stores,
07:17 including convenience stores and gas stations and stuff.
07:20 So Merrily Kick, the founder of that, made our list for the first time.
07:24 She just sold her company to Sazerac, which is the maker of Fireball whiskey,
07:30 as people may know.
07:31 Another newcomer is Mary Callahan-Urdos, who's been at J.P. Morgan
07:37 for something like 35, 40 years, and she's running their wealth management
07:43 and their asset management business.
07:45 And she is one of these people who is named as a potential successor
07:48 to Jamie Dimon, should he step down from the role,
07:51 which they've actually been talking about Jamie Dimon's eventual stepping down
07:56 just in these past few days.
07:58 Carrie, obviously to make room for these newcomers,
08:01 some women had to get the boot.
08:03 So when you look at this list and compare it to last year, years before,
08:07 who were some surprising drop-offs?
08:10 Yeah, well, one was Anne Wojcicki, the founder of 23andMe.
08:15 That company's stock price has tanked.
08:18 It's fallen something like 90% from its 2021 highs.
08:22 The company was in danger of being listed.
08:24 23andMe is one of these companies where you order, you get a tube in the mail,
08:29 you spit into it, and it tells you something about your DNA,
08:33 where you came from, and if you're at risk for maybe certain diseases.
08:39 The company's having a tough time.
08:41 Anne's talked about taking it private.
08:43 So she's fallen off the list.
08:45 Another person who fell off is Shonda Rhimes.
08:48 She was on our list last year for the first time.
08:50 She's the showrunner who's made all the shows we love to watch,
08:53 including "Bridgerton."
08:55 And she just did not make the cut.
08:58 The cutoff rose so much this year, she didn't make the cut.
09:02 The cutoff rose so much.
09:04 $300 million was that baseline.
09:07 Whose fortune really rose the most, what do you say?
09:11 I mean, well, so one of the people who--
09:14 another person whose fortune rose a lot is Lisa Su.
09:18 She is the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, better known as AMD,
09:23 one of the chip companies that competes with NVIDIA.
09:26 The semiconductor stocks have really been on a tear a lot
09:31 because of the adoption of AI.
09:33 And so there's demand for more computing power from semiconductors.
09:37 So her fortune's gone up.
09:38 She became a billionaire earlier this year.
09:42 I'm trying to think who else.
09:43 Oh, Katy Perry is a newcomer to the list,
09:46 and she is on this year for the first time as a result of a sale
09:52 of her song catalog last fall.
09:54 She's worth an estimated $350 million.
09:57 And that's mostly thanks to the sale of her catalog.
10:01 And aside from Katy Perry, would you say that the people who saw
10:04 their fortunes rise, could you attribute that at all to AI seeing
10:09 really an explosion over the past year, year and a half?
10:13 Yeah, I mean, I think you have a combination of AI has driven
10:16 some stocks much higher.
10:17 I mean, another newcomer is this woman, Sarah Liu,
10:20 who's got her company that makes servers,
10:22 which is really tied to the AI world as well.
10:26 I think in general, some of the stocks in different sectors have risen,
10:31 and that's lifted the net worths of a bunch of the people on the list.
10:34 They are richer than they've been ever.
10:36 So together, this group is worth $154 billion,
10:40 which is nearly 25% more than a year ago.
10:44 That's incredible.
10:45 That's an incredible number when you quantify it like that.
10:48 But on the flip side, who saw their fortune drop over the past year,
10:51 but still remains on the list?
10:53 Yeah, so one of the people whose fortune fell a fair amount
10:57 is Whitney Wolf Hurd.
10:59 She's the founder of the dating app Bumble.
11:02 Bumble's been having a hard time in terms of its share price,
11:06 and she stepped down as CEO of the company earlier this year,
11:10 but stayed on as chairman.
11:12 But the shares have fallen.
11:13 She used to be a billionaire when that company went public,
11:16 but the shares have tanked.
11:18 And she's still on the ranks, but just much lower.
11:23 Something I love that Forbes does is they divvy up the entrepreneurs,
11:28 the people on lists by states.
11:30 California sees the most self-made women.
11:33 Why do you think the Golden State sees so many of these entrepreneurs?
11:38 You know, it's fascinating.
11:39 When we do the lists of the richest Americans,
11:43 as well as 400 richest Americans,
11:44 we usually see California as the state with the most rich Americans as well.
11:51 I think, one, we have a high population.
11:53 It's a big state.
11:54 But, two, there's a lot between the entrepreneurship
11:57 and the innovation in Silicon Valley,
11:59 and then you have also -- we have people on this list
12:01 in the entertainment business, so you have a lot of people from L.A.
12:04 So I think those sort of two pockets really drop.
12:08 Plus, I've got to say, as a native Californian,
12:10 as someone who lives in San Francisco, the weather's pretty good here,
12:13 especially in the wintertime.
12:15 So that's one good place, one good reason to live here.
12:18 Carrie, this is now the 10th annual list of America's richest self-made women.
12:23 I am curious, what have you seen are the differences in this year
12:27 as opposed to years past?
12:29 What trends have you seen?
12:32 Yeah, so when we started this list, we started as a list of 60 people,
12:36 and we've increased it to 100 over the years.
12:40 I mean, what's been amazing is just the number of new companies
12:43 that people have been able to come up with in different sectors over time,
12:48 and people who you thought might be on the list forever as that cutoff increases.
12:55 And the cutoff increases because basically many people are getting richer.
12:59 But it's exciting to see new areas and new categories.
13:03 I mean, the fact that this woman, Mary Lee Kick, who created Buzzballs,
13:07 she was a high school teacher, and she came up with this as a side hustle.
13:10 Like there's just so many ways to be an entrepreneur.
13:12 It's so hard to be a successful entrepreneur, and it's so interesting when people succeed.
13:17 I love stories like that. Forbes covers them well.
13:20 I urge everyone to check out the full list.
13:23 Carrie Dolan, thank you so much for joining me.
13:26 Thanks, Brittany.
13:27 Thank you.
13:28 [ Silence ]

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