“I’m here to assure you that you can have it all,” says Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO of the disruptive fashion technology startup Rent the Runway. Hyman remains one of the few female founders to helm a billion-dollar empire, and the first to attain elusive unicorn status while also nine months pregnant. “You can have the life that you’ve always dreamed of having. And I think that it’s crazy that I used to think that that was impossible.” In a landscape where outdated stereotypes are just one of the many challenges female leaders face as they rise the ranks, Hyman is busting the myth that high-achieving women must choose between a fulfilling career and achieving life ambitions beyond their professional pursuits.
Since co-founding Rent the Runway in 2009 after attending Harvard Business School, Hyman has gone on to raise over $500 million in funding, growing the business to over 11 million members and revolutionizing the $2.4 trillion fashion industry along the way. Change has extended far beyond her professional life too, and Hyman stresses the importance of this in her evolution and success as a leader. “My whole life has changed. I’m married, I have kids, I have a much more balanced life than I had in the early days of Rent the Runway,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean that I work fewer hours now; I still work with the same level of intensity. But I think that it’s extremely important to have other things in your life that you are as obsessed with or more obsessed with than work.”
Read the full profile on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moiraforbes/2020/01/30/you-can-build-a-billion-dollar-empire-and-still-have-it-all-jenn-hyman-proves-it/#346fbdd918ba
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