Female founders, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, CEOs and executives share the paths that took them from dorm rooms, operating rooms and Fortune 500 offices to the top of their fields.

Women in Business Month is a good occasion to look closely at the women doing the work. The 26 women highlighted here lead credit unions and cat rescues, law firms and restaurant franchises, beverage brands, menopause training programs and an advanced manufacturing company.

Some built their businesses from a dorm room, a lunch break or a 23-foot Airstream. Others rose through Fortune 500 companies, operating rooms and national restaurant chains before taking on leadership roles of their own. Across very different fields, many of their stories begin with a problem they lived through firsthand, from a premature menopause to a family crisis that upended a thriving practice, and that experience now shapes how they serve other women.

Each profile covers who she is, what she has built and where to learn more about her work.

Colleen Joyce

CEO, Lawyer.com

Colleen Joyce is a lawyer and the CEO of Lawyer.com, the online legal marketplace she has helped build since 2010. A recognized leader in legal technology, marketplace innovation and law firm growth strategy, she has spent her career connecting consumers with trusted attorneys and giving law firms the tools to win new clients. Her insights have been featured on TV stations nationwide, including FOX 5, CBS’s KUTV 2News, ABC affiliate WTVM, WWAY TV3 and KFYR. She graduated with high honors from the University of Illinois.

Joyce started as an intern at World Media Group in 2007, built the entertainment site Popstar.com, where she interviewed everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the Kardashians before they were household names, and pivoted to legal tech in 2010. As CEO of Lawyer.com, she has grown the online legal marketplace into a profitable 8-figure company. The company serves more than 4,000 paying law firm clients and has surpassed 6 million lifetime legal inquiries, making legal help more accessible to consumers while giving attorneys the tools to grow, including LawyerLine, its AI-assisted, 24/7 client intake service.

She is also the founder of the Stevie® American Business Award-winning Lawyer Growth Summit, a community where attorneys, legal tech innovators and industry leaders share practical strategies for growth, and she writes the weekly Fast Five newsletter for law firm leaders, which reaches more than 20,000 subscribers. A New Jersey based working mom who travels often for work, she turned that experience into her children’s book, Mommy’s Love, released in August 2026, a story about the bond between mothers and children even when work keeps them apart. Her rise from intern to CEO backs up the line she lives by: “Where you start doesn’t determine where you finish.”

Dr. Natalya B