Top Ten Female Entrepreneurs to Watch on Forbes 30 Under 30

Illustration by Autumn Qiu

2021 has brought challenges to the world with the COVID-19 pandemic, sustainability practices, and politics. However, despite these challenges, several individuals have impacted the world with their innovations. Below are some of the top entrepreneurs to watch from Forbes 30 Under 30 list. 

Maddie Hall 

Maddie Hall is the founder of Living Carbon. Living Carbon is a company that grows genetically modified poplars and pines that absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and grow faster in comparison to regular trees. Hall, a graduate from Claremont Mckenna College, aims to “address climate change by meaningfully reducing atmospheric carbon,” according to her website. Her trees not only absorb more carbon dioxide but also produce more durable wood. Hall has already received approval by the USDA and filed two provisional patents, marking her as a pioneer in the field of environmental sustainability. 

Xuan Jiang and Xiaoyin Qu

Jiang and Qu founded Run The World, an online venue for virtual events, just before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world. Their perfect timing allowed them to grow their company from just five employees to 10,000 in the past year and a half alone. Qu, a former employee at Facebook, and her partner Jiang have worked with clients like Opentable and have raised $15 million dollars from investors. One unique feature of their app is a virtual cocktail party that, according to Forbes, allows the attendee to be “matched for five-minute one-on-ones in what passes for schmoozing in the pandemic era.”

Camila Mendes

Mendes graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2016. She has lived in both Brazil and the United States where she is best known for her role as Veronica Lodge on the Netflix TV show Riverdale. Mendes has spoken out in regards to Latino representation in the film industry, advocating for Latino inclusion. In a recent interview on Latino inclusion, Mendes noted, “I’m so happy…and it’s not just Veronica, it’s the whole Lodge family being all Latino… portraying Latinos as a strong, powerful, intelligent family.”

Jasmyn Lawson

A graduate of Spelman College, Jasmyn Lawson is a creative executive at Netflix. She is the manager of the original series on Netflix. In the past at Netflix, Lawson led and marketed content surrounding Netflix’s Black content. She also produces the  "Strong Black Legends" and "Strong Black Laughs" podcasts.

Rachel Feinberg and Breanne Harrison-Pollock 

Feinberg and Harrison-Pollock are co-founders of Ateyo, a clothing company that “creates technical apparel specifically designed for gamers,'' according to their website. The co-founders wanted to create a product that changed one’s interaction in the world. They often visited PC gaming cafes, which gave them the idea to create a sweatshirt for gamers. Even before Ateyo, Feinberg and Harrison-Pollock were already successful in the fashion industry. Their designs have been worn by Beyonce and featured at New York Fashion Week and Vogue. However, they founded Ateyo specifically to design a product that was needed by a community not already being designed for. 

Jennifer Armstrong

Jennifer Armstrong is a Portfolio Strategist for Bridgewater Associates in Stamford, CT. Armstrong is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a recipient of the prestigious Nelson A. Rockefeller Prize for Dartmouth’s top economics student. Armstrong builds research for individual clients and Bridgewater’s co-CIOs. Her research has been published in Bridgewater’s strategic reports, quarterly investor letters, and quarterly calls that have changed the economic conditions, according to Forbes. 

Isabel Baransky 

Isabel Baransky is the Vice President of Bank of America and a graduate of Columbia University. She is an engineer and has expanded Bank of America’s automated foreign exchange offering, which covers over billions of dollars in transactions annually. She also oversees Bank of America’s largest revenue-generating data initiative, which has risen 10-fold in volume “since Bransky took over the project,” according to Forbes. 

Annie Baldwin 

Annie Baldwin is the Director of Strategy and Operations at eIQ Mobility, an analytics platform that helps corporate vehicle feets understand their driving patterns to determine which vehicle would be best fit to be replaced with an electric vehicle. She has worked with Exelon to develop a plan to achieve a 50% electric vehicle fleet by 2030. Baldwin is also responsible for nearly 80,000 vehicles across different corporate fleets and hopes to help foster the transition to electric vehicles for more companies in the future.