10 brilliant quotes from inspiring female leaders

In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the female leaders who inspire us. At Front, we’re lucky that nearly half of our executive team is female: Co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin, Head of Marketing Keiko Tokuda, and our newest addition who joined us this week, CFO Jenny Decker.

We’re grateful to have the guidance of these women every day, but we know that’s not common. Women only hold 5.1 percent of Fortune 1000 CEO positions today. In the words of our CEO Mathilde Collin, “If we want to get serious about empowering women to become CEOs or get top management jobs, the starting point is for potential female CEOs to be inspired by other women.”

From boldly challenging the norm, to paving the way in male-dominated industries, these female leaders push their teams to new levels and spread valuable lessons about growth to everyone around them.

1. Mathilde Collin, Co-founder and CEO of Front

“As a founder, I’d choose discipline over some grand vision any day of the week.” – Mathilde Collin, @collinmathilde

2. Katrina Lake, Founder and CEO of Stitch Fix

“Every time I felt a little bit of doubt, all I had to do was talk to our customers, and that inherently gave me so much conviction along the way.” – Katrina Lake, @kmlake

3. Molly Graham, Former VP Operations at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

“At a scaling company, giving away responsibility — giving away the part of the LEGO tower you started building — is the only way to move on to building bigger and better things.” – Molly Graham, @molly_g

4. Kim Scott, Founder of Radical Candor

“It’s kind of hard to piss off the people who you care about. So caring personally and challenging directly are the two ways to get it right.” – Kim Scott, @kimballscott

5. Jess Lee, Partner at Sequoia Capital

“You have to get used to the feeling of constantly not knowing what you’re doing or how to do something — it’s essentially the same as learning. You should seek out that sort of nauseous, horrible feeling. That’s how you know you’re getting career growth.” – Jess Lee, @jesskah

6. Heidi Zak, Co-founder and CEO of ThirdLove

“When you go on a first date, you know pretty quickly if the person sitting across from you has potential. It’s the same when you sit down to interview someone. Within the first 30 seconds, you’ve likely identified whether or not this person has a chance of being successful on your team.” – Heidi Zak, @heidizaks

7. Tracy Young, Co-founder of PlanGrid

“It’s so easy for us to get so focused on what made us feel bad in the past that sometimes we lose sight of what’s important in the moment, which is to get to whatever it is that we were trying to get done or solve whatever problem is at hand.” – Tracy Young, @Tracy_Young

8. Jessica Livingston, Co-Founder of Y Combinator

“Be willing to work on a dubious idea — be a maverick and non-conformist.” – Jessica Livingston, @jesslivingston

9. Sara Blakely, Co-founder and CEO of Spanx

“Your negative self-talk is the No.1 barrier to success.” – Sara Blakely

10. Julia Hartz, Co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite

“Walk the walk: model to your team what you find most important in the way you think, behave, and make decisions.” – Julia Hartz, @juliahartz

Cheers to these female leaders, and the countless others who challenge the status quo every day. For more inspiration from leaders like these, follow us @FrontApp on Twitter.