Fortune Most Powerful Women

Last year, Thasunda Brown Duckett, President and CEO of TIAA spoke to the graduating class of the MBA program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She reflected on her speech in a personal Linkedln post, where she shared some of her key reflections. “And what I know today, as a leader, is that I rent my title, but I own my character,” Duckett wrote. “I get introduced as Thasunda Brown Duckett, President and CEO of TIAA. But that title is rented. It describes me, but it doesn’t define me. I earned it, but I don’t own it. To own something feels entirely different. When you own something, it belongs to you. You can claim it and proclaim it. It’s yours,” she added. bit.ly/3Lcsu6J

CVS Health CEO Karen S. Lynch has been recognized as the highest-ranked female on the #Fortune500 list. At age 12, Lynch lost her mother to suicide; she was raised by her Aunt Millie, who died when Lynch was in her late 20s. As a young adult, Lynch became her aunt’s caretaker. Sitting by Millie’s hospital bed, failing to find the answers she sought about Millie’s breast and lung cancer, and trying to interpret incomprehensible medical bills helped inspire Lynch to enter the health care industry—with the ambitious goal of reforming it. On Feb. 1. 2021, she took over as president and CEO of CVS Health, a chain of more than 9,900 pharmacy locations that was in the midst of a multiyear effort to transform itself from retailer to health care company—a change it says will make care more transparent and accessible to its massive customer base. bit.ly/4cqbvde

Making it to the Olympics is “a non-stop grind,” according to soccer star Lindsey Horan. The 30-year-old co-captain of the U.S. Women’s National Team is gearing up for her third Olympics this summer after helping her team earn a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Games. Now in her third Olympics, Horan will lead the 18-player roster, announced just last week, in Paris as the team aims to recapture a gold medal, one the U.S. has not seen since 2012. While investment in women’s sports is growing, “there’s still a massive difference” between men’s and women’s contracts, admits Horan, whose status as the most expensive USWNT player nets her just $1.5 million in off- and on-field earnings, according to Forbes. “It’s an investment that we’ve talked about before, it just needs to keep growing and growing, which I think it will because you see the way that women’s sports is moving,” Horan says. bit.ly/4cHGOzG

Suni Lee is heading to Paris for the 2024 Olympics as one of five women to qualify for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. However, the road to Paris has not been smooth sailing for Lee, who told TODAY this week that “it feels absolutely insane” to be marching toward her second Olympics representing Team USA. Lee swears by a daily mental ritual to calm her nerves and get in confidence mode, which includes journaling four to five pages before every competition. “I like to write down my keywords, trying to remember my why, things that I need to remember when I’m out there competing,” Lee tells Fortune. Read more: bit.ly/3RSvNUn

“It made me feel terrible. And it also was such a gift.” Sallie Krawcheck, Wall Street veteran and founder of Ellevest, walked Fortune through her early career and the building of Ellevest. Her work has led Krawcheck, 59, to become one of the most powerful women—and people, period—on Wall Street. During her ascent, Krawcheck led Bank of America’s Global Wealth and Investment Management division, and served as CEO of Sanford Bernstein and CFO of Citigroup, among many other plum roles. In an interview with Fortune, Krawcheck discussed being fired twice from glass-cliff jobs. bit.ly/4cNtoSL

Huge thanks to Ellie Austin and Fortune for this feature! When I started Kitsch, bootstrapping seemed like a burden, but it turned out to be a blessing. The constraints and challenges shaped Kitsch into exactly what it needed to be. Grateful for my incredible team, husband Jeremy Thurswell, and community. ALSO - Huge shout out to single moms. My mom was an incredible role model for determination, hard work, and figuring things out as you go.

Cassandra Thurswell was 25 when she started hand-making hair ties in her Los Angeles apartment and selling them door to door. Raised in Wisconsin by a hairdresser single mom, Thurswell’s initial goal was to make “cute things” that the Midwestern women who she grew up around would enjoy and be able to afford. “I was thinking about the young woman or girl and what she reached for every single day,” she recalls. “What’s something that I could do that no one else had put attention on? To me, that product was a basic hair elastic.” Fourteen years later, what began for Thurswell as a passion for colorful accessories, has evolved into Kitsch, a hugely popular beauty brand with a hefty social media presence. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eWkbTjST

The CEO of Hero Cosmetics can be your hero. Ju Rhyu might be best known for Mighty Patch, the ubiquitous barely-there pimple patch you may see on people’s faces everywhere from the grocery store, to the office, to a night on the town. “When you have acne, you feel more insecure, you feel more introverted, you feel like everyone is staring at your face,” Rhyu, 45, told Fortune. “The products and solutions we offer really do work and really do save the day. It was really important for me to have something punchy, positive, and emotional.” Read more:bit.ly/3W5zHvx

The target customer at J. Jill, the 63-year-old American womenswear brand, is “sophisticated.” Aged 45 and older with $150,000 or more in household income, “she’s well-educated, she’s shopping the social channels, she’s shopping wherever, whenever she wants to,” says CEO Claire Spofford. So when the brand’s product wasn’t up to snuff, the customer noticed. J. Jill was founded in Massachusetts in 1955 and acquired by Talbots in 2006 for $517 million. Since then, the brand known for its easy-to-wear basics and catalog business has been through a steep drop-off in value. bit.ly/4bketyn

Eugenia Kuyda is the founder and CEO of Replika, an 8-year-old startup that offers an AI companion. Its 2 million users and 500,000 paying subscribers talk to Replika’s chatbot to lift their moods, work through life’s hardest challenges, and stave off loneliness. Replika was used by some as a romantic AI companion; the company spun off that functionality into a separate platform called Blush. Kuyda spends much of her time trying to destigmatize the role of AI in dating. People’s dismissal of these kinds of chatbots is often a “knee-jerk reaction,” she says. Instead of judging people who seek out companionship or, yes, romantic and sexual connection from AI, she says, we should dig deeper. bit.ly/3xKLc22