This is this week’s ForbesWomen newsletter, which every Thursday morning brings news about the world’s top female entrepreneurs, leaders and investors straight to your inbox. Click here to get on the newsletter list!
Serena Williams might have come to the U.S. Open for a goodbye tour, but make no mistake: She is playing to win. Last night, the tennis ace served an upset win over No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in three sets (7-6, 2-6, 6-2), advancing to the third round of the tournament and stoking excitement that maybe, just maybe, her last tournament will bring her one last Grand Slam victory.
Williams is described as “legendary” so often that it can be easy to lose sight of the specifics of her longevity and dominance on the court. A tweet last night from Associated Press writer Tim Reynolds helps put her success into perspective: Williams’ first U.S. Open win, in 1999, came when NBA star Tim Duncan—who retired in 2016—was named rookie of the year and before LeBron James made his high school debut (that was 2002) or Tom Brady was drafted to the NFL (that was 2000).
And so, it felt rather fitting that when ESPN analyst and former player Mary Jo Fernandez asked Williams if she was “surprised” by her level of play during her upset win, Williams gave a knowing laugh. “I mean, I’m just Serena,” she replied, earning raucous laughter from the crowd. “I’m a pretty good player,” she added. “This is what I do best . . . I love rising to the challenge.”
As I said in my texts to friends last night: Now that’s the energy I need to close out this week. I hope you can draw some inspiration from it, too.
Cheers!
Maggie
Featured Forbes Profile: While Serena Williams Plays Her Final Matches At U.S. Open, Here’s How She’s Building Her Off-Court Investing
Serena Williams photographed in June 2019 for Forbes.
Levon Biss/The Forbes CiollectionIn 2019, the year that Williams became the first athlete to appear on Forbes’ annual list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, Forbes interviewed her about her plans as an investor and featured her in a cover story for the magazine. Williams’ venture firm, Serena Ventures, was brand-new then, but she’d already bet on 34 startups, focusing on companies started by women and people from underrepresented backgrounds. Three years later, that firm has grown: In March this year, it said it had raised $111 million from investors for a portfolio of some 60 companies. Here’s a look back at what Williams told us about the early days of her life as an entrepreneur.
ICYMI: News Of The Week
Kate Gerwin is the owner and founder of Happy Accidents, a bar that was just named America’s best new cocktail bar in 2022. But don’t call her an entrepreneur—Gerwin told Forbes that her favorite title is the one she’s held the longest: bartender.
According to a new analysis, the art world has a $192 billion gender pay gap: Of the $196.6 billion spent at art auctions between 2008 and 2019, work produced by women accounted for only $4 billion, or around 2% of the total sales.
A new study found that the Covid-19 pandemic may have fueled higher levels of maternal and child mortality in more than a dozen of the world’s poorest countries by causing women and children to skip health care visits.
Abortion “trigger laws” took effect last week in Idaho, Tennessee and Texas, and an Oklahoma law also went into effect that imposes harsher criminal penalties on abortion providers than the state’s existing trigger ban.
The Federal Trade Commission has sued data broker Kochava for buying and selling massive troves of geolocation information that it says can be used to target individuals, exposing them to “stalking, discrimination, job loss, and even physical violence.” In one example, the agency said it was able to use Kochava data to identify the movements of a person who appeared to have visited a shelter for at-risk pregnant mothers.
The Checklist
1. Keep your audience off their phones. Most people can only stay mentally engaged with a presentation for ten minutes before they check out. To keep a room fully engaged when you’re speaking, follow these eight tips.
2. Learn to get along with the most difficult person at your work. Difficult coworkers can hijack your emotions and energy. But with a little bit of innovation and a shift in your perspective, you can start to turn these relationships around—read on to find out how.
3. Overcome the “late summer scaries.” We all know about the Sunday scaries, but if August slipping away is giving you the same type of agita, here are some ways to get in the right mental space for what is shaping up to be a very busy fall for a lot of us.
Liked what you read? Click here to get on the newsletter list!
