Karren Brady Quotes

When I started Donna Karan, people weren't really accepting the idea of the working woman.

Women in business are talented leaders who can share their skills as trainers, mentors and advocates.

But maybe because the dot-com world gives people positions at a younger age, and many women are prominent in this business, it will help change the view about who can run big companies.

Every entrepreneur talks about the passion you have for your work, and I think that's what's missing with a lot of women in business.

I find it fascinating that sport has such a strong connection to success in business. Arguably, C-suite women are some of the most successful women, and more than half of them played at a more advanced level than just the general population of women in business that had sport in their background.

Every company wants to know how to find and keep highly talented women in the workplace.

When Donald Trump is in charge, all that counts is ability, effort, and excellence. This has long been the philosophy at the Trump Organization. At my father's company, there are more female than male executives. Women are paid equally for the work that we do, and when a woman becomes a mother, she is supported, not shut out.

I've been so fortunate to work with so many successful women who are moms as well.

I am a big advocate of female entrepreneurs. I do what I can to advise and help them along in their careers.

Being a woman in control of a company - even a small private company, as ours was then - was so singular and surprising in those days that I necessarily stood out. In 1963, and for the first several years of my working life, my situation was certainly unique.

I look forward to the day when half our homes are run by men and half our companies and institutions are run by women. When that happens, it won't just mean happier women and families; it will mean more successful businesses and better lives for us all.

What keeps me up at night? Sometimes it's day-to-day work stuff. And a lot of the times, it's, 'Am I making the wrong decisions in terms of reaching young women?'

I think I've been a moderately good boss. I've made a lot of people extremely wealthy - I think we've created 30 millionaires.

I feel it is now my duty to speak to young women, to encourage them to have careers and, particularly, careers in science.

If you look at the pipeline of women moving up through the organisation, it's a matter of time and experience that they develop and performance that allows them to move into senior levels.

Wherever women succeed, businesses will succeed.

When Dad came home from work, he'd turn our family dinners into tutorials on business, money, sales, and profit margins. He shared fascinating stories about his customers, marketing, and my favorite topic when I was a kid - new product launches. Our father also took us to his office before the advent of 'Take Your Child to Work Day.'

As a CEO, I want to show women that there are no limits to what they can achieve, whether through entrepreneurship, government, science or any path they choose, and there is plenty of room for women at the top.

To young professionals - and particularly women - looking to advance, it is imperative to keep your life in balance.

Society is notoriously stupid in its failure to harness the wisdom of older women in everything from television to politics, family life to boardrooms, and here is one reminiscing with honesty and realism about women's particular challenge: to create our professional and financial structures in the same period as our peak fertility.

I have received so many letters, messages, emails, testimonies of women whom I meet in international conferences, wherever it may be, who tell me, 'It's great that you have balanced life and work so successfully.' I now think I have underestimated that, the 'role model' aspect of my life, I must say.

If I can encourage other women to think about setting up their own businesses and being entrepreneurs and making a contribution then I think that's a good thing.

It's depressing that ambition and feminism have become almost dirty words for working women. But, there is no reason that they should be and, increasingly, I am struck by how the next generation is challenging conceptions of what it means to be successful at work.

I think it's possible to be a great mother and have a successful career. I like that more women are doing this.

I joined a very male-dominated profession back in 1986. I wanted to work with big multinational Fortune 500 companies, but you don't come into the firm and automatically get those. So, quite frankly, a key to my success was that I found male mentors and male sponsors. I think some women are afraid to say that.