Corporate leadership remains majority male, with less than a third of the top roles held by women. But some women are taking an alternative route to success.
A McKinsey and Company report last year found that women hold just 29% of the C-suite roles at U.S. companies. And that percentage has been unchanged in recent years.
In Hawaiʻi, that stalled progression has produced a shift where women are increasingly pursuing leadership outside traditional corporate hierarchies.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, women own nearly half of all businesses in Hawaiʻi. That's one of the highest ownership rates for women in the U.S.
The vast majority of those businesses are small, and often have no other employees. But they represent a leadership pipeline shaped by entrepreneurship rather than promotion.
Meli James says she became an entrepreneur after deciding the corporate path was not the right path for her. She co-founded her first company in Silicon Valley, then came home to Hawaiʻi. Nine years ago she
joined with partner Brittany Heyd to start Mana Up, an accelerator for products made in Hawaiʻi.
James says her first company reshaped her understanding of leadership. That it’s not a title earned over time but the ability to act, to build and to be accountable.
When she moved home to Hawaiʻi, James says she saw the same ambitions in women here. But not the same resources, especially access to capital and access to experienced business owners who've scaled their companies.
That's one of the reasons she and Heyd founded Mana Up, to fill the gaps of access and mentorship. Since its launch in 2017, more than 100 companies have gone through the program. And many of those companies are women-owned.
