The leaders of Fortune 500 companies have comprised a notorious boys’ club for years. In 2014, women held the top job at only 4.6% of Fortune 500 and 1000 companies, an improvement from 1995 when no Fortune 500 company had a female CEO. Observing similar patterns at the entrepreneurship events that she attended on and off of USC’s campus, Yiqing “Pocket” Sun decided she needed to make a change.
Sun was born and raised in China and came to the US in 2009 to attend the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. Upon graduation, she moved to Chicago to work in global marketing at Motorola and is now at USC earning her M.S. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Sun noticed a lack of women when she started attending entrepreneurship events: “I don’t see women on stage or in the audience… So I thought I should do something about it.”
Sun founded USC’s SoGal (formerly known as GirlsUp) in November 2014 to address the gender disparity in entrepreneurship. SoGal is a community that empowers women and allows them to share ideas and collaborate. The organization addresses what Sun believes are the main issues facing female entrepreneurs today: a lack of role models, underestimation and underselling, and lack of access to essential skills. “Women tend to undersell themselves and don’t see the really great things about them,” she said. Sun hopes that joining this community of women will encourage female entrepreneurs to speak up and gain confidence.
SoGal also hosts events, like the recent SoGal Summit on March 28, 2015—Southern California’s largest female entrepreneurship summit. Other events have included the Magic Mixer, which brought together eight female mentors from different fields, and a discussion panel on the power of female entrepreneurs.
Sun hopes that the organization will help demonstrate that entrepreneurship can be an equalizer. “Your nationality, ethnicity, age, or anything else doesn’t matter [in entrepreneurship] as long as you’re willing to take risks and actions and work on something that you enjoy,” she said.
The stories that Sun has heard from entrepreneurs in class, networking events at USC, and SoGal have been so impactful and inspiring that she has altered her career plans. She originally planned to return to the corporate world after leaving USC, but is now incredibly passionate about gender equality amongst entrepreneurs. “This is my mission,” Sun said, “and I want to keep pushing it.”
Leah Haynesworth, Communications Editor, is a first year student in the Master of Public Administration program and is from Montclair, New Jersey.