Defining the Success of a Modern Businesswoman

Female founder and CEO tells students how to be a successful woman in business and it is simpler than you think.

The modern businesswoman has redefined the meaning of success in what is still a male-dominated sector, the female founder and CEO of growth[period] said in a webinar hosted by Miami Herbert Business School’s Johnson A. Edosomwan Leadership Institute and the Graduate Women in Business last month.

“I define success as having an absence of fear, a prevalence of happiness, and a good grounding in what I was doing every day,” Courtney Spaeth told the undergraduate and graduate students who attended the hour-long webinar.

Being a wife, a mother to three children and five dogs, the CEO and founder of a multinational business development firm, and the owner of a local ice cream shop, Spaeth has faced the many challenges that come with being a successful businesswoman. From having men try to lure her into hotel rooms late at night to make business deals to being denied financing from banks to getting called offensive names, she has lived, survived and thrived through it all.

On account of her experiences, Spaeth’s advice is valuable to aspiring female leaders. To be successful, women must seek to actively help other women. She said, “Women need to see each other as more of a sisterhood and less of a competition.” Success as a female is more about working together to build one another up, rather than working alone to tear one another down.