Kendra Scott Holds First Women’s Summit for Entrepreneurs

Kendra Scott, center, at the first Women's Summit held by UT-Austin's Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (courtesy of Kendra Scott)

The first Kendra Scott Women's Entre­pren­eurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) Wom­en's Summit was held last Friday, Feb. 24, at the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs; hundreds of women attendees gathered to share stories and tools of empowerment. The Summit is an extension of the KS WELI, a McCombs School of Business institute founded at UT-Austin in 2019 in partnership with Kendra Scott.

Kendra Scott, the founder, lead designer, and executive chairwoman of the jewelry company that bears her name, told the Chronicle that she was the only woman in the room at many meetings at the start of her career in 2002. Although she's seen progress toward more gender equality in the workplace, she says, we have a long way to go. "Gender stereotypes are reinforced in different ways by the media, circle of friends, families, etc., and it is up to us female leaders to break the mold, and for our male advocates to help pave the way," she said. "As for leaders, I urge you to set the best example possible by creating an environment for your team members and peers where they feel comfortable having those hard discussions."

The summit included panels of women entrepreneurs, breakout sessions, networking sessions, and a multitude of hype walk-up songs throughout the day. Main stage speakers included Scott; Nicole Rex, vice president of global marketing campaigns at Dell; Kelly Steckleberg, chief financial officer of Zoom; and two-time gymnastic Olympian Gabby Thomas. A panel with Scott, Thomas, and Melissa Butler, founder of the Lip Bar, focused on overcoming discouragement. Butler appeared on Shark Tank with the Lip Bar in 2015 and left without a deal. "They told us that our idea wasn't a good one, that the big companies – the Maybellines, the Estée Lauders – would crush us like the colorful cockroaches we are," Butler said. "I left Shark Tank and I said, 'What do they know?' and I think it's so important that I had that mentality. At the end of the day, you're not starting your businesses for anyone else's validation, you're starting it for your customer." Ten years later, the Lip Bar is the top-selling Black makeup company in Target stores.

In another session, Cheval, chief inspiration officer of She Is Cheval, said she struggled with a contract negotiation with her former boss in the bridal industry. The botched negotiation left her unable to legally use her name to publicly identify herself. So she reinvented herself as a shoe designer. "Going after your dreams should not come at the expense of who you are and your morals," she said. "Be a mermaid; dive deep into your numbers and business, and not just the pretty stuff on the surface."

Though this was the first summit, KS WELI supports women business owners year-round, having given $100,000 in seed grants and through multidisciplinary courses at UT-Austin. "My dream is that these women [who] are a part of the institute today ... they will be the ones sitting up here years from now," Scott said. "We're building a community."