Women Entrepreneurs: Leaving the Corporate World for the Leap of FaithWomen Entrepreneurs: Leaving the Corporate World for the Leap of Faith Emily Shack Wickard, Karen White, and Lisa Ong are among a growing number of women leaving the corporate world behind to pursue entrepreneurship. Emily Shack Wickard: * After 20 years in corporate finance, Wickard left her vice president role to start Avara, an online boutique focused on stylish and affordable designer clothing. * With an affinity for fashion and a perceived market void, Wickard invested $10,000 and began posting on social media and hosting pop-up shops. * Avara has since opened its first physical store in Dallas and established itself as a national clothing brand with a private label. Karen White: * With experience in corporate HR, White launched Oasis Accents in 2017, focusing on home décor and accessories. * Her company has expanded to 1,000 products and has chosen to transition to an entirely online presence. * White credits her corporate experience with providing insights into running a small business across various functional areas. Lisa Ong: * After 30 years at PwC, Ong launched Wishing Out Loud, offering consulting and training services in diversity, equity, and inclusion. * Having forged her own career path at PwC, Ong advises aspiring entrepreneurs to build a strong “why” and acquire transferable skills through networking. These women’s experiences highlight a trend of women embracing entrepreneurship and leveraging their corporate knowledge to build successful businesses.
About eight years ago, Emily Shack Wickard sat at her kitchen table and typed six fateful words into a Google search bar. A twenty-year career in corporate finance culminated in landing her dream job as vice president of financial planning and analysis at the $4 billion manufacturer Flowserve. But about a year into her new role, she found herself wondering, “Is this it?”
In 2016, Shack Wickard was offered severance during a corporate restructuring. She was about to turn it down and choose to stay on. “But I had a moment of clarity,” she remembers. “I said to myself, ‘If I don’t get off this hamster wheel now, I may never get another chance.’”
With an affinity for fashion and a sense that there was a void in the market for moms who loved stylish and affordable designer clothing, Shack Wickard logged on and searched, “How to start an online boutique?” She sold a piece of jewelry for $10,000 as seed money. She then started posting photos of clothes, hosting pop-up shops at her home, and storing inventory in her son’s bathtub. Thus, her company Avara was born.
Four years later, Avara opened its first physical store. Based in Dallas, the company has since gone national, establishing itself more as a clothing brand than an online boutique; more than 30 percent of the company’s turnover now comes from the private label, which was founded in 2022. Avara has customers in all 50 states, as well as Canada and Mexico.
Shack Wickard is one of a group of women who left the corporate world to take the leap into entrepreneurship. In 2017, CNBC declared that the “golden age of women entrepreneurs” had begun, with women making up 40 percent of new entrepreneurs in the US.
Research shows that almost half of all companies founded during the pandemic were founded by women, compared to 29 percent in 2019.
Karen White‘s career in corporate HR includes working at Quaker Oats, Frito-Lay and Yum! To notice. When Frisco began touting itself as the $5 billion mile in recognition of major development plans along the Dallas North Tollway, White saw an opportunity. “Out of my love for decorating and the unavailability of niche boutiques with unique and quality items, I decided to open Oasis Accents.”
Launched in 2017, White’s company focuses on high-quality giclées, original artwork, home accessories and gifts. Amid remarkable digital growth and an expansion to 1,000 products, White has chosen to take her Frisco-based company entirely online.
Oasis accents
She says her experience working with different teams at the corporate level has informed how she runs her business. “Being on those cross-functional teams gave me insight into how a company operates from all those different functions, and I was able to translate that into a small business format,” she says.
When Lisa Ong kickstarted her company two days after ending a thirty-year career at PwC, the move was anything but impulsive. She spent six months preparing the runway for the January 2020 launch of Wishing Out Loud, which offers DEI and related strategy consulting, executive coaching and inclusive leadership training.
While at PwC, Ong forged her own career path, doing her personal version of “wishing out loud” for certain roles and finding ways to make them happen – including as national diversity director for the multibillion-dollar company. The circle has come full circle: many of her Wishing Out Loud customers are now talking to her about the possibility of getting started with entrepreneurship themselves.
“I always caution them to make sure they build their ‘why’, if that is their dream, because I see too many people leaving the company without a good plan,” says Ong. “They have the passion, but they haven’t done the preparation. And so I always caution people to look at the transferable skills they’ve acquired and build their network as they go.”
