Leading with Care: How Women Around the World are Inspiring Businesses, Empowering Communities, and Creating Opportunity

Challenging Conventional Wisdom

While overseeing the WNBA community, Donna has followed a simple but profound idea: challenge conventional wisdom.

Donna knows that women have long been defined by certain parameters. But she also recognizes that paths taken by women like Maria and herself have extended far beyond the conventional definition of “a woman’s place.” Although neither she nor Maria has rejected traditional female roles of strengthening the family, they’ve managed those roles in unconventional ways. They are creating their own definitions of “womanhood.”

Donna especially relates to the “no” that Maria received following her applications for a bank loan. That response is an everyday occurrence in the world of someone who challenges ...