Remember the girl boss? She burst in to the zeitgeist in the 2010s, riding the era’s nebulous wave of female empowerment and proving that women could become incredibly rich by helming capitalist empires – just like men. Branding-wise, she had some issues: beginning with that infantile moniker and peaking with a series of toxic workplace scandals. This – combined with the fact that celebrating corporate greed took on an even more nauseating hue post-pandemic – means we haven’t heard from her for quite a while.
Yet this new podcast from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is alive with the spirit of the girl boss. Confessions of a Female Founder with Meghan sees the royal quiz ladies on how they made their fortunes: starting with Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble, who was once the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Meghan has a vested interest in such success stories – hot on the heels of her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, the self-styled lifestyle guru is launching a business of her own. As ever sells preserves, teas and those dried flowers she sprinkled on a vegetable frittata in the TV show, much to her guest Mindy Kaling’s amusement. But As ever is more than a money-making scheme: it is, as our host puts it on this podcast, “an extension of my essence”.
