Unstoppable.

That was the theme of the 2024 Athena Women’s Entrepreneurship Summit, an annual event dedicated to casting light on female entrepreneurs and connecting them to other founders, investors, and thought leaders. Through panels and networking sessions, traditionally underfunded female visionaries can make crucial connections as they seek financial backing.

“The impetus for the conference eight years ago is still true today, which is that there are not enough women entrepreneurs in the world,” Dean Geoff Garrett said in his opening remarks. “Now, I think everyone in this room knows that is not a pipeline problem — because women are crushing it everywhere, and in particular at USC and in the Marshall School.”

Marshall’s MBA program became the first Top 20 program to achieve gender parity in 2018. In 2021, the school’s undergraduate program achieved parity as well, and has sustained it for the last three years. It’s a major success story, but the work doesn’t stop there. Conferences like Athena afford another opportunity to change the entrepreneurial landscape for the better.

Hosted by USC Marshall’s Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the event lived up to the “Unstoppable” moniker with an afternoon’s worth of panels featuring women who refused to stop in the face of obstacles.

One of these leaders was Julie Uhrman, the co-founder and president of Angel City Football Club (ACFC) based in Los Angeles. In her talk “The Unstoppable Success of Angel City FC,” Uhrman explained how Angel City differs from other sports franchises. Even when ACFC was still just a glimmer in Uhrman and her co-founders’ eyes, they had a clear vision of a club that did more than win games and sell jerseys. They sought to make an impact in the community.

“We want to build a platform that stands for impact, [giving] back to the community,” Uhrman explained to the crowd. “And then it was about how do we do that authentically and hire people who care as much about that as the soccer.”

That’s not to say profitability or winning has fallen by the wayside. On the contrary, Uhrman wanted ACFC to serve as a shining example of revenue generation. While 90 percent of sports franchises lose money, Uhrman and her team have powered ACFC to a $180 million valuation, the highest in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). According to Uhrman, that cashflow drives their community outreach.

“We’re going to be an organization where mission and capital can coexist, but we do not sacrifice one for the other,” Uhrman said. “Our revenue drives our impact, and our impact drives our revenue.”

For many of the speakers, fostering authentic relationships was just as important as building company infrastructure or a customer base. This was especially true for Marshall alumna Amy Liu, ’04 cofounder of beauty line Tower 28 Beauty. Liu received the Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year award, honoring her success in building Tower 28 into an empire. But Liu herself admitted she didn’t do it alone.

“I think the two major communities I’ve had in my career have been the [Trojan Network], and then also the beauty community,” Liu said. “So much of what has been important in my career has been other people helping me along the way.”