Let’s continue the Olympic theme in what would have been a Summer Olympics year by looking at the life and work of Lisa Carman Wang, who went from pushing herself to succeed as an athlete to helping other women create their own success in business and life.
Wang was born on September 24, 1988, at a time when Olympic fever was high in the United States. She was born in Madison, Wisconsin but grew up in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. At the age of 10, she enrolled in the North Shore Rhythmic Gymnastics Center in Prospect Heights, around six miles south. Rhythmic gymnastics involves using a hoop, a ball, clubs, a ribbon or a rope while performing floor exercises. It only became an official Olympic sport in 1984.
In 2003, she went to the World Championships and the World Games and was part of the gold-winning team at the Pan American Games. In 2005, she returned to the World Championships and the Pan American Games. But the best was yet to come on the mats. From 2006-2008, she won three U.S. all-around titles and eleven individual event titles. In 2007, she returned again to the World Championships and the Pan American Games. For her athletic achievements, Wang was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2014.
For all of her success, Wang, as most athletes do, also faced failures. The 2007 World Championships saw her fall short of the list to make the Olympics by 0.35 of a point. Attempts by USA Gymnastics to get Wang in as a wildcard for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing failed. She had already deferred her first year at Yale University in the hopes of making it to the Games. She competed at the U.S. championships and went out a winner before turning her attention to college. Wang went on to attend Yale University, earning a Bachelor of Arts/Sciences in American Studies.
After college, Wang started working in the world of finance as an analyst for Balyasny Asset Management. She discovered just how difficult it was for women to get backing to become entrepreneurs. The venture capital divide between men and women, as well as between whites and other racial and ethnic groups, is quite wide. A white man founding a company averages 1.3 million dollars in venture capital funding, while Black women may get $36,000.
Wang turned her “unapologetic feminist” philosophy into business opportunities. In 2015, she and Yin Lin co-founded SheWorx, which has helped over 20,000 women find venture capital funding to make their business ideas come to life. SheWorx was focused on creating a more democratic funding process that women could benefit from, not content with merely helping women find their way into the old models of funding.
Wang also gave advice in a series of columns in various publications. She has three articles listed on AlleyWatch, a digital publication focused on New York City and a global crossroads of tech and startups. In 2016, she wrote about why women should not follow male role models in business for Fortune Magazine. She was also a columnist at Forbes in 2018 and 2019.
Today, Wang has a coaching business where she helps women expand their power beyond business into every aspect of their lives. If you’d like to learn from Wang, she hosts the Enoughness podcast, where she interviews others and talks about her life. The podcast is tied into her GLOW (Global League of Women) organization.
Wang has a lot of decades ahead of her to make an impact on women’s lives, but she has already been honored for her work. In 2018, she was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30. That same year she was named one of Red Bull’s Heroes of the Year.