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Toshada Uma

Toshada Uma (4’8”) is a petite model, blogger and social media maven based out of Mumbai, India. When asked about her love of fashion and beauty, she says, “It directly roots from the women who birthed me, my mom and maternal grandmother—I could say it’s in my blood.” She began her modeling career several years ago and since then has made a name for herself as a petite body positive advocate.
Though she’s always loved performing and being in front of a camera, Toshada worried about fitting into the modeling industry’s rigid beauty standards. But photographers and modeling agencies began approaching her with offers when she was in high school, and it’s easy to see why—despite standing well below standard model height, her flair and confidence make her a natural. And she says that there’s “definitely” room for more petite models in the fashion industry. Besides breaking barriers in modeling, Toshada is also exposing her followers to unconventional types of beauty. Toshada has alopecia and at first tried to grow her hair out to cover it. Now, though, she keeps it shaved, saying that “getting over the one ‘flaw,’ as people may call alopecia, made her extremely confident.” She creates custom-made wigs, DIY beauty projects and beauty tutorials, all geared toward making people think of beauty in a new way. “When one feels beautiful, it shows,” she says, “and there’s nobody that can change that!”

Collete Davis

Collete Davis (5’2”) is a professional racecar driver, entrepreneur, and national TV host. At 24 years old, Collete has achieved more than most, but her path has been both challenging and untraditional. Racecar driving is often a family sport, and many successful racers get introduced to the sport as young as 4 years old. Starting to race at age 15 and being the first one in her family to do so gave Collete an unfair advantage, but her competitive and curious personality made her a perfect fit for the racecar industry. As she navigated the world of racing, she often had to find ways to support herself financially. From networking at the track to raising money from angels and venture capitalists, she raised money to pay for her training and build her brand. Now Collete has many wins across multiple types of racing: Monster Jam, Rallycross, Sports Car, Open-wheel, and Karting, with no intention of stopping soon. Each of these racing areas requires a different mindset and a different understanding of the vehicle, but Collete’s drive (pun intended) and strong belief in herself has allowed her to carve out a space in the industry. Collete also works to popularize STEM studies and entrepreneurship amongst women. Most recently, she earned a spot on Microsoft’s “People of Action” list and hosted TLC’s hit show ‘Girl Starter’. Collete feels grateful that she grew up in an environment where riding BMX bikes and experimenting with engines was encouraged, and she hopes to normalize this among other females so they too can follow their passions.

Ooshma Garg

Ooshma Garg (5’2”) is the founder and CEO of Gobble, a dinner-delivery service that helps create 15-minute, one-pan meals geared toward bringing together busy families. Ooshma was inspired to start Gobble in 2010, when running her first startup led to unhealthy eating habits. After her dad spent a few days cooking healthy meals for her, she realized the importance of eating well and with loved ones. Knowing that many busy professionals struggle with making time for eating with their families, she started building Gobble. Gobble began as a marketplace for local chefs to provide home-cooked meals. However, after realizing that this model wasn't scalable, Ooshma and her team pivoted into what Gobble is today. Gobble’s chefs prepare high-quality meals so busy parents can feed their families fresh, delicious meals without having to spend the time shopping, chopping, prepping, or cleaning. And this new model is clearly working: the company has thousands of loyal customers, nearly $30M in total funding, and a monthly growth of over $1 million. Ooshma describes Gobble as “convenience without compromise, togetherness recaptured, and a mission worth working on 24/7.” Her customers have felt the same, and she says that hearing how much the service has impacted them makes all the hard work worthwhile. When asked about her long term vision for the company, she says: “to be the #1 worldwide food brand for families to trust for fresh, easy options for meals any time, any day.”

Daria Tsvenger

Daria Tsvenger (5’2’’) is the co-founder of SuperGirls Club, a health and wellness organization for women of all backgrounds. With over 2000 members, SuperGirls Club has become a community marked by its solidarity and diversity. Daria started the SuperGirls Club after moving to San Francisco from Serbia almost two years ago. Experiencing extreme culture shock and craving a sense of belonging, she worked towards not just building a community for herself, but also towards providing a safe space where others could come and find a community of their own. As a longtime lover of yoga, Daria started out by providing free yoga classes for people in the area, but quickly realized there was so much more that she could offer. She began to incorporate simple programs like meditation workshops and essential oils classes, and would eventually host more significant events in collaboration with other like-minded organizations. SuperGirls Club has set itself apart as a health and wellness club by prioritizing community as its primary goal. The variety of events that SuperGirls Club now provides — health and wellness career panels, expressive arts workshops, wellness lounges, wellness seminars, etc. — are the means by which women of all backgrounds can come find a sense of belonging together, and encourage one another to be healthy, well and free.

Nitasha Syed

Nitasha Syed (5’2’’) is the founder of Unboxd, a media platform that celebrates the beauty of intelligence through the voices of inspiring women in STEM. Nitasha’s interest in technology was first piqued by her father who is a computer scientist. From taking apart his old laptops to learning basic practices in programming, she received an early exposure to tech that’s not very common (especially for young women). When choosing a career path, she chose to follow in her father’s footsteps, majoring in computer science and later finding a career as both an engineer and product manager. Throughout her experience in tech, Nitasha was well aware of the many unflattering descriptions of women in STEM. Popular culture often shows them as being stiff, boring, and unattractive, and as a society we’ve learned that beauty and charm are for the non-intelligent and intellect belongs to the nerdy and socially awkward. But Nitasha knew these perceptions were both untrue and heavily damaging to the potential of young women who believed this. “It pains me to think about how many women could have pursued STEM had the stereotype of women who work in STEM been different in the media,” says Nitasha. Unfortunately, she’s had many women tell her they were interested in math or science but made a conscious decision to stop pursuing it so they could fit in socially. This is ultimately what led her to start Unboxd. Unboxd is aiming to give these girls their STEM role models by sharing the stories of women currently in the field. With inspiring features on some of today’s movers and shakers, the Unboxd team is helping to slowly change the narrative about these women while giving young girls new role models to look up to.

Emily Lau

Emily Lau (5’2’’) is the founder of The Little Bra Company (TLBC), a company that specializes in lingerie for smaller-framed women. Emily started The Little Bra Company in 2007 because she couldn’t find any attractive bras that fit her smaller frame and chest. As Emily put it “the bras that fit better looked like training bras, and the ones that were sexier did not fit quite right.” She used this as inspiration to design a bra specifically for petite women. In the same way that petite-sized clothing fit a petite woman better because the shoulders, waists and inseams are proportionately narrower and shorter, all details of TLBC’s bras are scaled down to better fit and flatter a petite frame. As Emily’s business has grown, it has evolved beyond just offering the petite woman a specialized fitting bra to now offering a complete bra wardrobe—everything from a fashionable lace push-up bra to a sports bra, so that the petite buyer will have everything she needs in her lingerie drawer. Prior to starting The Little Bra Company, Emily worked as a writer/producer for the History and Discovery Channels. As a TV writer, Emily learned how to put together compelling stories and captivate an audience which has helped her build TLBC brand and business. Moving forward, Emily’s vision is to continue making her products available to as many petite women as possible. On that end, she’s working with some international partners and distributors to extend her company’s reach globally.