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Barbadian singer Rihanna alongside American singers Beyonce and Taylor Swift have made Forbes list of 100 most powerful women.

Forbes on Thursday released its list of 100 Most Powerful Women list for 2019. The list comprised of women who have made a profound impact in six categories: business, technology, finance, media & entertainment, politics & policy, and philanthropy.

On the newly released Forbes’ list, Rihanna ranks as number 61 ahead of Beyonce, who is positioned at number 66 and Taylor Swift at 71. Other female entertainers on the list are Ava DuVernay (79) and Reese Witherspoon (90).

Born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, the Barbadian singer has sold over 250 million records. She is one of the world’s best-selling music artists. She has earned 14 number-one singles and 31 top-ten singles in the US, and 30 top-ten entries in the UK. Her accolades include nine Grammy Awards, 13 American Music Awards, 12 Billboard Music Awards, and six Guinness World Records.

From fashion to cosmetics, Rihanna has been on a trail of entrepreneurial ventures. Her cosmetic brand Fenty Beauty was launched in September 2017. Fenty Beauty was named one of Time magazine’s best inventions of 2017.

Forbes ranked her among the top ten highest-paid celebrities in 2012 and 2014, and Time named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world twice (2012 and 2018). With an estimated net worth of N216,000,000,000 ($600 million), Rihanna is the richest female musician in the world.

American singer, songwriter Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter rose to fame in the late 1990s as the lead singer of Destiny’s Child. Beyoncé is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 100 million records worldwide as a solo artist and a further 60 million records with Destiny’s Child. Forbes ranked her as the most powerful female in entertainment on their 2015 and 2017 lists, and in 2016, she occupied the sixth place for Time’s Person of the Year.

American singer-songwriter Taylor Alison Swift is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She has sold more than 50 million albums—including 37 million in the US—and 150 million singles.

Time included her on its annual list of the 100 most influential people in 2010, 2015, and 2019. From 2011 to 2015, she appeared in the top three on the Forbes Top-Earning Women in Music list with earnings of $45 million, $57 million, $55 million, $64 million, and $80 million respectively.

She has appeared in Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world (2010, 2015, 2019).

 

 

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In its 2019 edition, the list featured 600 trailblazers from 20 industries with an average age of 26.8. According to the magazine, the 30 were chosen from among thousands through a three-layer process that relies on the knowledge and authority of its community and experts.

Among the featured individuals are eight outstanding Africans, Tomi Adeyemi, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Winnie Karanja, Ivy Awino, Wemimo Abbey, Obi Omile Jr., Nohemie Mawaka and Joy Buolamwini.

The Forbes “30 Under 30” list Class of 2020 is made up of 30 honorees for each of the 20 categories which vary from work in art and style to energy, finance, tech, law and more. The list is a diverse one, with 48 percent of the featured individuals identifying as either an immigrant or first generation.

Meet the Africans that were featured in the prestigious list below:

Tomi Adeyemi, 26

Tomi Adeyemi is the author of Children of Blood and Bone (Holt Books, 2018), the first novel in a young adult fantasy series, which reached No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The book remains on the list nearly two years later and is being developed as a movie by Lucasfilm.

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, 27

Adeniyi-Jones is a 27-year-old who finds inspiration for his figurative paintings in West African history and mythology and in his own Yoruban heritage. Artforum magazine has compared him to Matisse. The son of Nigerian immigrants, he was born and raised in London and earned an MFA from Yale. The Dallas Museum of Art owns one of his paintings and he has had solo shows in New York, London, and Los Angeles.

Wemimo Abbey, 27

Esusu helps users save money, access capital and build credit. In 2018, the fintech company debuted its peer-to-peer savings app on iOS and Android. The following year Abbey and Goel launched a reporting platform to give renters credit for making monthly payments, a benefit historically reserved for homeowners. Esusu has served over 30,000 people, saving them over $20 million in interest rates.

 

Joy Buolamwini, 29

Joy Buolamwini is a computer scientist and digital activist based at the MIT Media Lab. As founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, she identifies bias in artificial intelligence and develops practices for accountability. Buolamwini’s TED Talk on algorithmic bias has been viewed over one million times.

Winnie Karanja, 28

Winnie Karanja is the founder and executive director of Maydm Women and people of color are underrepresented in STEM jobs. Maydm, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit, is fighting to close that gap by training girls and youth of color on the skills needed to work in the technology sector.

Ivy Awino, 29: Performing as DJ Poison Ivy, Awino is the second-ever female NBA team DJ and, in 2018, became the first woman to DJ the NBA All-Star Game. The former Mavs ball girl curates and programs the team’s in-arena audio as well as music used in digital programming. Her performances have amassed 10 million views on social media, and in 2019 she launched an initiative in Senegal for the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders program.

Nohemie Mawaka, 28

In 2017 Nohemie Mawaka founded Stats Congo to help the mothers and newborns in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who face one of the highest mortality rates in the world. Stats Congo aims to help Congolese hospitals go digital and to collect data to monitor medical indicators linked to that high mortality rate.

Obi Omile Jr., 26

Founded by two high school best friends, Obi Omile Jr. and Kush Patel, theCut is a barbershop technology platform that allows users and barbers to schedule and manage appointments. A graduate of the TechStars program, TheCut has successfully booked 2 million appointments by over 350,000 clients who visited 22,000 barbers across the country. Previously, both founders worked in engineering with Omile at Wells Fargo and Accenture, while Patel was working at Microsoft and Yahoo.

Check out the complete list of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for 2020.

 

 

Credit: Bella Naija

Scarlett Johansson has been named the highest-paid actress for the second time in a row.

This was revealed by Forbes in its highest-paid actresses list of  2019.

Johansson dominates the list thanks to her Marvel paycheck with a salary of $56 million.

Second place goes to Sofia Vergara, who is officially the highest-paid television actress thanks to her work on Modern Family with a salary of $44.1 million.

Reese Witherspoon takes third place with $35 million, followed closely behind by Nicole Kidman with $34 million.

Notably this year, Angelina Jolie drops off the top ten list compared to last year when she made $28 million.

Sofia Vergara is also the only person of colour to make this year’s highest-paid actresses list.

See full list below

Forbes highest paid actresses of 2019

  1. Scarlett Johansson – $56 million
  2. Sofia Vergara – $44.1 million
  3. Reese Witherspoon – $35 million
  4. Nicole Kidman – $34 milion
  5. Jennifer Aniston – $28 million
  6. Kaley Cuoco – $25 milion
  7. Elisabeth Moss – $24 million
  8. Margot Robbie – $23.5 million
  9. Charlize Theron – $23 million
  10. Ellen Pompeo – $22 million

 

 

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Raking in a whooping $185 million, Taylor Swift has been crowned 2018 world’s highest paid celebrity by Forbes.

Topping the Forbes’ Clelebrity 100 list released on Wednesday July 10th with the biggest earning of her career, it was gathered that her estimated pay increased by an insane 131% from 2017 when she made a paltry $80 million. The last time she got the spot was in 2016, when she made $170 million from her 1989 World Tour. 

Kylie Jenner, the youngest billionaire got the second spot on the list with $170 million.  Kanye West was third with $150 million while Swift’s good friend Ed Sheeran was number 5 with $110 million. Beyoncé was number 20 with $81 million earned. Ellen Degeneres was number 22 with $80.5 million. Kim Kardashian was number 26 with $72 million, and Anthony Joshua was number 49 with $55m.

Credit: LIB

Presently, women make up 18 to 20 percent of the cruise ship workforce, with the first woman cruise ship captain not being appointed until 2007. Breaking the glass ceiling in this industry is Belinda Bennett, who is the World’s First Black woman cruise ship captain.

According to Forbes, Bennett has worked for the cruise line Windstar Cruises for 14 years. She came to the cruise ship line in 2005 and worked her way up from second officer, to chief officer to now captain, which is a position she was appointed to in 2016. Currently, she is captain of the MSY Wind Star and is in charge of sailing the ship through the Caribbean in the winter and Europe in the summer.

Growing up on a small island called St. Helena, which is between South America and South Africa, Bennett says she’s always had a love for the ocean. She started her career in the cruise ship industry at just 17 years old, working on the island’s local ship called RMS St. Helena. From there, she went on to train as a cadet and admits that her journey to moving up the ranks has been met with a lot of push back and hard work as a result of her gender and race. 

“Unfortunately, I had a rough start,” she says. “When I was training as a cadet, I sailed with the chief officers who made me work harder than the other guys. During your cadetship you’re starting out as a sailor, so you do every job that they do. I had a chief officer, unfortunately, who made me work later than the sailors, so they would knock off for the day, and I would be left outside continuing to work until it got dark.”

After working on a private yacht of Monaco for two years, Bennett went back to school to get her masters and then tried to work her way into the leadership ranks of the yachting industry. But, she was again met with barriers when she says an agent in Antibes sat her down and told her that finding a job in yachting would be hard because she is more educated than most of the captains, she’s a woman and she’s Black.

Using the criticism to find motivation for a different route, Bennett left the yacht industry and joined the cruise ship industry in 2005 when she landed a job with Windstar Cruises.

Most recently, Bennett’s work in the industry has led her to be awarded with the prestigious Merchant Navy Medal award for Meritorious Service in the U.K. While she says most of the career goals that she initially set for herself have been accomplished, she admits that getting to where she is today has not been an easy feat.

“Being a woman, you have to work extra hard to prove yourself – even more than a man,” she explains. “Some men might not like that, but that’s the way it is. I’m driven. I wanted to be captain, and so, I am.”

Credit: Becauseofthemwecan.com

Serena Williams has made history as the first athlete to make Forbes’ list of the World’s Richest Self-Made Women.  

According to the publication, the 23-time Grand Slam champion made the list as a result of her estimated fortune of $224m (£177m). The majority of William’s fortune has been made as a result of her “brain and brand rather than her backhand”, according to Forbes, with the star investing in 34 startup businesses in the past five years alone.

Opening up about her financial investments, Williams told the publication: “I want to be in the infrastructure. I want to be the brand, instead of just being the face.”

In April, Williams announced she was launching her own venture-capital firm.

Forbes reports that 60 per cent of Williams’ investments so far have gone to companies led by women or people of colour.

At just 31, Rihanna has officially been named the world’s richest female musician by Forbes.

A new Forbes report published on Tuesday estimated the singer’s massive assets to be worth about $600 million, thereby placing her ahead of fellow music superstars as Madonna ($570 million), Celine Dion ($450 million) and Beyoncé ($400 million).

This is coming on the heels of the news that her early mentor Jay-Z has just become the first rap billionaire.

A breakdown indicated that Rihanna’s earnings tripled as a result of her partnership with LVMH, the French luxury goods giant run by billionaire Bernard Arnault.

Rihanna and LVMH co-own the makeup brand Fenty Beauty which was launched in September 2017.

Not only did the business quickly become a viral success, it also racked up a reported $100 million in sales in its first few weeks, propelled by Rihanna’s fame and 71 million Instagram followers.

Forbes said Fenty Beauty generated an estimated $570 million in revenue last year, after only 15 months in business.

The entire operation is worth, conservatively, more than $3 billion.

Forbes estimates that LVMH owns an estimated 50% of it, while Rihanna has about 15%, a figure a spokesperson for the artist disputed but would not clarify further.

The Barbados native, who overcame hardships including an abusive addict father and a well-publicised assault by then-boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009, also co-owns the Savage X Fenty lingerie line with Los Angeles-based online fashion firm TechStyle Fashion Group.

She has millions in earnings from her career touring and releases as a singer, which make up the rest of her fortune.

Her empire continues to grow. In May, LVMH and Rihanna announced Fenty, a new clothing house that will make high-end clothes, shoes, accessories, and jewelry.

Credit: Premium Times

Look around you and you’ll see three kinds of people – those who hate their work, and complain bitterly, those who just tolerate their work and see it as a paycheck and aren’t looking for more (or feel they can’t have more), and finally, those who love their work, and relish it.  The third category is a small subset of all professionals globally, but this group stands out because these are, most often, the people who change the world for the better.

It’s critical to note that people who’ve made a real difference aren’t all privileged, advantaged or “special” by any stretch.  Many come from disadvantaged families, crushing circumstances and initially limited capabilities, but have found ways to pick themselves up and rise above their circumstances (and their genes) to transform their own lives and those around them.

The 9 core behaviors of people who positively impact the world are:

  1. They dedicate themselves to what gives their life meaning and purpose.

Thousands of people today don’t believe in meaning and purpose as something to discover or pursue in life.  And others believe in a life purpose but won’t take the risk to identify or honor it.  Those with positive influence feel otherwise.  They have found that there is a purpose to their life, and that purpose usually involves some aspect of turning their “mess into a message,” or using what they’ve learned (often the hard way) as a means of being of service to others.  People with a sense of purpose are driven, focused, committed, and lit up from the inside – unable to be deterred or distracted from what they believe is the reason they’re on this planet at this time. This sense of meaning and purpose gives them inexhaustible drive and offers guideposts to follow along the path.  It informs them of what they wish to attend to in life, and what they need to walk away from because it doesn’t support their higher purpose.

2. They invest time and energy not in what is, but what can be.

The people I’ve interacted with and interviewed who’ve made a positive impact in the world don’t settle for conformity.  When they see something that agitates and disturbs them, they strive to know more, get to the root of the issue, research and understand the contributing factors, and arrive at new solutions.  They observe gaps and mistakes in common thinking and behavior, and trust themselves in their belief that it’s time to push the boundaries of what’s accepted.   They want to affect change because they believe change will bring a better way to live.

3. They embrace critique.

The most powerful positive influencers don’t need or want to be “right” – they want to grow and be more effective.  For that to occur, they walk right into critique, and they embrace challenge.  They’re not afraid to put their work out there for others to poke holes in.   They are strong and confident in the face of opposition, yet know how to integrate constructive feedback to strengthen their work and ideas. They engage in open dialogue and welcome scrutiny.

4. They spread what they know.

We’ve all met authors or “experts” who keep their knowledge secret, close to the vest. They’re afraid to let it out for fear someone will steal it or make money on their ideas.  This is the opposite of the positive influencer’s mindset.  Those who make a true positive difference can’t help but share and teach what they’ve learned. They don’t see their knowledge as just some commodity to sell, as a meal ticket or a money maker – they see it as information that has to be shared with the world for its betterment. They believe their ideas and innovations are of use and value to others, and can’t help but share those openly, and teach others what they’ve learned.  They live the universal principle  – “the more you give, the more you get.”

5. They uplift others as they ascend.

You’ve experienced, as I have, scores of “leaders” and high-achievers who’ve gotten where they are by stepping on the heads and backs of those in the way.  These are not true leaders or influencers because their power is a sham – it was obtained unethically and is shallow and weak, and can’t be sustained over the long haul.   I have encountered power-mongers who were crushing and cruel to their subordinates and I wondered when they would finally reap what they’ve sown.  Over the long term, this day always comes.

On the other hand, people who positively impact the world not only obtain amazing results in their work, but their process of obtaining these results – how they operate in life — is also inspiring and uplifting.  They are happy to help and support others, and have an overflow of positive energy that enriches the lives of everyone they work with and connect with.  These positive influencers want others to grow.  They walk away from “success-building” opportunities that will be hurtful and damaging to others. They know that those unethical, demeaning or destructive approaches go against the very meaning and purpose they’re committed to.

6. They view the journey as the goal.

Positive influencers don’t take short cuts or go for the quick buck or easy answer. They don’t view some arbitrary goal or outcome as a destination, because they believe there is no end – it’s all in the journey.  It’s about what they’re learning, experiencing, and building that helps others, and for that, there is no defined end point.  They embrace failure more readily than others as “information” that guides them.  They are more fluid and flexible, and more open to the “how’s” because their ultimate goal is not about upholding their title, income, reputation, stature or power, but about new ways to help and share what they know.

7.They use their power and influence well.

Sadly, it’s a common occurrence in business today to witness power and influence being wielded as a weapon. It hurts and destroys. Positive influencers use their power well and wisely. They understand the widespread influence they have, the power they have to build up and elevate, or tear down.  Those who impact the world for the better are careful and judicious with their words, actions and behaviors. They operate with heart, and care deeply about their leadership and communication process and style, and the influence they have.  They take it seriously, as a special honor and responsibility not to be flaunted or misused.  They understand their special role, and accept it with grace, compassion, and care.

Are you longing to make a positive impact in the world?  If so, do these behaviors match your own? How are they different?

By: Kathy Caprino for Forbes

Former Minister of Education, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, has been announced as Forbes Woman Africa Social Influencer at the Forbes Woman Africa Awards inaugural gala dinner which held in Durban, South Africa.

The Anti-corruption campaigner and convener of the Bring Back our Girls movement was celebrated for her efforts in launching the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

Other recipients of awards at the prestigious gala were Dr. Divine Simbi-Ndhlukula (Business); Rachel SibandeCaster Semenya (Sports); Sho Madjozi (Entertainment); Uche Pedro (New media), among others.

The Managing Editor of Forbes Africa and Forbes Woman Africa, Methil Renuka, said:

 The ceremony was the perfect conclusion to a highly constructive day of networking and concept sharing by Africa’s most dynamic women.”

Renuka congratulated the women for their efforts in impacting the lives of young women worldwide.

Ezekwesili was also named among the World’s 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine in 2018 and was shortlisted for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

 

Credit: Pulse News