Why There Are No Women Among World’s 50 Highest-Paid Athletes. Plus: Navigate A ‘Dry’ Promotion

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Gina Bartasi is sometimes referred to as the “OG” fertility founder: She founded her first company in the space in 2009—several years before the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommended that egg freezing no longer be classified as “experimental”—and today stands as the founder and executive chair of Kindbody, a $1.8 billion-valuation fertility network that this week was named by the Women Presidents Organization (WPO) as the country’s fastest-growing female-led company.

Bartasi (who is also a member of the 2023 class of 50 Over 50) sat down with me this week to talk about what’s driving Kindbody’s growth, achieving profitability and the company’s potential to become a multi-billion, publicly-traded company. Patient demand is booming, Bartasi said, and despite state-by-state differences in reproductive health laws that could affect her company’s growth, she sees family-building as a non-partisan issue.

While demand for IVF and egg-freezing is an industry-specific business driver for Kindbody and Bartasi, WPO CEO Camille Burns told me that the other fast-growing companies she’s observed are often benefiting from a willingness to invest money and resources into people and technology. “I’ve seen a lot of women-owned businesses hire the senior executive they thought they couldn’t afford, but once they got over that fear of investing, their business scaled to the next level,” Burns says. “They were hindering their own growth by not making investments they thought they couldn’t make.”

Cheers to that!

Maggie McGrath

P.S.: Nominations for the 2024 50 Over 50 list are STILL open, so if you are creating your greatest professional impact after the age of 50, please head to this link here to nominate yourself today!

Featured Forbes Story: Why No Women Are Among The World’s 50 Highest-Paid Athletes

Even with her Nike deal and other lucrative partnerships with Gatorade, State Farm and Gainbridge, Caitlin Clark did not earn enough to be among Forbes’ accounting of the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes this year—in fact, no woman did. The highest-paid female athlete in 2023, Polish tennis sensation Iga Świątek, collected an estimated $23.9 million in total earnings, just over half of the $45.2 million it took to rank among 2024’s top 50 athletes overall. And it’s not getting any easier to make the list… this is why.

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ICYMI: News Of The Week

Melinda French Gates announced Monday she is leaving the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation next month after more than two decades serving as co-chair. French Gates also said that, under the terms of her agreement with her ex-husband to leave the foundation, she will have “an additional $12.5 billion” to use in her “work on behalf of women and families.”

Stormy Daniels, the porn star at the center of Donald Trump’s criminal case, has earned far more after her secret hush-money deal slipped out—although it’s not as much as the former president’s lawyers suggested. Here’s Forbes’ calculation of exactly how much Daniels has made off of Donald Trump.

Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Moms First, this week convened leaders including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and actor and activist Geena Davis for the inaugural Moms First Summit. The day’s discussions focused on the high cost of child care, the lack of standards around paid leave, and the maternal mortality rate—and the ways businesses and society can go beyond lip service and actually support working mothers.

Speaking of lip service: Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker is under fire for comments he made in a commencement speech at Benedictine College. In his remarks, Butker—whose mother is a medical physicist in Emory University’s radiation oncology department—suggested to these new grads that women focus on being mothers and wives instead of pursuing careers.

Dating app Bumble said it’s removing billboards seemingly targeted at women that discourage celibacy after receiving backlash online from women who feel the messaging delegitimizes women’s freedom of choice.

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The Checklist

1. Unlearn most of what you learned at school. This one goes out to all you new grads: A good education has given you the skills to rethink and reframe. Being successful at work requires you to use those skills to question what you think you know, challenge your assumptions and open yourself up to new ideas and perspectives.

2. Negotiate through a “dry” promotion. Are you getting an increase in workload, responsibilities and title but no compensation for this extra work? This is what’s known as a “dry” promotion, and you’re not alone. Here’s how to negotiate other benefits if a salary increase is a non-starter.

3. Reconsider that return-to-office mandate. Two new analyses released in the last week highlight the potential that senior-level employees will want to change jobs after return-to-office policies are introduced, offering new evidence that builds on past reports about the remote work preferences and habits of more experienced workers.

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The Quiz

Basketball phenom Caitlin Clark may not have made our list of highest-paid athletes—yet—but her WNBA debut in the Indiana Fever’s game against the Connecticut Sun this week was a strong sign for continued interest in women’s basketball. Despite the Fever’s loss, 92-71, why was Tuesday’s game significant?

A. It drew up to 2.3 million viewers, the most for a WNBA game since 2001

B. It was the Connecticut Sun’s first sellout for a home opener since 2003

C. It was one of only two WNBA season openers that aired on national television

D. All of the above

Check your answer.

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