About
Leadership for women who run businesses.
Building a business takes more than knowing how to market, sell, price or hire. Eventually, an entrepreneur has to become a leader. That’s what this site is about.
Why this exists
Everywhere I looked — in management, at Duke, in technology, in entrepreneurship — women were vastly underrepresented. The higher up you went, the fewer there were.
I didn’t think that was because women lacked ability. I thought too few girls grew up picturing themselves in charge, and too many capable women were getting encouragement when what they needed was information.
So Leadership Girl is where I write about the part nobody warns entrepreneurs about: that at some point, building the next version of your company means building the next version of yourself as a leader.
~ Haley Lynn Gray
Who it’s for
Women who own businesses and have discovered that running one means leading people — whether that’s one contractor or twenty employees. Founders, small-business owners, and anyone making the shift from doing the work to running the place.
It assumes you already have customers, responsibilities and real-world experience. It is not written for people who have never run anything.
What we write about
Lead Your Team
Delegation, hiring, difficult conversations, and becoming the boss you’d want to work for.
Build the Business
Pricing, launching, systems, and building something that doesn’t depend on you.
Women in Leadership
Negotiation, the pay gap, and what the research actually says about women who lead.
Get Seen
Being visible without the cringe — podcasts, content, and being remembered.
Lead Yourself
Courage, your inner critic, time, and protecting what matters most.
You're Not Alone
The loneliness of leading, and why the best owners don’t solve everything alone.
How we write
A few standards this site holds itself to:
- Nothing is invented. No made-up statistics, no fabricated quotes, no research that doesn’t exist. Where a study is cited, it’s named so you can check it.
- Quotes are verified. Plenty of famous leadership quotes were never said by the people they’re attributed to. We don’t repeat those.
- No paid placements. Nobody can buy a link, a mention or a post here.
- Mechanisms, not platitudes. The aim is to explain why something works, not to tell you to believe in yourself.
- The messy parts included. Leadership is messy and entrepreneurship is messy. Writing that pretends otherwise isn’t useful.
- Corrections welcome. If something here is wrong, tell me and it gets fixed.
New here?
Start with six posts that explain what this site is about.
Who writes it
Leadership Girl is written by Haley Lynn Gray — engineer, Duke MBA, founder of several businesses, and mother of four.
Join 77,000+ women building businesses — and leading them.
The Women’s Entrepreneur Network grew out of the same idea as this site: women in business need somewhere to exchange the things nobody publishes.