121: Aishetu Dozie | Founder & CEO, Bossy Cosmetics

She Leads

Aisha is the founder of Bossy Cosmetics, a hyper-growth independent beauty company that inspires, empowers, and champions ambitious working women. Under her leadership, the company has grown from a purely digitally native footprint to retailing in over 600 retail doors across the country, including JCPenney and Nordstrom, as well as on Amazon.com. The brand was selected (numerous times) as one of the coveted “Oprah’s Favorite Things”, and has won honorable mentions and awards from Fast Company in Innovation by Design and various product awards from Self and Ebony Magazines. In the 5 years since its founding, Aisha has redefined the way beauty companies “see” professional women and has been featured in NPR’s How I Built Resilience,, Forbes, W Magazine, InStyle, Refinery29, amongst others.

Prior to founding Bossy Cosmetics, Aisha led a different life - as a 20-year global finance executive having worked over the course of her career at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Standard Chartered Bank, World Bank, and Rand Merchant Bank. Aishe has worked on over $130 billion in M&A, private equity financings, IPOs, and public capital market transactions.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and was a Fellow in the Distinguished Careers Institute at Stanford University.
Perhaps even more impressive than all of this, Aisha is a wife and the mother of three sons!

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn, Miriam Haart and many more.

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Show Notes:

1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Aisha's Childhood and Values
3. Emphasis and Importance of Education
4. Grappling with her Dual Identity as a Nigerian Growing Up in America
5. The Value and Optimizing for Money and Finding Financial Security Growing Up
6. Navigating Career Paths – Tackling Job Security Vs. Passion
7. Optimizing for Wealth as a Woman
8. Rising Up the Investment Banking and Finance Career Path Ladder
9. Choosing to go to Harvard Business School
10. Aisha's Mental Health During the Pinnacle of Her Banking Career
11. Quitting her Banking Job (and the Health Scare that Led to this)
12. Balancing Work and Family
13. Taking off to Palo Alto and the Distinguished Careers Institute Fellowship at Stanford
14. Founding Bossy Cosmetics + Early Days
15. Venture Capital Responses + Rejections of Bossy Cosmetics
16. Aisha Defining Success - Then and Now
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