Designer Tory Burch says of her success: “It was breathtaking in a hard and beautiful way.”
In December 2019, Kathy Abel was having a good time. She was trying to run two small businesses when her only employee, a part-time worker, emailed her to take a full-time job elsewhere.
Then the new coronavirus hit. Her mother was hospitalized during the first wave, and her father suffered a heart attack and was airlifted to a nearby hospital.
Her parents slowly recovered. Abel’s business did not immediately recover.
Clients at her PR marketing and consulting firm were paralyzed, not knowing when the world would open up. Her women’s outdoor apparel company, Wild Rye, also faced uncertainty. “We’ve received emails from retailers threatening to cancel large orders because they don’t know what’s going to happen in the future,” she says. But as people began to escape their homes and go outside, equipment was needed and wild rye began to grow. Mr. Abel shut down his consulting business and gave it his all. The Idaho-based CEO now has 11 full-time employees and generated more than $4 million in revenue last year, despite the impact of tariffs.
Hard work, vision, and grit all got her there. And a little help from someone.
“Negativity is noise”
In 2017, Tory Burch participated in a sleek black and white ad campaign featuring celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Hamm and Gwyneth Paltrow. They weren’t modeled after her huge fashion line, known for its “preppy bohemian” style, double-T logo, ballet flats and tunics. The campaign was titled #EmbraceAmbition.
It was a kind of compensation. In an interview about her success, Birch was asked whether she would describe herself as ambitious (“in a very rude way,” she says now).
Birch demurred. When this article was published, a friend gave me simple feedback: “Great article, but I can’t shy away from that word.”
“The moment she said that, something switched in me. Of course we need to come together and follow through on our ambitions,” Birch said in a video call from her sunny office before boarding a plane to Paris.
Hillary Clinton had just lost the presidential election. There were questions about how ambitious women should or could be.
But Birch answered the phone. When she called people to ask them to join the campaign, “the response was overwhelmingly yes,” she says. “Everyone who called felt at the time that this was kind of like opening a door for them,” she says.
When it was announced, there were naysayers. “I’ve been very disliked in every aspect of this company,” she says. “My parents used the phrase, ‘Negativity is noise,’ and that really helped me.”
Birch also heard something else. I can’t even tell you how many people said, “[The campaign]really helped me think differently about my own life, my own journey, my feelings about what I’m doing and what I want to do.” ”
Abel remembered that. “I love that motto,” she says. “I grew up being an athlete, but I was also kind of a super nerd. I felt like I was made fun of because I was a hard worker and ambitious. So that really resonated with me.”
This was one of the reasons she applied to the Tory Burch Foundation Fellows Program, which at the time offered $5,000 grants, networking, and other support to female founders. In the midst of a pandemic, a family health crisis, and the business challenges she’s facing, Abel thought she had another interview for the program. Birch then appeared on the screen and told the group that they had been chosen as fellows.
“It was just this moment where, okay, things are starting to look up,” Abel says. “This is exactly what I need, when I need it.”
“Keep going and get it done.”
Birch started her fashion line in 2004, but the industry has changed dramatically in the two decades since. Social media, fast fashion, e-commerce, supply chain disruption, the onslaught of AI, and other factors are making fashion even more difficult. This is despite cultural phenomena like The Devil Wears Prada and its long-awaited sequel making fashion more accessible and mainstream.
But for Birch, fashion has always been something of a Trojan horse. “My business plan was to build a global lifestyle brand to start a foundation,” Birch says. “I don’t know why I was so sure of that idea, but it just came to me instinctively.”
She said that with every pitch. One investor quickly shut her down. “He basically looked at me and said, ‘Don’t ever say that again.’ He didn’t position it as a charity, but he didn’t need to,” she recalls. He made it clear that business and purpose are incompatible.
That wasn’t the case back then. This was before Tom’s and Warby Parker, before Dove’s Self-Esteem Fund, before Tom’s and Warby Parker pledged to donate a pair of shoes or glasses for every shoe purchase.
Birch remained resolute. She launched her own fashion line, and five years later, before that, she says, “I honestly didn’t have any money” to launch the Tory Burch Foundation.
In its early days, the foundation provided mentoring, coaching, and low-interest small business loans. We started our fellowship program in 2015 and are quietly working with a small group of 10 entrepreneurs.
Now, Birch is beginning to understand the scale of what she first envisioned. Yes, she remains one of the few women at the top of a cutthroat industry that typically glorifies men (she’s been named to Forbes’ Most Powerful Women list six times). The company she founded is worth an estimated $3.2 billion.
But she always wants to focus on other founders. This year, the Foundation will add 120 Fellows. They announced a goal to add $1 billion to the economy through women entrepreneurs by 2030. Total to date: $342 million.
Ambitious? without hesitation. In a world where less than 2% of VC funding goes to women-led companies (and that number is shrinking, even though data shows women-led companies have higher returns on average), “we’re not making enough progress,” Birch says. “We just have to keep at it and get it done.”
Pamela Anderson, Marcello Hernandez to appear at Tory Burch’s 2026 NYFW
Tory Burch presented her artful Fall/Winter 2026 collection surrounded by artwork at Sotheby’s Auction House in New York City.
From fashion to empanadas?
Pilar Guzman is the founder and CEO of Half Moon Empanadas in Miami. All they make is empanadas. “At the airport, it’s one product, one brand,” she says. She later added, as an example of her training as a 2021 fellow, “We’re also building something even bigger. We’re working to make empanadas an iconic part of America’s food scene, while also opening doors and supporting our teams and communities.”
Fellows often talk about the community they found through the foundation: other women who understand what it’s like to juggle a family and a startup. Women who know how difficult it is to raise funds. Women who understand how selling take-out food that can be eaten with just one hand to customers rushing through the airport can be a successful business.
Guzman had the receipt. She grew her business to $3 million in revenue. However, growth stagnated. “Very successful people have said to me, ‘It’s crazy to expand at an airport, Pilar, you’re crazy,'” she says. This year, she opened four new stores, including Boston Logan and JFK, has 200 employees (who she boasts pays nearly $10 an hour more than the industry average), and is on track to hit $30 million in revenue this year.
“Much of the ‘female empowerment’ positioning in the industry as a whole, and especially in fashion, is a marketing smokescreen for the empowerment label,” says Megan Mason, branding strategist and founder of Elle Collective. “Real economic impact requires a comprehensive and intentional architecture.”
The Tory Burch Foundation “absolutely” built it, she says. This fellowship focuses on early-stage businesses with a minimum of $75,000 in annual revenue. The intensive 12-month program includes a financial bootcamp to drive sustainable growth, guidance on designing a pitch deck, creating a target investor list, and assistance hosting a conference. To date, the company has 500 fellows and average annual revenue of more than $2 million, nearly 30% more than the average women-owned business, according to LendingTree data. (Entrepreneurs remain lifelong companions and are mentored at every stage of their company’s growth.)
“Torrey plays to his strengths. As an entrepreneur, he knows what it takes,” said Jason Kelly, author of “The New Tycoons” and co-host of The Deal. “There’s also a very strong flywheel effect because she’s building this great network of people who have a stake in each other’s success, which has a compounding effect. They’re given this opportunity and they’re going to pass it on to the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
Beau Wangtrakuldee founded Philadelphia-based AmorSui after a chemical spill in the lab where he worked burned off his standard lab coat. Two years ago, she ended up needing a $25,000 loan after signing a $1 million contract with the VA. She received an interest-free loan from the foundation, which she helped finance, leading to an additional $5 million deal.
Entrepreneurs who participate in the program grow faster, exceed $1 million in annual revenue, 10 times the national average, and stay in business longer, according to the foundation. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 91% of businesses are still in business after five years, compared to the national average of 50%.
Only recently has Birch, now the company’s executive chairman and chief creative officer, decided to open up more about the hard work he’s been through. So women like Kathy Abel, Pilar Guzmán, and Beau Wantrakurdi can see what’s possible. “The last 20 years have been 20 amazing years. Exhausting, challenging and sometimes brutal,” she says.
Six or seven years ago, she called an investor and was told to never confuse purpose with business. “I had just been to a Forbes event, and I said, ‘You know what? They said purpose and business go hand in hand.’ And he said, ‘Okay, what do you want?’ And I said, ‘Obviously, let’s check the basics.’
He sent a check that year and every year since.
Wendy Naugle is USA TODAY’s entertainment editor. Follow her on Instagram @wendy_naugle.
