Press, Media, and Appearances
Corporate Leaders As Architects For Social Change In Chicago And Beyond
Plenary Panel, 26th International Leadership Association Global Conference, November 7, 2024
Janet Foutty (Deloitte), Calvin Butler (Exelon), Sona Wang (venture capitalist), and Michael Strautmanis (Obama Foundation) share how their leadership extends beyond the C-Suite and the boardroom by delving into initiatives they have spearheaded and the challenges they have tackled as they influence change and empower others to lead change in their communities.
Creatives as Entrepreneurs
Breaking Barriers Festival 2023, Ravinia
Led by Women of the World founder Jude Kelly, Marin Alsop, Fortune Brands Innovations VP Leigh Avsec, composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Randolph Entertainment co-founder Sona Wang discuss how creative women in the arts and corporate America have broken barriers to become successful entrepreneurs. (Sona begins speaking at 14:25)
Women Entrepreneurs — Inc., January 5, 2021
According to Sona Wang, quoted in a Crain’s Chicago Business article and general partner of Inroads Capital Partners, an Evanston venture capital firm that specializes in backing women and minorities, the venture capital business “clearly relies heavily on the old-boy network.”
How a venture-capital veteran got the blues — Crain’s Chicago Business, August 31, 2017
How did you get interested in the blues?
On our first date, my husband took me to Blues on Halsted. He plays guitar, and that night, he wrote out on a napkin the 12-bar blues structure for me. That was my first lesson in the blues. One of my favorite blues singers is Etta James. She could melt your heart singing blues, jazz, R&B, rock or pop. When I listen to Adele, I hear Etta.
Have you met Buddy Guy?
It was in a roomful of people in 2012. We presented our plan [for the Chicago Blues Experience museum]. He said, "Wait a minute," and we stopped in our tracks. He said, "I've been waiting 25 years for you folks to walk into my office and tell me we are finally going to do this." It was such a seminal moment.
The best advice I ever got was . . .— Crain’s Chicago Business, September 19, 2009
Ms. Wang's mother was a surgeon in Korea who uprooted her family in 1964 to come to America and escape the political intrigues at home. When mom and daughter were sworn in as U.S. citizens in 1972, Mom's advice to Sona was this: "Choose the things that are most difficult to do, and people will learn to respect you for that."
With few financial resources, Ms. Wang resolved while still in junior high to go on to Stanford University and get a degree in engineering, a rare thing for a woman in the '70s. With a full scholarship, she accomplished both goals, then later left a comfortable career at Intel Corp. to work in the risky world of venture capital. In the '90s she took another difficult step, leaving Batterson Johnson & Wang to go into business for herself.
Sona Wang: Helping entrepreneurial dreams take flight — Kellogg World Magazine, Spring 2005
"Don't wait for someone to take you under their wings," [Sona] says. "Find a really big set of wings and climb under them."
Growing in size but not in equity — Crain’s Chicago Business, December 11, 2004
"This business clearly relies heavily on the old-boy network," says Sona Wang, general partner of Inroads Capital Partners, an Evanston venture capital firm that specializes in backing women and minorities. Ms. Wang, one of the few U.S. women in a top venture capital role, co-founded Inroads in 1995 after a decade in the industry.
Silicon ceiling: Women entrepreneurs still see barriers to power in high-tech — Crain’s Chicago Business, November 10, 2001
When Sona Wang took her first job as an engineer at Intel Corp. in the early 1980s, she thought little of the glass ceiling. She was too busy racing along the fast track of a fast-growing company to pay attention to the makeup of the highest executive ranks.
But as she began to work her way into management during her fifth year at the California-based chipmaker, she began to notice there were very few women at the company's top levels.
"Those that I did see were as tough as nails," says Ms. Wang, general partner at InRoads Capital Partners in Evanston. "They weren't a profile that most women would emulate."