From Paris to the Milken Global Conference, Business O Feminin CEO Veronique Forge Unites C-Level Women Around the World
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Show Notes:
In this Mission Matters Milken Conference Series episode, Adam Torres interviews Veronique Forge, CEO of Business O Feminin. Veronique shares how she built a global media and executive network championing women in leadership, including her newest initiative the Female Leaders Club launched with support from the Milken Institute. Her mission: to create cross-industry collaboration, mentorship, and visibility for top female executives worldwide.
About Veronique Forge
Véronique Forge is the founder of Businessofeminin.com a digital platform dedicated to empowering women in business and entrepreneurs. She has supported more than 20 000 women to date.
In 2017, she launched the Business O Féminin awards which reward female led start-ups with an international scope. The awards is supported by exceptional female leaders every year among them: Fleur Pellerin, Virginie Morgon, Clara Gaymard, Fanny Moizant, Lucie Basch, Angélique Gérard. The awards is supported by #frenchtech and got twice the High Patronage of President Emmanuel Macron ( 2023, 2024)
In October 2019, she opened the Business O Féminin club, a space enabling women professionals to attend career and entrepreneurship workshops and connect with an inspirational community.
Véronique has a background in Press and TV journalism. She hosted « Femmes d’Exception » and then “Rendez-vous avec…”, a talk show where she interviewed influential and powerful women such as Christine Lagarde, Simone Veil etc
About Business O Feminin
Business O Féminin is a top expert in the organisation of conferences for corporate in the area of leadership, female empowerment, entrepreneurship.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today is a very special episode. We have Veronique Forge on the line and this.
A particular interview is part of our Milken series where we’re covering top guests and also attendees and participants of the Milken Global Conference over in Beverly Hills, California. And again, Ron is on the show today. So first thing, first welcome. Hello, Adam. Nice to be with you. Alright, so we got a lot to talk about today.
So I understand you’re doing some work with Milken in France. And I also wanna get into your, company. So business Oh, Femina. And really how you’ve been working on empowerment of women for over 20 years. I guess just to get us kicked off here, how did you originally get introduced to like, the Milken organization, the conference?
Like the whole, thing. Like how did you first get introduced? You know, life is about encounters and you’re really you do that on a daily basis. So I met them. I’m based in London. I met them in London and we, I actually, I didn’t know anything about milk and Hmm uh, at the beginning because it’s very, you know I’m very often in France and this, it’s not very known.
Yet in France. So, but I happened to, see what were they were doing. And I was able to attend the conference in May and I thought that was amazing. And and yeah, so that’s how. How it all started, and now we’re working a bit in Paris together. We just did an event last week with C-level executives and you know, Milken Institute being a partner in this.
So tell me about the event. I’m curious. I’ve never I love to see when partnerships are created and people come together and collaborate. Like tell me, tell me about the event I. So the event was a special dinner to launch the executive club by business of Femina, which is called the Female Leaders Club, which intend to gather so C-level executive with an, an international background.
Mm-hmm. And the idea is to have. Women from women cross industries and to have a guest speaker. And we had a fantastic guest speaker was named and, and she’s actually makes the link with the US and the, and the what happened at the Milken this year because the my guest speaker was Barbara Zi.
She’s the CEO of in lab. She’s doing the greenhouses, which are going to, be in space and, and particularly she’s working with an an American aerospace company, which is called Vast. And we, were lucky enough as well to have the vice president of Vast vast. So it’s, was just amazing.
And the idea, you know, it’s just, having guest speaker who just out of their, the environment of all those women, obviously, yeah. None of them were into space or, anything, but their top executive. And I think that give, bringing them people who are so different from their environment makes something very different in their, life and, particularly in their professional life.
Hmm. so how did this come together? I’m just so curious ’cause I’ve, I’ve done quite a few interviews with individuals, but you just got introduced to the organization, you’ve been, and now you’re collaborating events. I love this, this is like, it’s great news to me and to see like, Milken going forward and, supporting other groups as well.
I guess, what was it like to work with them and, how does that come together? Oh, I think it’s fantastic. I mean, I, love working with, I’m, lucky enough to work with big companies such as Google for the US and also and BNP Parva. And what I love with these companies and with the Milken Institutes as well, is, you know, the degree of per perfectionism and you have to be, and it’s always, you know, it.
Puts you in another level and, and mm-hmm. You improve yourself, you know, do working with, the best people. Mm-hmm. And from what I’ve seen and what I’ve, been the work I’ve been doing with the Milken the institute so far is just amazing because I have top people and I’m working with top people and I’m learning a lot.
And that’s how you, grow professionally. Hmm. Tell us a little bit more about your platform. So business of feminine. So just a little bit of background. So I’ve been working for, on the women empowerment for 20 years. I used to be a TV journalist. I had a TV program in France, which was called exceptional Women.
I mean, that’s a translation where I interviewed women from. All over the world. But you know, women like women in business, women in politics, I had, you know Christine Laggard, all those kind of you know, type of women. And that’s how I started with women empowerment. And then I’m moved back from tv, came back years later.
And I started my own media company, so mm-hmm. Which was a digital media business. Of fina.com and now it’s media. It’s digital media. It’s a e-learning platform. Mm-hmm. We have also launched a couple years ago the business of immuno awards, which rewards every year female entrepreneurs.
And we just rewarded the the award that a big tech event in Europe, which is called Viva Tech, Viva Technology, where a lot of us company are there. It was, we were all stood by Amazon actually to, to give back the price. And I also. Who launch two years ago female leadership firm, which is hosted at Google.
So I’m working quite a lot with the US actually. Wow, that’s great. And like looking at your I guess a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that watch this program and listen to this, like, what’s your vision for, the organization going forward? Like, let’s dreaming big here. What, what’s the vision?
The vision is really, I mean, one of my last initiative, which is the female Leaders Club, the executive club that I just launched last week in Paris is really the idea to gather international sea level women and to be able to, have to brought together yeah, women on the. monthly basis in Paris.
That’s one of the vision. And then I have I’m working on a big summit also, which is going to, of course, has to do with women, but it’s going to address women’s health, wellbeing, and longevity. And of course, you see. the link with there again, the Milken Institute because mm-hmm. I was really fascinated by, you know, all the session that I saw.
I could I could attend at the Milken global Comforts, where a, mm-hmm. A lot was said on the women’s health, health in general, the women’s health. And that’s one of their key topics. So that’s. What I’m working on and the ideas together. Expert researchers obviously startups in the fem tech environment.
Yeah. And, and there again, to have an international scope because I think we need that in France and in Europe in general. Hmm. I’ll tell you, this has been really enlightening. I love it. I’m excited to see how this continues to unfold. In terms of business of feminine, how do people get involved?
Like how do they follow up? Like, how do people connect? I. So they first can connect, you know, through the the website that we have. So business or fina.com, they can send us, you know, an email and, and, mm-hmm see more about it. it’s membership based. Obviously we’re more in French, but with the executive club it’s gonna be in English.
So people will be able to reach out to us and, and be able to be involved in the club. Which whose events obviously will be in Paris, but we, which is very international mm-hmm. As I said before. So they will be able to, you know, to get a membership and to meet up with amazing women and amazing guest speakers.
So it’s gonna be very soon on the website and will be able to see that as well on our social media, baso feminine, we’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Instagram Facebook, but I mean, we’re, mainly on the, on LinkedIn and and Instagram and, they can reach out to me as well. Veronique Forge, Caribbean, that’s on, that’s my name on LinkedIn.
Mm-hmm. Fantastic for everybody listening. Just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes, so you can just click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Veronique, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam.
