Lift as You Climb: Linda Fisk on Building a Global Sisterhood for Women Leaders

13 Apr Lift as You Climb: Linda Fisk on Building a Global Sisterhood for Women Leaders

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Linda Fisk, founder and CEO of LeadHership Global and a two-time TEDx speaker, explains why the funding gap for women entrepreneurs was never about the business plan — and what she's building to fix it.

The Numbers

"Women are a driving force of the economy and yet they're given less than 2% of the available VC funding to help capitalize their companies to help them grow and scale," Linda Fisk explained to Jeff Crilley during a recent appearance on The Jeff Crilley Show. She said it without anger, without raising her voice — just a plain statement of fact delivered by someone who has spent a decade working with the data.

But then she offered a detail that reframes the entire conversation. When funding systems are made gender-blind — when the name at the top of an application is hidden — women's likelihood of getting funded jumps. "If you can make access to funding blind in terms of gender, if you can create systems where the gender of the owner operator is not seen, not known, if you can make it truly an equal playing field, then women in fact have a much higher likelihood of being funded," Fisk explained. The problem, in other words, was never the pitch deck.

Ten Thousand Women, One Mission

Fisk is the founder and CEO of LeadHership Global, an organization built around a simple but specific premise: women in leadership positions — whether running their own companies or occupying C-suites — need the same access to stages, funding, and networks that their male counterparts receive without asking. The organization now counts 10,000 members in cities from Kuala Lumpur to Dallas to Vancouver.

"My role is to simply give them the tools, the connections, the resources, the stages and the platforms that they need to accelerate their success," Fisk said. She described the gap in concrete terms: less than 10% of board director roles go to women, less than 10% of C-suite positions in Fortune 500 companies are held by women, and less than 10% of speakers at conferences are women. LeadHership Global exists to push against every one of those numbers.

Where the Ceiling Hits

The typical member who comes to LeadHership Global has already achieved a level of success. The problem isn't getting started — it's what happens next. "Most women feel as though they've been able to achieve incredible success but they often feel at some point in their journey that they've hit a ceiling," Fisk said. That ceiling might be revenue, or it might be access — the kind of after-hours networking on golf courses and in restaurants that fuels the VC ecosystem but is practically inaccessible to women juggling household responsibilities with running a business.

Fisk described how LeadHership Global responds: a twelve-month strategic plan built around how each woman individually defines success, whether that's home-life balance, a revenue target, or a specific kind of impact. The community surrounding that plan is the real engine. "You get to benefit from the hard won lessons of women who have walked in your shoes and can tell you at a grassroots level, this is what I did that worked," she said.

The Sisterhood as Strategy

What distinguishes LeadHership Global from a typical professional network, according to Fisk, is the protective instinct that runs through it. When a young woman enters the community, the response from established members goes beyond mentorship. "A lot of other women would say they feel protective," Fisk said. "They really want to shield her from everything from microaggressions to being demeaned or dismissed or being belittled or feeling less than."

That protectiveness translates into something practical: collective knowledge deployed in real time. Fisk described the dynamic inside the community — members telling newcomers, "I just did that, I was just there, oh, I overcame that ten years ago, oh, let me tell you how I solved that five years ago." It's a model built on the principle Crilley invoked at the top of the show: lift as you climb.

An AI-Powered Bet on Access

Fisk has also recently announced an integration with CurvUp, an AI-powered platform she described as "kind of a mashup between LinkedIn, Upworks, Fiverr and maybe your favorite VC firm that you would have to stand in front of and pitch your business to." The platform is designed to give entrepreneurs instant access to experts, investors, coaches, and trainers — removing the dependency on knowing the right people in the right rooms.

Linda Fisk is the founder and CEO of LeadHership Global (leadhershipglobal.com), a two-time TEDx speaker, international bestselling author, and keynote speaker. This conversation was recorded on The Jeff Crilley Show, produced at the Real News Communications Network studios in Dallas, Texas.

Key Topics

  • the VC funding gap for women-owned businesses
  • LeadHership Global's 12-month strategic planning model
  • CurvUp's AI-powered entrepreneur ecosystem
  • the double standard facing female leaders
  • building global sisterhood and mentorship networks
  • gender-blind funding systems
  • overcoming lack of confidence as a young leader

Episode Timestamps

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Episode Chapters

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 01:22 – Meet Linda Fisk of Lead Hership Global
  • 02:03 – What Is Lead Hership Global?
  • 03:11 – Challenges Facing Female Leaders
  • 04:09 – The Gender Gap in Funding and Opportunity
  • 05:10 – Ideal Members and Breaking Through Ceilings
  • 07:15 – The Power of Community and Sisterhood
  • 08:20 – Introducing CurvUp: AI-Powered Ecosystem
  • 09:37 – Why Entrepreneurs Fail and How CurvUp Helps
  • 10:45 – Funding Inequality for Women Entrepreneurs
  • 13:20 – Leveling the Playing Field with Technology
  • 13:50 – Linda's Heart for Teaching and Mentorship
  • 15:04 – Encouraging the Next Generation of Women Leaders
  • 16:20 – Final Words: Start Preparing Now
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