"Who is Your Role Model?"

Written by Christina Stolz; Edited by Juliette Santulin (W’25)

“Who is your role model” is an ice breaker I’ve gotten quite a few times during my time at Penn. I always struggle with that question but, in the end, I will mostly say Angela Merkel because she is a woman with immense power. However, in terms of her traits and methods, I don’t know much about her. For me she’s ultimately a vehicle of action, a symbol of a country that belongs to the world of news. 

Growing up, I never had a specific role model or someone who resonated or stuck with me completely. The nearest I think I got were long and very feverish obsessions with Cleopatra, Boudicca and 九天玄女 (The Dark Lady), but these women are lost to history or mythology and greatly remain abstract concepts rather than fully fleshed out beings.

But it did make me think and want to dig further—what do I see in women and how do I choose a role model? What is the significance of a role model, especially in business? What can I learn from that to help my career?

Role models can be someone close to you, a family member or friend, but often it is someone who has reached a high status or made a sizable impact on society. We usually have little reach or access to these people though. The sole access we have to them is through the media. We get big titles like Becoming Warren Buffet, Inside Bill's Brain, Burt's Buzz or nearly 15 different documentaries on Steve Jobs diffused through the media. All titles on über-successful male businessmen. Female success stories on the other hand are not pasted throughout the media as frequently, especially in the case of female business leaders.

Recently, however, women have been taken into the mix. Two titles in particular have soared in popularity worldwide on multiple streaming platforms. The first one was streamed over 511 million hours globally, ranking fourth among all English-language television shows for the first 28 days of its airing. The second one was watched by over 499,000 US households within its first four days of streaming and peaked as one of the 10 most watched TV shows in the US.

These shows are Inventing Anna and The Dropout.

I must admit that I hadn’t heard of The Dropout’s Elizabeth Holmes until the news about her trial became popular at the beginning of this year. Both women intrigued me as they were some of the first women in business on the big screen. Both had achieved strong confidence, leadership and strength. Despite the fact these women are both utterly despicable, they made me question what it is to be a strong woman in leadership. Even after going to various “female leadership programmes,” I still cannot grasp the concept of what that really means. The media, on the other hand, really allows you to dive into a person and follow them. With these two characters, I really admired that they could accomplish immense things despite obvious hurdles—Elizabeth was very awkward and generally unlikeable. But, if she managed to reach such heights in securing funding despite the disadvantages of being a woman and having an awkward gait, what does that say about networking and what do I need to take heed of?

Articles I pour over seem to love using the word seduction in her case. She was able to secure her funding through seduction. But no matter how many videos or interviews of her I look over, I just don’t see the “temptress” that the media portrays her to be. How does this seduction express itself? What bound all those people to her? Do they paint this image of her because, since ancient Greek times, women have either been categorized as the virtuous and innocent maiden or a manipulative femme-fatale?

She doesn’t seem to be very appealing when watching her on YouTube—she apparently adapted Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck and artificially lowered her voice. Her dress, voice, and posture have all been said to work to project a masculine image. If she was really doing this, it would imply that she is using mirroring on her investors or business partners. The extent of it and how far it goes makes it almost disturbing, especially in the sense of what this could infer for successfully networking and gaining traction in the business world.

Having to mirror my male colleagues is not a message I want to hear and shouldn’t be the first message sent to young girls that have large aspirations in business. Even though we may feel for Anna Sorokin or Elizabeth Holmes as we follow their journeys, the baseline is that these women are terrible. So, why are they among the first strong (real world) female figures that really gained popularity in the media? We should not have to look to them for leadership but rather to more positive leaders. And so, I really hope to see documentaries or shows on Bumble’s founder Whitney Wolfe Herd or AMD’s Lisa Su, as they can become true role models to aspiring business-women.