For Danica Lynne Casta, an engineer by profession turned baker, success was hers after she risked taking a big step outside her comfort zone. She now manages her online cake business under “Amberlyns Cake.”

The Filipina baker had just graduated from university when the pandemic struck. Danica began to reconsider her professional goals in baking when her family had financial difficulties, so she looked for a short-term position in the online world.  

Danica had limited experience in baking. But through hard work, she persisted in her quest to become a better baker until she became well-known for her delicious “bento cakes”.

The bento cakes were not only delicious but also the perfect size and price for those watching their spending. She also recently launched a “Selfie Mirror Cake” featuring a real mirror on top of the cake. So, you can take one-of-a-kind mirror selfies while taking a snap of your scrumptious cake.

In only one month, she turned a profit into double digits. At that moment, she knew that baking was her true calling in life. “I told my family that I was quitting my job and would be a full-time baker from now on,” she told The Philippine Star, a digital newspaper in the Philippines.

As of writing, Amberlyns Cake (@amberlynscake) got over 178k followers on Instagram and Facebook.

This millennial will inspire you with his quest for financial independence. Sahil Mehta earns $515,000 a year flipping houses in addition to his full-time job at Golden Gate Sotheby’s.

Mehta grew up in a low-income household. He moved to California at 16, where he started college and graduated early to launch a successful career in real estate. Today, he has already put five rental apartments into the real estate market in Berkeley and has been able to make a profit from them.

He acknowledges that prospective investors require substantial capital even to enter the game. One essential thing he considers in investing his money is making deposits into a personal retirement account. Now, Mehta puts a lot of money into himself and puts away about $10,000 monthly for real estate investments. 

The 25-year-old also invests $1,500 per month, while most financial advisers recommend saving 10% to 15% of income for retirement. Brilliant move to put some of it in an IRA, where it can multiply at 6% to 8% every year.

O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares ETFs and a judge on the new CNBC show “Money Court,” was impressed by Sahil Mehta’s connotations to stock market strategies. “That’s what you’re putting aside for your nest egg when you turn 65.”

When it comes to closing the gender equality gap in entrepreneurship, many barriers remain to be addressed. However, female entrepreneurs in the startup industry are now rising and have been taking center stage.

Fortune recently released a list of the 15 Most Powerful Women in Startups based on PitchBook valuation data. 

Eight women on the list are notable Asian women who are either founders of highly valued startups where they hold important jobs or chief executives of highly valued firms.

Without further ado, here are the most powerful women in charge of the most valuable private companies in the world today.

 

Melanie Perkins

Cofounder and CEO, Canva

Valuation: $26 billion

The Malaysian-Austrailian cofounder and CEO of design software maker Canva was valued at $40 billion in 2021, which makes it the highest-valued female-founded startup in the world. Launching their new office product, the company is ready to take on Microsoft and Google.

 

Divya Gokulnath

Cofounder and director, Byju’s

Valuation: $22 billion

Gokulnath cofounded India’s most valuable startup, Byju’s. The firm’s aim is to make learning engaging and effective by leveraging deep pedagogy and cutting edge technology.

 

Miranda Qu

Cofounder and president, Xiaohongshu

Valuation: $20 billion

Based in Shanghai, the social e-commerce app Xiaohongshu (translation: “Little Red Book”) has been key to the rise of experiential shopping in China. The innovative platform integrates the authentic content shared by its community with commerce, quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations for making lifestyle decisions.

 

Ruchi Kalra

Cofounder and CFO, OfBusiness; cofounder and CEO, Oxyzo

Valuations: $5 billion (OfBusiness); $1 billion (Oxyzo)

Kalra along with her husband Asish Mohapatra, cofounded the carbon management business OfBusiness and the digital lender Oxyzo. OfBusiness provides India’s SMEs access to cash flow-based financing for buying raw materials through its NBFC ‘Oxyzo Financial Services’.

 

Adi Tatarko

Cofounder and CEO, Houzz

Valuation: $4 billion

The Israeli-American cofounder and CEO started the home remodeling and design platform where people can browse and save beautiful photos of inspiring home, as well as find and hire the right design and construction professionals.

 

Eynat Guez

Cofounder and CEO, Papaya Global

Valuation: $3.7 billion

Papaya Global is a payroll platform trusted across 160+ countries and all types of employment. Based in Israel, Guez cofounded the startup after a long career in global workforce management.

 

April Koh

Cofounder and CEO, Spring Health

Valuation: $2 billion

Koh became the youngest woman to run a multibillion-dollar company when the startup hit its $2 billion valuation in 2021. With the mission to eliminate every barrier to mental health, Spring Health offers mental health care services as an employer-provided health benefit.

 

Jinglan Wang

Cofounder and CEO, Optimism

Valuation: $1.7 billion

Optimism is an Ethereum-based decentralized infrastructure platform that allows for instant transactions and scalable smart contracts.The company valued at $1.7 billion as it worked to scale Ethereum.

Natalie Naudus’ voice actor journey began when she realized that narrating audiobooks could be a promising career option. She found that audiobooks were one of the fastest-growing areas of content creation and that most of them were recorded by voice actors in high-quality at-home studios. 

The mother of two decided to pursue it as a new career because she believed that many aspects of the genre she cherished as a classical singer could be incorporated into this new line of work. She now earns six figures annually.

Natalie’s husband helped her set up a home studio. A platform called ACX, which connects narrators with authors, agents, and publishers, gave her her first book job. To make her name and voice more well-known within the community, she started going to events related to book narration. 

During the 2020 pandemic, she decided to share snippets of her book narrator life on Tiktok and Instagram. She wishes others could appreciate this profession as much as she does. This exposure increased her popularity and fan base. Book gigs from publishers who wanted to hire her to publish her works also began to flood in. With this strong online presence, she acknowledged it as one of the most important decisions she has ever made for her professional advancement.

Currently, she still manages to put in a productive 40 hours a week between recording, administrative duties and reading up on material for her next book. Major publishers typically offer her a starting rate of $225 per finished audio hour. 

After three years as a voice actor, she finally reached the six-figure mark in earnings and enabled her to purchase the land for their mountaintop home, as well as upgrade her recording booth.

Natalie had recorded almost 400 books over five years. She is also an award-winning audiobook narrator of more than 250 titles.  Her story shows that taking a chance on a new career path can pay off in ways one never expects.– “It was a difficult decision to give up my opera dreams. But I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t left it behind and taken this chance.” she tells CNBC’s Make It.