54 InSTYLE AUGUST 2019
BADASS WOMEN
31 RIHANNA After the
success of her shade-inclusive
makeup line, Fenty Beauty by
Rihanna, she set her sights on
fashion with Fenty, a luxury
ready-to-wear label that
débuted to major fanfare in
May as the first new brand
under the LVMH umbrella since
Christian Lacroix in 1987. RiRi is
the first woman to create an
original clothing line for LVMH
and the first woman of color
to helm any of its maisons.
Work, work, work, indeed.
32 KATELYN OHASHI “It’s as
if I’ve been working for 19 years
to reach this level of stardom,
bring gymnastics out of the
dark, and show a brighter side
to the sport,” says the UCLA
gymnast, whose final floor
routine in January scored a
perfect 10 and went viral. She
now intends to inspire women
through poetry in a book
about mental health, self-love,
and female empowerment.
33 KOMAL AHMAD Since her
app, Copia, launched in 2016,
she has fed three million people
across 11 U.S. cities with 2
million pounds of excess food
recovered from restaurants and
businesses like Lyft and Intel.
“Hunger isn’t a scarcity problem;
it’s a logistics problem,” she says.
“Food waste is also a logistics
problem, one I went on to solve.”
34 MARTHA HOOVER The
former sex-crimes prosecutor
left law to pioneer the farm-to-
table movement. By opening
Café Patachou in her home
state of Indiana, she revolution-
ized how people think about
fresh food and sustainability. “So
many restaurants stop at what
KC: To me, a badass takes a bad situation, learns
from it, and then does what she can to prevent
it from happening to others. I’ve definitely tried
to do that. What about you?
SP: I agree wholeheartedly. In philanthropy you
can hear no so many times, but that is an
opportunity for a yes. It’s really about having the
courage and the ability to deliver.
KC: I think it’s been the most gratifying work I’ve
done in my career and my life in general. SU2C
has helped me to honor Jay [Monahan, Couric’s
first husband, who died of colon cancer in 1998]
and my sister Emily [who died of pancreatic
cancer in 2001]. It allowed me to channel my
grief into something extraordinarily positive.
SP: There’s so much to be proud of. Everything is
really about the patients and what we can do to
help them. In 10 short years we have raised over
$600 million for cancer research and funded
more than 1,600 scientists from 180 institutions.
They have contributed to the approval of five new
cancer therapies, which include treatments for
breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers as well
as difficult-to-treat forms of leukemia. That’s
pretty badass, if you ask me.
KC: When you see that a new therapy has saved
the lives of scores of people, you think, “Oh my
god, this work is really making a huge difference.”
SP: Cancer is more than 200 diseases. If every single
person donated a dollar, imagine the amount of
funds we could raise.
In 2008 nine determined executives—two
of whom, Noreen Fraser and Laura Ziskin,
were sadly lost to the disease—came
together to create SU2C, which has saved
countless lives. Co-founder and journalist
Katie Couric speaks with CEO Sung Poblete
about why they’ll never give up the fight.
30 The Women of
Stand Up to Cancer
3 5
SARA NELSON The international president
of the Association of Flight Attendants
became a labor-movement icon when she
spoke out about the dangers of furloughing airport
workers during the 35-day partial shutdown of the U.S.
government (the longest in the nation’s history). “Our
lives were on the line, and we were the ones who saw
the path to end the shutdown,” she says. “When we
focus on our goals and move forward with absolute
conviction, we win every time. After all, a badass gets
things done that nobody thought possible.”
SARA
NELSON
KOMAL
AHMAD
RIHANNA
KATELYN
OHASHI
From left: Ellen Ziffren, Rusty Robertson, Lisa Paulsen, Sherry
Lansing, Pamela Oas Williams, Sue Schwartz, Kathleen Lobb,
Sung Poblete, Katie Couric
