Women owned businesses account for 40% of all businesses in Massachusetts translating to 250,761 businesses as of 2023, and moms play an important role in there1.
31% of women entrepreneurs have school-aged children2 — translating to an estimated 77,735 mom-owned businesses in Massachusetts. Not bad for a state with roughly 700,000 small businesses.
Following up on our NYC Mom-Owned Businesses, we’re going farther afield with our Massachusetts spotlight exploring the full spectrum of impact the momprenuers have had on the bay state from a small e-commerce shop to a nationwide financial firm. We spotlight 10 moms’ businesses from all walks of life.
Soderstrom’s Instagram says it all: mom, dog mom, wife, and jewelry maker. She turns jewelry making from a hobby into a bona-fide business. You know you’ve got it made when Gisele Bundchen and Deepak Chopra can both be spotted wearing your jewelry. Aside from a celebrity following, Soderstrom also boasts 30,000 Instagram followers. We can add influencer to her brand alongside entrepreneur.
Women entrepreneurs own 85% of businesses in the beauty business, so we had to include a spotlight on a mom-owned salon3. Rachel’s salon Parlr takes the beauty makeover experience one level up and also provides photo shoots in their 11,000 square foot facility.
Rachel has expanded her business to beyond a beauty salon. She runs both a podcast and has an e-commerce business selling the SleepyTie.
While Boston may not be known for its food as it is known for its sports team and colleges, this list wouldn’t be complete without a food industry listing. We all have to eat, and most of us love to do so!
Nivia Pina and her husband are serial restauranteers with three restaurants to their name: Merengue, Vejigantes, and Dona Habana featuring Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban food respectively. Pina represents the growing Latin community in the Bay state, and her story from being the daughter of immigrants to a successful restaurant owner is the epitome of the American Dream. Did we also mention that she’s a science teacher at Boston Public Schools?
The founders of the Russian School of Mathematics (RSM) hails from Massachusetts. Their first school building opened in 1999 in Boston. Since then RSM has gone on to serve over 50,000 students across the country with their alumni going on to elite universities and making waves in the tech industry. They have been featured on numerous periodicals like the Boston Globe and even had a talk on TEDTalks.
The significance of RSM can’t be overstated by bridging the gap between American mathematics education in the classroom to what is needed to compete at the global stage in highly quantitative fields.
An estimated 47% of Fortune 500 CMOs are women, showing the dominance of females in the marketing and PR sector4. In comparison only 10% of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs5. This is why we’re spotlighting a bay state PR firm founded by mom and entrepreneur Collette Philip.
Founded in 1986, Collette Philip Communications (CPC) is a Boston-based firm that specializes in public relations, brand strategy, and other areas of marketing for c-suite executives and their firms. CPC has been recognized as on of the best PR firms in Boston and Collette in 2024 was recognized by the Women’s Edge, a female leadership organization in Boston and Florida.
Real estate like marketing and PR, is another industry that has been a rare career choice for women who seek to balance a rewarding career and motherhood. Tracy Campion, however, takes her career to the next level. Campion, the founder of Campion & Co., specializes in real estate deals for millionaires in the bay state. As one of the wealthiest states in the US with roughly 16,000 millionaires, Campion’s business has plenty to work with especially in the state’s economic epicenter in Downtown Boston and neighboring Cambridge.
Airbnb has normalized short-term rental of people’s homes and apartments allowing mom-and-pop rental businesses to thrive. But before Airbnb, the ‘bed and breakfast’ experience could have also been found at the Upton dating back to the 1980s. Founded by Laura, a former architect, the Upton is short-term apartment rentals business based in Boston. Their business provides furnished living experiences in a historic brownstone building in Boston’s trendy South End neighborhood. Today Laura is joined by her daughter Olivia turning this mom-owned business to a mother-daughter duo.
The Boston Red Sox and Boston Globe are well known nationwide. With over 245,000 digital only subscriptions the Boston Globe is one of the most read newspapers in New England [6]. The Red Sox as one of the most valuable franchises in the MLB. Their games at the iconic Fenway Park had an estimated 2.6M attendees in 2022 alone [7].
Linda Henry is both the CEO of the Boston Globe and part owner of the Boston Red Sox. Need we say more?
As the home of one of the hottest biotech scenes in the country, we naturally had to include a mom founder in the biotech scene. Laurie Halloran founded in 1998 Halloran Consulting Group is a management consulting firm specializing in the life sciences. Halloran has since passed away, but has passed on the mantle of the Halloran Consulting Group to the next generation of female leaders. Halloran’s example also shows how female founders help to lift other female founders as in seen with the current leaders of a Halloran Consulting Group.
Last and definitely not least: Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity. Johnson needs no introduction. Fidelity is one of the largest financial services firm in America with an estimated $13.7 trillion in assets under management (AUM)8. Fidelity. in collaboration with Blackrock, also inaugurated the no-fee ETF trades that has enabled the current generation of investors to execute passive, fractional share investment strategies historically too expensive to do for most folks. Locally, Fidelity is the brokerage firm that administers the states' 529 plans for education savings. Johnson sets a standard so high in achievement it’s hard to find another like her. She is also the wealthiest billionaire in the bay state.
There are so many mom-owned businesses in Massachusetts. — Most recently, Massachusetts has also been recognized as one of the best states for working moms for its access to childcare, good schools, work environment (particularly remote and/or flex work schedule), and career opportunities for women. These women show just how far the state has come to support women in business.
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1 US Small Business Office of Advocacy. “2023 Small Business Profile”. Advocacy SBA.gov. May 9, 2024.
2 Gabrielle Carpenter. "Small Business Statistics in 2024". NAWBO site. March 6, 2024.
3 Jannik Linder. “Diversity in the Salon Industry”. Gitnux.org. April 3, 2024.
4 J.G. Navarro. “Percentage of women among Fortune 500 chief marketing officers (CMOs) in the United States in 2021 and 2022” Statista. August 14, 2023.
5 Emma Hinchliffe. “Women CEOs run 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies. A quarter of the 52 leaders became CEO in the last year”. Fortune.com. June 5, 2023.
6 Dan Kennedy. “Circulation holds steady at the Globe while it continues its slow decline at the Herald” The Media Nation. October 12, 2023.
7 Christina Gough. “Boston Red Sox - Statistics & Facts” Statista. February 29, 2024. ****
8 “We Are Fidelity”. Fidelity website. As of March 31, 2024.
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