Assistant Managing Editor Kerry A. Dolan sits with Co-CEO Maky Zanganeh of Summit Therapeutics.
Zanganeh earned hundreds of millions as an investor and executive, speaks four languages (Farsi, German, English, French), survived breast cancer and runs, as co-CEO with Bob Duggan, Miami-based Summit Therapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed biotech that has minted her a $1.5 billion fortune of her own.
That wealth has landed Zanganeh, now 54, on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women (at No. 23) for the first time. She is one of 38 self-made female U.S. billionaires on the list, and one of just five to have made a billion-dollar-plus fortune in health care.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2025/06/03/the-unlikely-path-from-iranian-revolution-to-billionaire-biotech-ceo/
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Zanganeh earned hundreds of millions as an investor and executive, speaks four languages (Farsi, German, English, French), survived breast cancer and runs, as co-CEO with Bob Duggan, Miami-based Summit Therapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed biotech that has minted her a $1.5 billion fortune of her own.
That wealth has landed Zanganeh, now 54, on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women (at No. 23) for the first time. She is one of 38 self-made female U.S. billionaires on the list, and one of just five to have made a billion-dollar-plus fortune in health care.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2025/06/03/the-unlikely-path-from-iranian-revolution-to-billionaire-biotech-ceo/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Maggie McGrath, editor of Forbes Women. This year marks the 10th anniversary of a Forbes franchise list known as America's Richest Self-Made Women. Joining me now is an editor who has worked on the list since its inception, my colleague, Assistant Managing Editor, Carrie Dolan. Carrie, thanks so much for joining us.
00:26Thanks, Maggie. Great to be here.
00:28So the list is out now. And before we dive into what we will find on the 2025 edition of America's Richest Self-Made Women, I would love to zoom back a little bit. Take us back 10 years. What was the inspiration behind creating this list and this franchise?
00:44Yeah, so I give credit to Louisa Kroll, who is an executive editor now. She was a longtime editor along with me on the billionaires list. And we were both frustrated at the low number of women on the list, particularly women who had built their own fortunes.
01:04Many of the women on the billionaires list either inherited their fortunes from a late husband or a father. And it's hard to have a billion-dollar fortune. So we started this list, at Louisa's idea, to shine a light on entrepreneurial success of women.
01:20We launched with 50 women in 2015. And in 2020, we expanded to 100 women on the list. And we've been doing 100 women ever since then.
01:27A hundred women ever since then. And can you give a sense for how fortunes have changed over the years?
01:34Who was the richest woman in 2015? And is she still on the list this year?
01:39So the richest woman in 2015 was Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. So she is not on the list anymore. She is in jail now.
01:50And her company and Theranos value went to zero. So this was capturing a moment in time. As we do with all these lists, we capture, we figure out what people's net worth is.
02:00We pick a day and we take everybody's net worth on the same day. And sort of in 2015, Theranos was not yet discovered to have been the fraudulent company that turned out to be.
02:12So she was number one. Number two on the list then was Diane Hendricks. And she is number one today. And she's been number one for the past eight years.
02:20She's been number one for actually all of eight out of 10 years on the list.
02:25Long time Forbes viewers may remember that we interviewed Diane for the 50 over 50 list a few years ago, calling her America's most successful female entrepreneur practically of all time.
02:37She has a really incredible story. Carrie, what stands out to you about the way Diane has built her fortune or what do you want folks to know?
02:46Yeah, I mean, she's probably not a very well-known name to most Americans, not like, you know, Oprah or some of the other folks on our list.
02:53But she built with her late husband this roofing and then expanded into building supplies company called ABC Supplies.
03:02It's a wholesaler, so it doesn't sell. You know, most people won't be buying from them.
03:05And her husband sadly died in 2007. She is the owner and the chair of the company. She's expanded it hugely.
03:15The revenues have like more than quadrupled in the 10 years since she's been on this list.
03:21And her fortune's gone up to $22 billion this year, down from around $3.9 billion, I think, in 2015.
03:30She's a big donor to the Republican Party, and she's also put a lot of money into the surrounding community in Wisconsin, where she's from.
03:40So Diane has gone from number two in the first ever edition of this list to number one in 2025, the list that is out now.
03:48How many of the original members of the self-made women's list from 2015 remain on the list today?
03:56Thirty-six of the original 50 are still on the list today, and that would be even more, except for the fact that several of the original 50 have died in the past year.
04:05Most recently, Elaine Wynn, the casino mogul from Wynn Resorts, passed away in April.
04:09Susan Wojcicki, who was the CEO of YouTube, died last year.
04:17And Judy Love from Love's Truck Stops, Love's Country Store, I guess is the official name of the company, she died as well.
04:24So it's a pretty good number from the original group that are still on the list.
04:28Thirty-six is more than I would have guessed, honestly.
04:31Does this say anything about the way businesses are built or fortunes change over time in America?
04:36I mean, I think that a lot of the businesses that women have founded or co-founded that are on our list are private companies that don't have to deal with the whims of the stock market.
04:50They're really focused on growth and at a reasonable pace, not trying to grow that's beyond what's sustainable.
04:59And they have businesses that serve real needs.
05:01I mean, the other interesting thing about this list is, you know, I feel like a lot of business coverage focuses on tech companies, but there are a lot of non-tech fortunes on this list.
05:14You know, number one being, of course, the home building sector that Diane Hendricks is in, which I think is a testament, you know, what do we all spend our money on?
05:23I mean, sure, we're all looking at Google, but we're also maybe buying cosmetics, drinking wine, doing all these other things that these women have on the list have businesses in.
05:33That's a really good point.
05:34Let's zoom out also and look at the criteria for this list.
05:37We've talked around a little bit of it, but as you and the team are putting this list together, what are you looking for?
05:46Right.
05:46Well, the first question may be to address what do we mean by self-made, because this has been an issue of debate on the Internet over time.
05:53People think sometimes when we say self-made that these women did it all by themselves with no help, and that's not what we mean at all.
05:59What we mean by self-made is these women have either founded or co-founded a company or become an executive at a company or some of them are authors or entertainers.
06:10And that's as opposed to having inherited a business from, you know, a family member.
06:18So that's kind of that's sort of the Forbes definition of self-made.
06:22But we're looking for for women who are self-made and there's a net worth component.
06:26The net worth cutoff changes every year.
06:30In 2015, number 50 was worth 250 million.
06:34This year, number 100 is worth 350 million, and that's up from 300 million last year.
06:41And the other thing that we're looking at is just women who have their businesses in the United States.
06:47So some people are not necessarily American citizens.
06:50Celine Dion is one who's on the list.
06:53She lives in Las Vegas.
06:54We put her on the list for that reason.
06:57There are Rihanna's from Barbados.
06:59I mean, she lives in Los Angeles, right?
07:00So we've got people who are not necessarily original, you know, American citizens, but the bulk of what they do is here in the United States.
07:07You talk about how in 2015, number 50 was worth 250 million.
07:15This year, number 100, so the poorest person on the list of richest self-made women, is worth 350 million.
07:24What accounts for these fortunes going up and up and up?
07:26Is it entirely the stock market?
07:27Well, yes and no.
07:32So, for example, to value a private company, we can go back to Diane Hendricks' roofing company, we look at what a private company would be worth if it were publicly traded.
07:46So we're looking at publicly traded competitors to ABC Supply to figure out – and looking at the revenue of the company.
07:53So the revenue of ABC Supply, of course, and other private companies have grown significantly over the years.
08:00And then we look at what the market's doing.
08:02So in a year when the stock market is down a lot, private company valuations may be down as well, which has been kind of interesting because this year, you know, we've had a lot of volatility in the stock market because of concerns about the tariff, you know, various Donald Trump policies.
08:19And at the end, though, you know, I'd say the net worth of the group went up.
08:27So altogether, these 100 women are worth $155 billion, which is $1 billion more than last year.
08:35So it's an increase, and obviously the cutoff to get onto the list has increased.
08:41But it's not as big an increase as we've seen in – you know, as we look at the group as a whole, it's not as big as an increase as we saw, like, the prior year, for example.
08:51So the stock market's calmed down a bit.
08:54There has been so much volatility.
08:56The market was going up and down and up and down while this entire list was in production.
09:00But as you look at the final 100, who are the other names that maybe stand out to you as notable newcomers or just notable stories that our audience should be aware of?
09:11Yeah, well, we've got a number of notable newcomers.
09:13We've got nine newcomers to the list this year.
09:16Perhaps the best known is Selena Gomez, who is an actress and singer and entrepreneur.
09:22She started Rare Beauty, a cosmetics company, in 2020, and it's really taken off.
09:28And most of her net worth is in her – she's a majority shareholder of Rare Beauty, which is sold mostly online and in one – I think it's in Sephora.
09:42And we've got her on the list for the first time with an estimated net worth of $700 million.
09:48We've got a couple of other newcomers.
09:51One new biotech billionaire, her name is Maki Zangane.
09:56She's on her second potential success of a biotech company.
10:02She works with her now husband, Bob Duggan, who's been on our billionaire's list for a while.
10:07They are testing a lung cancer drug that has shown quite good promise.
10:14And then another interesting newcomer is Michelle Kang, who sold her health IT company and has become quite a power in women's professional soccer.
10:25She owns the Washington Spirit team and two other teams in Europe, and she's really committed to taking those teams as far as she can.
10:35She's a fascinating figure.
10:36She talks about needing equity for women in soccer, but also promoting men, too, and just making better policies for all athletes.
10:43I want to go back to Selena Gomez because you mentioned her net worth, and I think that number might surprise some people because there are some rumors on the Internet that she's a billionaire, which we are careful with that B word, Carrie.
10:55So what would you say to folks who think that Selena is a billionaire?
10:59What I would say to folks that think that Selena is a billionaire, so one of the things that's happened is we talked about the stock market being in flux, and some of the values for publicly traded cosmetics firms have come down.
11:15And because we value private companies as if what would they be worth if they were public, because those public market values for cosmetic firms are down, our estimate of Rare Beauty's value is that it's worth more than a billion dollars.
11:31But we don't know exactly what she owns.
11:34We understand that she owns majority stakes.
11:37She's not commenting on how much more than 50% she owns.
11:39So we've taken a conservative estimate of her ownership, and we get her at $700 million.
11:46Company's doing great.
11:47It's just that, as best we can tell, doesn't share a lot of data, but we did find some revenues for 2023.
11:53But we're just looking at what the market is valuing cosmetics firms at now.
12:00Speaking of singers and billionaire status, Taylor Swift became the youngest female self-made billionaire in 2023.
12:07But someone else earned that title this year.
12:11Can you tell us about her?
12:13Right.
12:14So a woman who's not very well-known, Lucy Guo, who is 30 years old, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire in April.
12:22She is the co-founder of an AI company called Scale AI.
12:26And basically what that company does is it has people label data to train AI.
12:32She co-founded the company in 2016.
12:34She left the company in 2018 and has gone to start two other things since then.
12:39But she held on to most of her stake.
12:42And that company is private still, but it sold shares at a valuation that bumped the valuation of the company to $25 billion in late April.
12:53And that makes her worth $1.3 billion.
12:58It's an incredible story that folks can read more about on Forbes.com under your byline.
13:03But as we talk about this list, I'm curious.
13:05I know you look at this so closely, so you might not be surprised in any given year.
13:09But were there any surprises for you this year?
13:12Well, one of the things that's interesting to me is to see how many people can make this list without being company founders.
13:20Just like with our billionaires list, most billionaires either founded or co-founded a company or maybe inherited it.
13:28We have a smaller subset of billionaires that we call hired hand billionaires, people who got hired at a company and became a billionaire that way.
13:37One of those examples is also on our list, Sheryl Sandberg.
13:39She got hired at Facebook very early on, and she has a billion-dollar fortune from being the chief operating officer at Facebook, or now Meta.
13:47We have two new women this year who are in that same executive rank.
13:54Two women who are at NVIDIA, the big semiconductor chip design company.
13:59There's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, and the executive VP of operations at the company, Deborah Showquist.
14:09Both of those women made their company.
14:11They've both been at NVIDIA for a long time.
14:14They've gotten stock over years, and most of their net worth lies in the value of their NVIDIA stock.
14:18So that was, I thought, kind of interesting.
14:20And we've got another, a new private equity billionaire, also another soccer owner.
14:28So besides Michelle, there's a woman named Lauren Lichtman.
14:31She and her husband, Arthur Levine, started a private equity firm out of Beverly Hills and became soccer fans, first supporting UCLA and women's soccer there.
14:41And then they bought into the San Diego Wave, the National Women's Soccer League team, last year.
14:47And so we've got two different newcomers on our list who are women's pro soccer supporters, which is pretty interesting, I think.
14:57It's interesting, and it perhaps reflects the moment that we're in for women's sports with increasing valuations, increasing attention.
15:05That inflection point that came with the quote-unquote Caitlin Clark effect seems to be sustaining itself, at least for the time being.
15:12That's one takeaway that I have based on what you've said.
15:15But you talked a little bit about the tangible businesses that a lot of these women have, right, in home building, in cosmetics, in the things that we buy in our day-to-day lives.
15:25Are there other takeaways that you see this list giving in terms of maybe what it says about female entrepreneurs in this moment in time?
15:34Yeah, I mean, if you look at who's in charge at the largest companies in the country, the CEOs of those companies are still, you know, some minority.
15:46It's a very small, you can probably count in one or two hands the number of women CEOs at the largest.
15:51But when we look at this list, I think it's a testament to women's entrepreneurship.
15:55Women are, you know, kind of repeating that point.
15:59There's different, lots of different ways to make money.
16:01Starting your own business and building it to be super successful is one interesting way.
16:06I mean, one of the stories that I love is we had a newcomer last year, Marilee Kick, who was a teacher.
16:12And she came up with this idea for these cocktails in these colorful plastic containers.
16:19They're called buzz balls, very popular with college students.
16:23And they're different color plastic and different, like, you know, I think Tequila Rita is one of the name of them.
16:29They're different flavors.
16:30And she sold the company to Sazerac, one of the largest alcohol companies in the spirits companies in the country.
16:37And, I mean, she built it, you know, from scratch.
16:40Her two sons helped her.
16:41I mean, it was like a family affair.
16:43Her husband helped her as well.
16:45You know, who would have thought?
16:46Teacher to cocktail mogul.
16:47I mean, you know, these are the stories that I think make this list so interesting.
16:52Those are the stories I love because it shows what's possible.
16:55She's a public school teacher who ultimately ends up on the Forbes list of America's richest self-made women.
17:01It's a bit of the American dream.
17:03But I want to ask you about that title that I just said, America's richest self-made women.
17:09Why is it so important to track the wealth?
17:12Because I get pitches for this list, and I'm sure you do too, for people who are successful but then don't want to talk about the money.
17:19Why is it so important that we keep talking about the money?
17:23It's so interesting.
17:25I feel like, you know, if we had to generalize, I don't like to generalize, but there are women who were on the cusp of making this list, including a couple that I was emailing with, who were, I think, proud of their success but didn't want their net worth broadcast.
17:42And, I mean, on the one hand, I think people who don't want that see it as an invasion of privacy.
17:50I mean, I think when you work for a very big business, it's not that private, right?
17:54So, you know, I don't know.
17:57Some women are quite proud to be on the list.
17:59I mean, this woman, Maki Zangane, the new biotech billionaire on our list, I think she's super excited because it means her company's doing, you know, on the verge of doing very well anyway.
18:07The stock price is up a lot.
18:09I think, you know, it's sort of the Forbes way to keep track of success with money.
18:15This is what we do with our Forbes 400 richest Americans list.
18:18This is what we do with our world's billionaires list.
18:20It's not in any way to denigrate anyone who's built a super successful two or three or four million dollar company that will never make this list.
18:28I think there's all kinds.
18:29There's room for all kinds of success.
18:31We're just trying to pick some of the kind of the people at the apex of success.
18:37And they become role models for people.
18:40They do.
18:41And, of course, money is power.
18:43And this list of 100 women command power in a way that, as you note, might be different than America's corporate CEOs, but is nonetheless powerful on a day-to-day basis in terms of building the goods and services that we all are using.
18:57Yeah, and that's a really good point because, in addition, you know, I mentioned that Dianne Hendricks was a big donor to the Republican Party.
19:05Another big donor to the Republicans is Elizabeth Uline.
19:10She and her husband started a packaging company called Uline, and they are big DOP supporters.
19:14So, I mean, you know, people can use their power in different ways.
19:16They can help start, you know, support pro sports teams.
19:20They can work in politics.
19:22They can.
19:22I mean, there are others who do a lot in philanthropy.
19:25I mean, there's lots of ways.
19:26And some do all of those, right?
19:27Some may do both philanthropy and business.
19:30But, yeah, they do have a lot of power.
19:32That's a really good point, Maggie.
19:33There's so much that we could keep talking about, but we'll let people explore the package on Forbes.com on their own.
19:41But before I let you go, is there anything we missed, anything else that you would highlight about the 2025 list of America's richest self-made women?
19:49I think we pretty much covered the highlights.
19:51The only other thing I would say is, you know, back to that theme of money, we have 38 billionaires on the list this year, which is, and we had 18 back in 2015.
20:00So we've more than doubled the number of billionaires in a decade, which is, you know, an interesting statistic to leave on, I would say.
20:10That is an interesting statistic to leave on.
20:12Carrie Dolan, assistant managing editor at Forbes, thank you so much for sitting down and talking about America's richest self-made women.
20:19Everyone watching, you can read the package on Forbes.com, and please check out all of the associated articles that we've been talking about.