Athletic Women Are Literally Running to the Top of the Business World

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Some of the top female business leaders have kicked, punched, and sprinted their ways to the tops of their fields — and that’s not a metaphor. A new report by Ernst and Young’s Women Athletes Business Network and EspnW found that a majority of high-level executives had once been athletes. Fifty-two percent of women on boards or with CEO, CFO, or COO titles had played a sport at the university level (and, at other management levels, 39 percent had done so).

A look at the landscape of fashion designers and executives by Yahoo Style found that some of the most stylish and successful woman in this industry are sporty too — and that athletics have played a profound influence on their career climbs. For example, Tory Burch — whose company is said to be valued at well over $3 billion and has a new book out, Tory Burch In Color — tells Yahoo Style she was a tomboy kid and continues to lead a sporty life. “Any sport will teach you discipline, perseverance, fairness, and the importance of timing, which is critical in all aspects of life, especially running a company,” she says. “I played and still do play a lot of tennis.” It makes sense then that Burch already has a collaboration with Fitbit and is launching a line of activewear within the next year.

Vera Wang, who was a close-to Olympic level figure skater, has credited much of her success with the internal drive she got from her skating. ”Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves,” Wang has said. “And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.”

And, Harvard Business School grad and Rent the Runway founder Jenny Carter Fleiss — whose startup has raised over $55.4 million in funding — has said that her high school track days continue to help her as a CEO today. She told The Daily Beast, “Our coach always had us write our goals on the back of our hands to be constantly reminded of them, to give one example. Today, I still keep a list of my personal goals posted right in front of me-and encourage everyone else at Rent the Runway to do this-as a constant reminder of the bigger-picture things we’re working on.”