Tiffany Dufu, President of the Tory Burch Foundation
Tiffany Dufu is president of the Tory Burch Foundation, which empowers women entrepreneurs by providing access to capital, education, and community. She’s the author of the bestselling book Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less. According to foreword contributor Gloria Steinem, Drop the Ball is “important, path-breaking, intimate and brave.” Her writing has appeared in The Oprah Magazine, ESSENCE, and the New York Times.
Named to Entrepreneur's 100 Powerful Women and Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women, Tiffany has raised over $25 million toward the cause of women and girls. She’s the founder of The Cru, a peer coaching tech company that was acquired by Luminary in 2023. Their algorithm matches women in accountability circles to help them meet their life goals. Tiffany was a launch team member to Lean In and was Chief Leadership Officer to Levo, the fastest growing millennial women's professional network. Prior to that, she served as President of The White House Project, which trained thousands of women across the nation to run for political office.
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Introduction
Activators are the leaders who ignite movements, rally people around a future vision, and drive the kind of impact that shapes our world. They’re Superconnectors, community builders, and catalysts who stand for something bigger than themselves. In this series, I’m spotlighting these uniquely impactful leaders to extract their insights and inspire others to follow a similar mission-driven approach.
Today, I’m excited to introduce Tiffany Dufu—current president of the Tory Burch Foundation.
Tiffany has raised over $25 million to empower women and girls, and as a successful entrepreneur, she exited her community business The Cru. Tiffany is also an author, keynote speaker, and an Activator who blends community-building with challenging cultural norms. She works tirelessly to elevate other women to positions of power, while continually paying forward the investment others have made in her.
Throughout our interview, Tiffany shares countless pearls of wisdom. She also exudes one of the warmest, most peaceful, and confident demeanors I've had the privilege of engaging with.
Tiffany, you've built an extraordinary career leading movements, building communities and aligning others around a compelling vision for a better future. What is your unique approach? How would you explain what makes Tiffany Dufu so compelling?
A few years ago, I was on a podcast. The podcast was led by a psychologist who said at the end of the episode that he had never actually met someone who had true pronoia. And I said what is that? I've never heard of that. He said have you heard of paranoia?
And I said, yes. He said, paranoia is when you feel that the world is out to get you, that you walk around kind of assuming ill intent. He said, pronoia is the opposite. It's a person who walks around assuming that the world is operating in their favor. And I said isn't it? And he started to laugh and he said, exactly, that's it.
My answer to your question based on this podcaster psychologist is that I assume that, whatever I put out into the universe, the universe will buoy it and that the universe will support it. As long as I stay true and committed to my passion and purpose, and there's a sense of indebtedness I feel to every single person who's said yes to my request, who has given me an opportunity. I want to make sure that the world gets a return on the investment that they made in me. I think that's what drives me, and I would say it's a big reason why Tiffany's compelling.
Reflecting on your journey, what ROI metrics or specific impact results are you most proud of? How were you, Tiffany Dufu, uniquely skilled to drive those outcomes?
The most important ROI for me that's been consistent throughout my career is capital for women and girls. Over the course of my career, I've raised over 25 million for the cause of women and girls, as a nonprofit fundraiser, as someone who built a community and raised venture capital for that community.
There's a lot of people with a lot of great ideas about how the world can be changed and how the world can be better. But if you don't know how to secure the resources, meaning the dollars, the money it takes to execute on those ideas, those ideas will go nowhere.
I'm really proud of my ability to tell a compelling story and to persuade others to take action on the things that I feel are very important.
Hopefully because they feel that they're important, but also because Tiffany can be very persuasive.
We often hear phrases like it just takes one person to speak up or the idea of a snowball effect. But building and sustaining a movement is no easy feat.
You've led movements, empowering women to run for office, achieve their life goals and do less but achieve more. And now you're focused on providing women entrepreneurs with the tools to build generational wealth. How do you actually build and lead a movement?
By getting out of the way of the movement and really by inviting people in.
Right now I'm president of the Tory Burch Foundation. We empower women entrepreneurs through community, through capital, through education. It's very clear to me that pillar around community is key, and it's important for a woman entrepreneur. And I empathize with that, particularly as a founder myself, as an entrepreneur, and part of the reason why community is so important is because when you're a founder and you know, this Nicole, cause you're an entrepreneur, you never know what you're going to need at any period in time.
One moment you need help with the acquisition funnel. Another moment you need help closing a deal. Another moment you need help dealing with the talent crisis. What's amazing is if you have a community of other entrepreneurs, of other founders, I call them my founder sisters, who you can reach out to at any one period in time, they can support you.
I believe that building that kind of movement and building that community means that for the leader of that community, you really need to put your own interests aside and allow the community to support and lead you. For example, one of the things that I'm in the process of launching at the foundation is a president's advisory council of the fellows that are in our program, of the entrepreneurs themselves. I've put a call to action that I need at least eight of the fellows that represent different regions of the country, different types of businesses.
Different stages and revenue. I'm going to need you every other month to sit down with me. I'm going to bring them into my inner circle, share with them what some of my challenges are, and get their perspective as a representative of the founder community that we have, about how I should move forward as a leader.
To me, that's how you build community. That's how you build a movement, is you assume that you're not the expert. And you really rely on the community members themselves to point you in the right direction.
Tiffany, in your book, Drop the Ball, you introduce a new perspective on why the women's leadership movement has stalled, because women have too much going on, especially mid career as they start families, and we struggle with letting go of certain things, and we feel we need to achieve it all. How has challenging the status quo opened new doors for you? How has challenging cultural norms influenced business?
It's been everything. There are a lot of things that I didn't do that society expected me to do. As a wife and as a mother, I have a son that I just dropped off at college in August.
I have a daughter that's 15. And there were lots of things that I wasn't there for, and in that invisible description that we all get handed about what it means to be a quote unquote, good mom. There were lots of things in that description that I didn't do. In the process though, of not doing those things, I ran a nonprofit organization that trained thousands of women across the country to run for political office, and our democracy needs them now more than ever. I served on the board of Girls Who Code, which is on track to close the gender gap in STEM in my lifetime, certainly in my daughter's lifetime, that one organization will do that.
I've raised millions of dollars for women's causes. I've started a company that matches women in accountability circles to help them meet their life goals. And those women did everything from get new jobs to save money for their retirements, to have the relationships and the lives that really matter to them, all because I freed myself, and I focused on how I could leverage my gifts and talents and skills and abilities in the public world in order to really impact women.
There are always gives and takes and pushes and pulls, but at the end of the day, there's no way that I would have been able to create the impact that I've been able to create in the world and for women, which I care deeply about, if I had not declined to do the drop off or make the lunch, or show up every once in a while.
My kids are the ultimate judge of how that turned out, but I think they both tell you that they're pretty proud of me.
A key trait of successful activators like you is their multidisciplinary experience and non linear career path. You've worked in government, scaled your own community business, which you eventually exited. Now you're leading the nonprofit Tory Burch Foundation. How have your diverse experiences made you uniquely capable as a leader and impact driver? Why should organizations hire leaders with backgrounds like yours?
It's given me humility, which I believe is a fundamental key trait of leadership.
It's cultivated humility in me because every time I'm trying to build something that I've never built before, do something that I've never done before, I have to learn all over again. And I'm reminded that I may not have the exact skills or capabilities that's required, but that I can learn them all over again.
Or even better, I can find access, get access to the people who have them that could really help to build it. It happens every time. I started a tech company. I have two English degrees. I can't write one line of code. So there was a huge learning curve there.
The people who are the activators, the innovators, are the people who are able to recognize a challenge or a problem and will have a unique insight into the solution.
If you have that, and you're also someone who's just relentless about solving problems for a group of people that you really care about, I think that that's it. Success is not about having the answers. It's about knowing where to get the answers. I'm very good at that.
As a super connector with a vast network and diverse experiences, you've acquired unique nuggets of knowledge that can be helpful to other leaders. What is one insight or skill from your journey that others could benefit from and how might it create impact if applied in a different industry? Is there something you'd like to cross pollinate across industries?
Oh, that's really interesting. I think that probably, the insight that drove my company The Cru, was this idea that when you have a challenge or a problem, what typically people ask themselves is, how am I going to solve this problem?
The more important question for you to always be asking yourself first is, who's going to help me solve this problem? I think that that's applicable across any industry and any context, and really speaks to what I was saying previously about not having all of the answers and not necessarily being the expert.
I think it's those of us who can recognize I'm a little bit out of my league here. Let me figure out who is in the league, and having enough story capability, and passion, and vision for what it is that you're doing that you can invite others into your world to help support you, but our leadership journey, our personal journeys, they're not solo endeavors, they're team sports.
So recognizing that you're the coach of a team and you've got to recruit your team in order to execute and really create change in the world, I think is important regardless of what you're trying to do.
What current project or initiative would you love to see amplified? This is our way to show love to something that you care about.
There's an organization that was just launched by Reshma Saujani. It's called Moms First. I really believe that she is on the cusp of organizing the most influential demographic I think that there is in the country and around the world, which is mothers. Outside of a few key issues, whether it was drunk driving, we really haven't organized moms, though we all have this very common experience of trying to figure out the confluence between our livelihoods and caregiving.
I think that movement is going to be very important, in part, because I think it can cross boundaries. It doesn't matter if I'm a Democratic mom or if I'm a Republican mom, I still have to figure out how to get out of the house at the right time with everyone with the right lunch and the right backpack.
There's something about mobilizing moms that I think, and Reshma, she'll pull it off, I really think can impact the world.
Closing
Tiffany Dufu's effectiveness and popularity stems from her deep understanding of the power of community. She not only leverages it for her own growth and support, she creates communities to foster other people’s development.
Something I deeply admire and hope to see in more leaders, is Tiffany’s humility and sense of responsibility to provide value and deliver real results.
As she succinctly pointed out, true leadership often means stepping back to empower others to lead the way.
Tiffany recognizes that her role is to create spaces and opportunities for people to shine, grow, and lead. This approach has fueled her success, amplified her impact, and enabled her to equip and inspire a new generation of leaders.
Tiffany's journey exemplifies the power of community-driven leadership and the ripple effect it can have on society. Her work continues to break barriers, challenge norms, and pave the way for a brighter future for women and girls.