Women Presidents Organization (WPO)

The Women Presidents Organization runs more than 145 chapters worldwide, each bringing together leaders from diverse, non-competing industries to share business expertise in confidence. It is a peer advisory organisation for women who own and run substantial private companies.

Who joins

Three conditions, all required. You must lead the company and hold primary decision-making authority for day-to-day operations. You must have an ownership interest in the business. And the company must be privately held.

That second condition is the one that shapes the membership. Requiring ownership, not just a senior title, means the room is made up of proprietors rather than executives, and the questions they bring are about their own capital rather than someone else's.

Revenue thresholds vary by business model: US$2 million in gross annual sales for product businesses, or US$1 million for service businesses. That distinction is sensible, since a service company at a million in revenue is a comparable undertaking to a product company at two.

Two higher tiers exist for larger companies: Platinum for women grossing over US$10 million a year, and Zenith for those above US$50 million. Segmenting by scale matters in peer groups, because the problems of a five million dollar business and a hundred million dollar one have little in common.

How membership works

Application against the ownership and revenue criteria. WPO does not publish dues, so the cost comes on enquiry.

What members get

The monthly chapter meeting is the core: confidential, facilitated by a professionally trained Chapter Chair, and structured around peer advisory sessions the organisation calls PeerView. Chapters are deliberately composed of non-competing businesses so members can speak freely.

Professional facilitation is the detail worth paying attention to. Peer groups without a trained chair tend to drift toward whoever is most confident in the room. A paid facilitator whose job is to keep the discussion useful is a large part of what separates the effective peer organisations in this directory from the social ones.

An annual forum brings the wider membership together beyond the chapters.

For this directory, WPO's relevance is that women who own substantial private companies are a significant and under-served source of newly created wealth, and this is the largest organised peer network serving them. For a family whose business is led by a woman owner, it is the natural first membership to consider alongside the family business associations listed here.