SILICON VALLEY ROOTS. ORANGE COUNTY STAGE. GLOBAL REACH.
Anne Tammel
Originally appeared in Redefining Leadership
Orange County is preparing to take the global stage as the next hub of innovation. The question is who will be at the center of this conversation — and whether the leadership culture we've built becomes a model for the rest of the world. On April 16, we find out.
When I sat down recently with Bonni Pomush for the Working Wardrobes podcast Real Talk. Real Growth., she asked what gap I was seeing in Orange County that made me say, I'm building this myself. The answer begins in San Jose.
I grew up in one of the most culturally integrated cities in the world — during the years when Silicon Valley was taking shape. My parents had come to California from New York, chasing visions of their own. My father, who brought from the University of Chicago the spirit of invention and a wisdom about the magic possible in diversity, taught me to question, to trust my intuition, and to create.
After starting my career at the leading public relations firm in Silicon Valley — the firm that represented the greatest technology pioneers of its era — I later moved to Orange County to lead positioning strategy for Baxter medical device makers and serve as Vice President of Communications for the American Marketing Association. But the culture shock was palpable.
Orange County felt intentionally insular, closed-circle, difficult to get to know. Thirty-four cities and dozens of chambers, rarely collaborating. For a woman who had grown up where cultures relied on and reimagined each other naturally — where integration stood as the basis for what created Silicon Valley — living on Balboa Island and walking into the Center Club (now the Park Club) to build key relationships, I felt exiled to a pocket of California where everyone seemed intent on protecting their own.
After traveling through Paris and to the Mediterranean, I went back to creative writing — though the leaders from my past kept calling me for positioning work — and in 2001, founded Poets and Dreamers International. From a small circle of competitive writers, The Orange County Writers Group, which its leader abandoned leaving me to run it — I created my positive team culture model, then grew it into a global circle of over two thousand writers, leaders, artists, and coaches spanning India, Africa, the UK, Greece, Italy, France, Mexico, Spain, and across Asia. I gave it the tagline "Connecting Cultures and Continents," and the writers were supporting one another to reach goals they hadn't before believed were possible.
There is a through line here, and it is not a route one might normally take. But it has led to where I am today.
In 2024, when I was invited to lead and resurrect a women in business initiative in Orange County, what I found was essentially the same series of tight circles — pockets focused primarily within, not seeing the greater ability to tap into what we could create collectively. So I drew on what I had built before: I brought the team culture model I created for Poets and Dreamers to business women and introduced "Uniting and Empowering Women in Business" to Orange County. In less than seventy-five days, the dwindling attendance I inherited grew from forty-two to two hundred seventeen. At UCI's Cove, over two hundred leaders spent a full day together — and in the afternoon, women of every culture, industry, generation, and belief system were dancing.
When that initiative lost its funding, everywhere I went, women and men were approaching me asking where Women in Business had gone. I realized I had created more than a community. I'd started a movement. And I remembered my father's words:
"Women are going to solve this. Women are the true leaders."
The data confirms he was right. Women own 42% of all U.S. businesses. We launched 49% of new businesses in 2024 — the highest share ever recorded. Women-founded startups generate 78 cents per dollar invested. Men generate 31 cents. Women invented agriculture, developed the first crops, the first pottery, the first woven textiles. Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. Grace Hopper gave machines human language. Hedy Lamarr co-invented the technology behind WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Twenty Vietnamese refugee women built an $8.3 billion industry. Innovation was never the question. Recognition was.
After founding OC CEO Collective in 2024, where I still work with founders and global leaders who need to position themselves, build peak-performing teams, and navigate an infrastructure never designed to welcome them, in 2025, I privately funded SoCal Women in Business. The same way Amy Winehouse wasn't hearing the music she wanted so created it herself — I knew just what this region was missing. So I built it.
Orange County sits inside the world’s fourth-largest economy. It drew $2.62 billion in AI and machine learning venture capital in 2025. The 2026 Economic Opportunity Report confirmed that its most valuable infrastructure is its people. With the region positioning itself as a global hub of innovation — this conversation demands women at its center.
One of the leaders who understands this is Bonni Pomush, CEO of Working Wardrobes — a woman who transformed her organization from a 2.3 to a 4.3 Glassdoor rating, tripled clients served to over ten thousand, and leads every day from a place of dignity and purpose. When I walked through Working Wardrobes, it was clear the glass-walled pod Bonni showed me — a sacred space within an open office, both private and connected — is not a metaphor. It is architecture.
I sat down with Bonni for a conversation on the Working Wardrobes podcast Real Talk. Real Growth. We talked about what it means to build cultures where people arrive in crisis and walk out as leaders. We talked about what happens when women stop apologizing for the qualities that make us extraordinary. And Bonni said something I will remember for a long time. In response to the Steve Jobs quote — "you can change it, you can build your own" — she called it "revolutionary permission."
Listen here.
This is why I launched the Redefining Leadership book series — conversations with the leaders who are building what comes next. This is why I launched this newsletter. And this is why, on April 16, we gather.
On April 16 at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business, we will host the Global Women in Innovation Summit. It needs to be global because the architecture we are redesigning is the same in Newport Beach, Nairobi, São Paulo, and Singapore.
Register.
Subscribe https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7443175441785532416
Anne Tammel
When I sat down recently with Bonni Pomush for the Working Wardrobes podcast Real Talk. Real Growth., she asked what gap I was seeing in Orange County that made me say, I'm building this myself. The answer begins in San Jose.
I grew up in one of the most culturally integrated cities in the world — during the years when Silicon Valley was taking shape. My parents had come to California from New York, chasing visions of their own. My father, who brought from the University of Chicago the spirit of invention and a wisdom about the magic possible in diversity, taught me to question, to trust my intuition, and to create.
After starting my career at the leading public relations firm in Silicon Valley — the firm that represented the greatest technology pioneers of its era — I later moved to Orange County to lead positioning strategy for Baxter medical device makers and serve as Vice President of Communications for the American Marketing Association. But the culture shock was palpable.
Orange County felt intentionally insular, closed-circle, difficult to get to know. Thirty-four cities and dozens of chambers, rarely collaborating. For a woman who had grown up where cultures relied on and reimagined each other naturally — where integration stood as the basis for what created Silicon Valley — living on Balboa Island and walking into the Center Club (now the Park Club) to build key relationships, I felt exiled to a pocket of California where everyone seemed intent on protecting their own.
After traveling through Paris and to the Mediterranean, I went back to creative writing — though the leaders from my past kept calling me for positioning work — and in 2001, founded Poets and Dreamers International. From a small circle of competitive writers, The Orange County Writers Group, which its leader abandoned leaving me to run it — I created my positive team culture model, then grew it into a global circle of over two thousand writers, leaders, artists, and coaches spanning India, Africa, the UK, Greece, Italy, France, Mexico, Spain, and across Asia. I gave it the tagline "Connecting Cultures and Continents," and the writers were supporting one another to reach goals they hadn't before believed were possible.
There is a through line here, and it is not a route one might normally take. But it has led to where I am today.
In 2024, when I was invited to lead and resurrect a women in business initiative in Orange County, what I found was essentially the same series of tight circles — pockets focused primarily within, not seeing the greater ability to tap into what we could create collectively. So I drew on what I had built before: I brought the team culture model I created for Poets and Dreamers to business women and introduced "Uniting and Empowering Women in Business" to Orange County. In less than seventy-five days, the dwindling attendance I inherited grew from forty-two to two hundred seventeen. At UCI's Cove, over two hundred leaders spent a full day together — and in the afternoon, women of every culture, industry, generation, and belief system were dancing.
When that initiative lost its funding, everywhere I went, women and men were approaching me asking where Women in Business had gone. I realized I had created more than a community. I'd started a movement. And I remembered my father's words:
"Women are going to solve this. Women are the true leaders."
The data confirms he was right. Women own 42% of all U.S. businesses. We launched 49% of new businesses in 2024 — the highest share ever recorded. Women-founded startups generate 78 cents per dollar invested. Men generate 31 cents. Women invented agriculture, developed the first crops, the first pottery, the first woven textiles. Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. Grace Hopper gave machines human language. Hedy Lamarr co-invented the technology behind WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Twenty Vietnamese refugee women built an $8.3 billion industry. Innovation was never the question. Recognition was.
After founding OC CEO Collective in 2024, where I still work with founders and global leaders who need to position themselves, build peak-performing teams, and navigate an infrastructure never designed to welcome them, in 2025, I privately funded SoCal Women in Business. The same way Amy Winehouse wasn't hearing the music she wanted so created it herself — I knew just what this region was missing. So I built it.
Orange County sits inside the world’s fourth-largest economy. It drew $2.62 billion in AI and machine learning venture capital in 2025. The 2026 Economic Opportunity Report confirmed that its most valuable infrastructure is its people. With the region positioning itself as a global hub of innovation — this conversation demands women at its center.
One of the leaders who understands this is Bonni Pomush, CEO of Working Wardrobes — a woman who transformed her organization from a 2.3 to a 4.3 Glassdoor rating, tripled clients served to over ten thousand, and leads every day from a place of dignity and purpose. When I walked through Working Wardrobes, it was clear the glass-walled pod Bonni showed me — a sacred space within an open office, both private and connected — is not a metaphor. It is architecture.
I sat down with Bonni for a conversation on the Working Wardrobes podcast Real Talk. Real Growth. We talked about what it means to build cultures where people arrive in crisis and walk out as leaders. We talked about what happens when women stop apologizing for the qualities that make us extraordinary. And Bonni said something I will remember for a long time. In response to the Steve Jobs quote — "you can change it, you can build your own" — she called it "revolutionary permission."
Listen here.
This is why I launched the Redefining Leadership book series — conversations with the leaders who are building what comes next. This is why I launched this newsletter. And this is why, on April 16, we gather.
On April 16 at the UCI Paul Merage School of Business, we will host the Global Women in Innovation Summit. It needs to be global because the architecture we are redesigning is the same in Newport Beach, Nairobi, São Paulo, and Singapore.
Register.
Subscribe https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7443175441785532416
Anne Tammel
FORCE FIELD™ The dynamic strategic guide for the post-consulting era. Force Field™ maps the forces driving and blocking acceleration then deploys a step-by-step architecture for launching, scaling, and sustaining expansion.
REDEFINING LEADERSHIP™ The proprietary architecture that integrates Silicon Valley positioning strategy, USC Tribal Leadership culture, and neuroscience-based leadership to transform how leaders are positioned and how they build and scale to unprecedented outcomes.
REDEFINING LEADERSHIP™ The proprietary architecture that integrates Silicon Valley positioning strategy, USC Tribal Leadership culture, and neuroscience-based leadership to transform how leaders are positioned and how they build and scale to unprecedented outcomes.
First published in Redefining LeadershipStrategy from inside the Fortune 100. How thought leaders build, create, and define the future.
