What does it take to create a successful start-up? This International Women’s Day we find out from the female entrepreneurs leading by example

This International Women’s Day, we at BlueSky Thinking are celebrating the inspiring female entrepreneurs who have used their business school education to create their own career paths.

Drawing on what they’ve learned through business education, and their professional lives following graduation, they share their advice for other women aspiring to follow in their footsteps, sharing their ideas, inspirations and ambitions for the future.

For Margarita Womack, becoming an entrepreneur was an act of defiance. “In many families shaped by a more male-biased culture there are assumptions about what a woman will or won’t do in business,” she shares. “Starting this company was, in a very real way, me refusing to accept those limits.”

Pulling on her heritage, the lessons learned from a childhood spent in her father’s restaurant, and, of course, her studies at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Margarita created and launched MasPanadas – a food brand which brings authentic, diverse street foods and flavours from Latin America to the masses. Becoming an entrepreneur not only gave Margarita an opportunity to break those boundaries for herself, but also to become the catalyst for others to do the same.

In the nine years since MasPanadas launch, Margarita has seen significant success. She was named Small Business Leader of the Year by the Washington Business Journal and was also an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Mid-Atlantic winner. MasPanadas was also featured as one of Poets & Quants’ Most Disruptive MBA Startups.

All of this has allowed MasPandas to keep growing, providing Margarita with not only professional success but a way to continue creating opportunities for others.

Here she shares how her Executive MBA and her study experience at the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business helped her realise her ambitions.

Please introduce yourself to our readers – who are you and what is your job role?

I’m Margarita Womack, founder and CEO of MasPanadas. I lead the company’s strategy and execution – product innovation, operations, sales growth, and fundraising – while making sure we stay true to our mission: building a great food business that also creates opportunity through good jobs and advancement.

My role is equal parts vision and execution. On any given day I’m thinking about where the brand is going, while also living in the details that determine whether a food company wins or loses – food safety, unit economics, supply chain reliability, and building systems and a team that can scale.

What does your start-up do?

MasPanadas is a fast-growing frozen food brand inspired by the rich and diverse street foods of Latin America. We make convenient, clean-label meals and snacks that don’t compromise on flavour, authenticity, or nutrition.

We focus on regionally inspired Latin flavours that go beyond the typical “one-size-fits-all” category treatment. We also operate with a clear social mission: creating real employment pathways, especially for Hispanic women in manufacturing and food production.

Tell us about your background – where did you grow up?

I grew up in Bogotá, Colombia. My father was a restauranteur and an entrepreneur, and some of my earliest memories are in his kitchen. That’s where I learned how to make empanadas – watching, helping, and absorbing the idea that food is both culture and craft, but also a business built on grit and consistency.

“There are still rooms where the default assumption is that a successful business leader doesn’t look like me. If I’m at an event with a male employee, people will sometimes assume he’s the boss – or assume I’m married to him. It sounds small, but it’s a signal about how often women, and especially Hispanic women, are not automatically seen as the decision-maker.”

– Margarita Womack

I emigrated to the United States during my sophomore year of college, after my family was extorted by a guerrilla group known as FARC. That experience reshaped everything – how I think about risk, resilience, and what it means to build stability from scratch. It also deepened my commitment to creating opportunity through work, because I’ve seen how quickly life can change when security disappears.

What were your early career ambitions and experiences? How have they contributed to where you find yourself now?

Early on, I was drawn to science and problem-solving. I earned a PhD in Biology from Princeton, and that training still shows up in how I run the company: I’m rigorous about evidence, testing, and building systems that hold up under pressure.

Over time I realized that good ideas don’t become real without execution – people, capital, operations, and decision-making under uncertainty. That pull toward building and scaling is what ultimately led me into business and entrepreneurship.

What was the reason you decided to go to business school? What was it about your school and programme that encouraged you to enrol?

I pursued an Executive MBA at Georgetown because I wanted to pair my scientific training with the tools to build and scale an enterprise. I wasn’t looking for theory, I needed frameworks for leadership, finance, operations, and growth that I could apply immediately.

The program made sense because it was built for working leaders. I could bring real problems from the business into the classroom, pressure-test decisions, and sharpen how I think in real time.

What was the most valuable take-away from your studies?

Two things: decision-making and discipline.

Decision-making, and how to break a complex situation into solvable parts and make the best call with imperfect information. And discipline, how to set priorities, align a team around them, measure what matters, and keep adjusting without losing focus.

What inspired you to start your business?

Before it was a business opportunity – honestly, before I even let myself think of it that way – it started from something personal.

Part of it was defiance. In many families shaped by a more male-biased culture there are assumptions about what a woman will or won’t do in business. Starting this company was, in a very real way, me refusing to accept those limits.

The other part was human and immediate: helping a friend who needed work. She was a talented chef and needed a real opportunity. The earliest version of MasPanadas wasn’t a pitch deck, it was a way to create a job and stability for someone I cared about.

Only later did I fully see the bigger picture – the market gap, the cultural gap, and the opportunity to bring authentic, regionally inspired Latin street foods into a convenient frozen format without sacrificing quality. But the spark was personal.

How did your business school/education support you in realising your entrepreneurial ambitions?

It gave me a practical toolkit for scaling, not just starting. Food businesses can grow quickly, but they can also break quickly if the fundamentals aren’t solid.

Business school strengthened how I think about unit economics, operational leverage, pricing and margin structure, and the realities of capital. It also helped me become more structured as a leader – how to build a team, set an operating cadence, and translate strategy into execution. And the network mattered too, less for “contacts,” more for having access to people who have built companies and can challenge your blind spots.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in the early stages of building your business, and how did you overcome them?

In the beginning, cash flow was relentless. There were stretches where I’d wake up already doing math – payroll, ingredients, packaging, production time, and whether the next purchase order would land fast enough to cover the gap. It’s a specific kind of stress when you’re responsible not only for a product, but for people’s jobs.

Another challenge was the weight of responsibility. When you’re the founder, the business lives on your shoulders, and there’s a moment where you realize no one around you cares as much as you do or knows the details as deeply. That can make it hard to trust yourself. It can also push you into extremes, either second-guessing everything or trying to do everything.

I learned the hard way that overdoing it doesn’t work. Burnout isn’t a badge, it’s a failure mode. And perfectionism is not compatible with building. You make the best decision you can with incomplete information, then you adjust fast. Things won’t go as planned – shipments, hires, customers, margins, timelines – and the ability to forgive yourself, learn, and move forward is essential.

What helped was shifting from “I have to hold everything” to “I have to build people and systems that can hold this with me.” That meant getting more disciplined about numbers and processes, opening up to my team in a real way so they became as committed as I was, and building close relationships with advisors who could challenge my assumptions and steady my thinking when I was too deep in it.

As a female entrepreneur, have you encountered any obstacles or biases in your entrepreneurial journey? How did you navigate them?

Yes, and as a Latina founder it can be a double layer. There are still rooms where the default assumption is that a successful business leader doesn’t look like me. If I’m at an event with a male employee, people will sometimes assume he’s the boss – or assume I’m married to him. It sounds small, but it’s a signal about how often women, and especially Hispanic women, are not automatically seen as the decision-maker.

“I want to be leading a business that proves you can grow without compromising your values: financially strong, operationally disciplined, and mission-driven-creating opportunity through jobs and advancement while building a brand that earns real loyalty.”

– Margarita Womack

The funding landscape reflects that reality too. Less than 2% of venture funding goes to women, and an even smaller fraction goes to women of colour. But I’m not a statistic, and I don’t let the odds set the ceiling.

What matters is being aware of how you might be perceived and anticipating it professionally. I introduce myself clearly as founder and CEO, I come prepared and know the numbers cold, and I focus on execution. And I invest heavily in relationships, because once people truly know you and have seen how you operate, it becomes much easier to move past those assumptions.

What advice would you give to other women who are considering starting their own businesses? Is there anything you wished someone had told you as you began your entrepreneurial journey?

Start before you feel fully ready. You’re never going to have perfect certainty, and waiting for it can turn into a quiet form of self-sabotage.

Also, expect to make mistakes, and make them early. When you’re small, you don’t fall far. The consequences are usually manageable, but the learning is massive, and it builds your judgment faster than anything else.

And use the scientific method, the one you learned in school. Treat the business like a set of hypotheses. Use numbers, think in probabilities, test assumptions quickly and cheaply, and update your conclusions as new information comes in. It’s never enough data, and at some point you have to take the leap – but it should be an informed leap, not a blind one.

Two other things I wish I had internalized sooner: build relationships as a deliberate strategy, and protect your energy. Hustle can get you started, but systems and a strong team are what let you scale without burning out.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

In five years, I see MasPanadas as a nationally recognised platform brand for Latin frozen foods known for flavour, quality, and operational excellence, with a manufacturing engine that can scale reliably.

Personally, I want to be leading a business that proves you can grow without compromising your values: financially strong, operationally disciplined, and mission-driven-creating opportunity through jobs and advancement while building a brand that earns real loyalty.

Find out more about Margarita via LinkedIn, and her work with MasPanadas via the website.

Interested in this series? Keep reading…