My excellent colleagues in Corporate Marketing have been asking me for weeks to name my Heroes for Dreamforce. The problem is that I have so many of them

Do I choose Rosetta Carrington-Lue of the City of Philadelphia, who has tirelessly improved the lives of our most vulnerable citizens, or Lesa Evans, EVP of The Key Bank, whose vision and leadership will change the face of banking? Or maybe I should choose April Anderson, Head of Industry at Google, who is single-handedly heralding in a new business model and creating cultural relevancy with millennials? And that's only a small sampling of my nomination list.

There is one person I met through this Dreamforce '14 journey, however, who stands out. June Sarpong, my fabulous panelist and the founder of WIE Network puts empowering those without a voice at the center of everything she does. She explains it all in her own words:

I have the great fortune of being born the daughter of immigrants in the UK. My parents came to the UK from Ghana in the early '70s with the dream of providing a better future for their yet-to-be born children. From the time my siblings and I could remember, my parents made it clear there were two things expected from all us: success and giving back.

June Sarpong, co-founder of the WIE Network

I was a curious child, a big talker who always asked “why?” and could make friends with anyone. This skill would serve me well in my career as a television host. Success was something I was lucky enough to experience at an early age, and giving back was something that came naturally to me through the various charities I have worked with over the years, including: Make Poverty History, The Prince's Trust, and the White Ribbon Alliance.

However, the issue that kept rearing its complex head was how to give back in a sustainable way. It’s the urge to tackle this problem that is the genesis and foundation for LDNY, an ethical fashion initiative that I have founded with support from the UN, Parsons' School of Fashion, and London College of Fashion. LDNY is a unique model that promotes new fashion design talent while also supporting female artisans in the developing world.

While it is critical that commitments strive for outcomes that effectively benefit girls and women, the challenge moving forward is a deliberate shift in strategy and investments to mobilize and enable girls and women to address their own challenges. For too long we’ve missed the opportunity to create a development and social enterprise field that is “by women, for women, to women.”

Social enterprises and B-corps have a crucial role to play in addressing some of society’s biggest issues around poverty and inequality. We can look back and look forward to see the benefits of such a strategy. Over a 125 years ago, Avon launched with its unique model of "business in a bag"—a social innovation meant to create an army of women entrepreneurs. In the United States, women had the right to sell Avon before they had the right to vote. Their "business in a bag" model has all the components necessary for an entrepreneur’s success: ongoing training, financing or consignment models for initial inventory, systematized promotion or marketing (branded uniforms or products), strict protocols regulating quality and helping the entrepreneur develop a reputation within a community. Avon proved—again, before women had the right to vote!—that women entrepreneurs were a valuable investment.

They paved the path for the next generation of social entrepreneurs to think creatively about how to pursue “by women, for women, to women.” We feel that LDNY has the opportunity to make our customers look fantastic while disrupting the fashion industry with a model that not only supports new design talent but also promotes female artisans—all while being ethically produced. Our plan is to have a thriving e-commerce business within five years that can follow in the footsteps of a Toms or a Warby Parker, proving that businesses can be successful while doing good.

We were fortunate to launch our first collection at this year’s 69th UN General Assembly, kickstarting the UN external calendar. This was the first time a fashion show had taken place at the UN, and Madam Ban (wife of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon), Simon Collins – Dean of Parsons' School of Fashion, Cherie Blair, Arancha Gonzales – Executive Director of the ITC, and Supermodel Cameron Russell all helped lead the launch.

In my role as cofounder of WIE (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise), we’ve spent a lot of time looking for solutions to support women. The challenge for all of us moving forward is recognizing and truly investing in women as the change agents, as the entrepreneurs who must be empowered to scale well beyond microfinance. We must think beyond the benefit of women to the larger community and focus on the power of their ideas to address their own challenges.

Give yourself a treat. Come see June live on Monday, October 13 at 2:30 at The Grand Ballroom, The Hilton Hotel in Union Square.