Female Disruptors: Jessica Honegger wants you to practice Imperfect Courage

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Honegger, the Founder and co-CEO of Noonday Collection, a socially responsible business that uses fashion to create meaningful opportunities for people around the world. Honegger launched Noonday Collection in 2010 as a fundraiser for her she and her husband’s adoption of their son from Rwanda, but the brand soon grew into a multi-million dollar business that today impacts 4,500 artisans across the globe. In 2015, Inc magazine named Noonday Collection the 45th fastest growing business in the US. Honegger shares the full Noonday Collection story and challenges women to get out of their comfort zones and go scared in her new book, Imperfect Courage, available now.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?

My story starts in San Antonio, Texas, where I grew up in a beautiful tight knit community. Sometimes tight knit communities have tightly woven scripts and the script for little girls in my community expected young women to follow a very specific path: a debutante party, followed by marriage, followed by life as a stay-at-home mother and wife.

Despite those expectations, I always took after my Texas spitfire of a father and shared his entrepreneurial spirit — from the jewelry stands I set up to hawk…