Whitney Wolfe Herd

Whitney Wolfe Herd is the founder and former CEO of Bumble, the dating app where women make the first move, and one of the youngest female self-made billionaires in history. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Wolfe Herd studied international studies at Southern Methodist University and initially made her mark as a co-founder and VP of Marketing at Tinder, where she helped grow the app into a cultural phenomenon.

In 2014, Wolfe Herd left Tinder amid a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit against several executives. Rather than retreating from the industry, she channeled the experience into building something better. With backing from Russian-British entrepreneur Andrey Andreev and the Badoo technology platform, she founded Bumble in December 2014 with a simple but revolutionary premise: in heterosexual matches, women must initiate the conversation. This single design decision challenged centuries of dating norms and created a safer, more empowering environment for women.

Bumble grew rapidly, reaching tens of millions of users worldwide and expanding beyond dating into networking (Bumble Bizz) and friendship (Bumble BFF). In February 2021, Wolfe Herd took Bumble public on the Nasdaq at a valuation of $13 billion, becoming the youngest female CEO to take a company public in the United States at age 31. She rang the opening bell holding her 18-month-old son on her hip, creating one of the most iconic images in modern business history. Wolfe Herd has been a vocal advocate for legislation against online harassment and has lobbied for laws criminalizing unsolicited explicit images, successfully getting such legislation passed in Texas.