Formidable is a media and membership company aimed at high-level women. Our goal is to keep our audience informed while spotlighting diverse leaders who are experts in their fields and connecting these thought leaders to each other.

The company was started by longtime media executive Emily Parkhurst, who had seen for years how the vast majority of media coverage was written with a male lens. The argument was always that the majority of the audience was male, thus reporters should keep that in mind when reporting the news. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that many traditional media companies have struggled to reverse. Meanwhile, coverage of “women’s issues” is largely relegated to the lifestyle sections or separate special publications. Formidable aims to tell the news, but always through a women’s lens, while respecting the intelligence and sophistication of its audience.

Meet the Founder:

Emily Parkhurst has nearly 20 years of media and events experience, including about three years as a top executive with venture-backed newsletter startup 6AM City and 10 years with American City Business Journals, where she served as Editor in Chief and then as Publisher and President of the Puget Sound Business Journal in Seattle. At 6AM City, she tripled the business and launched 20 local news publications in three years. Under her leadership, the PSBJ grew revenue every year and increased profit 14%, won several national reporting awards, and became one of the most financially successful publications in the American City Business Journal chain. As a reporter, she won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting in 2010. She has been a member of the exclusive networking organization the International Women’s Forum for eight years, two of which she served as the co-president of the Washington state chapter. She lives in Seattle with her husband, step-son and a goofy orange cat named Autzen.