In this episode of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores what happens when a business begins with a simple question. Where do people go to belong?

More women are starting businesses than ever before. Yet ownership does not always mean access. Women still face barriers to capital, growth, and recognition. In spaces like game store ownership, those gaps are even more visible.

Whitney Wolfe did not set out to become an entrepreneur. She set out to create a place where people could gather, connect, and feel at ease. That idea became Last Place on Earth, a Brooklyn game store that opened just as the world shut down. Through uncertainty and reinvention, she built a thriving community. Then she did it again with Third Place from the Sun.

This is a story about more than games. It is about how connection creates value. It is about building spaces where people are invited in, not kept out.

Because the strongest businesses are not only places where people spend. They are places where people belong.

A board game may look simple. A set of pieces. A set of rules. A way to win. But every game is a system. It teaches us what to value, how to compete, and what success looks like.

In this episode of What Does It Profit?, we follow the unexpected journey of Elizabeth Hargrave, a health policy consultant turned award-winning game designer, whose hit board game Wingspan reshaped an entire industry. What began as a simple idea, a game about birds, became one of the most successful and celebrated board games of all time, selling over two million copies and opening the door for more women in game design.

But this story is about more than one game. It's about who gets to design systems and whose ideas shape the rules we all live by. In an industry where women create fewer than one percent of games, Hargrave's success signals both how far we have come and how far we still have to go.

From early pioneers like Elizabeth Magie, the creator of The Landlord's Game (the anti-capitalist precursor to Monopoly), to today's emerging designers, women have always been part of this story, even when they were written out of it.

This episode asks a deeper question at the heart of work and economic life: not just who plays the game, but who designs it. Because when new voices shape the rules, the game itself begins to change.

In Season 6 of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores dignity at work by stepping inside industries where women are still underestimated and often unwelcome.

In this episode, we meet Aine O'Dwyer, a civil engineer and the CEO of Enovate Engineering. Raised on a dairy farm in Ireland, Aine learned early the value of discipline, perseverance, and hard work. Those lessons carried her across the Atlantic to the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where she pursued civil engineering while playing college basketball.

Engineering classrooms were still overwhelmingly male, but Aine was undeterred. She built a career from the ground up, beginning as a field engineer and eventually leading major infrastructure projects across the New York region.

Today, her firm helps design and manage the construction of bridges and other critical structures. For Aine, the work is more than technical. Every bridge represents a system carefully designed to endure.

But the bridges she builds are not only made of steel and concrete. They are also bridges of confidence and opportunity for the next generation of women entering engineering.

Aine's story reminds us that economic life is not just about what we build, but about who gets to build it. Because the structures that shape our world are not only physical, they are moral as well.

And every one of them raises the same question: What does it profit?

In Season 6 of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter goes inside industries where women are still underestimated and often unwelcome to explore how they are reshaping the meaning and structure of work.

In this episode, we meet Judaline Cassidy, a master plumber, union leader, and founder of Tools & Tiaras, a nonprofit that introduces girls to welding, carpentry, plumbing, and the power of the skilled trades.

Judaline was one of the only women in her plumbing program in Trinidad. She later broke barriers within New York's unions. Along the way, she developed a simple conviction that guides her work today: Jobs do not have genders.

With every pipe she fits and every workshop she leads, Judaline is doing more than repairing infrastructure. She is challenging assumptions about who belongs in the trades and who gets to build the future.

Through Tools & Tiaras, she is creating pathways for girls to see technical skill as strength, economic independence as attainable, and the trades as dignified, essential work.

This episode explores what happens when women claim space in skilled labor and how expanding access strengthens the entire economy.

Because when more people are invited to build, we all benefit from what gets built.

Less than 10% of truck drivers are women.

The open road has long been seen as a man's world. But that is changing.

In 2012, Jess Graham left an abusive relationship and enrolled in CDL training within days. Weeks later, she was licensed and on the road with her ten-year-old daughter, living together in the cab of a truck.

For Jess, trucking was not just a job. It was a path to stability, speed, and self-determination. Every mile out there is different from your last mile. That's a new opportunity.

In 2019, she bought her own truck, a 1995 Freightliner known as the Black Widow. Ownership shifted the journey from survival to entrepreneurship.

This episode explores trucking as an economic ladder, a lifestyle, and a test of endurance. It asks what it profits us when women claim space in industries that keep the economy moving.

Because sometimes the road is not just about freight. It is about freedom.

What happens when women enter one of the most dangerous, male-dominated professions... and change it from the inside?

In this episode of What Does It Profit, Dr. Dawn Carpenter goes from D.C. firehouses to wildfire lines to meet the women fighting fire with fire. At Camp Spark in Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Roshawnda Drake is building a pipeline for the next generation of women firefighters. Out West, Lou Bean, Heidi Leib, and Ashley Nalley are reshaping wildfire response and prescribed burning, often in systems never designed with them in mind.

Together, they show how women are reshaping the fire service and why a more inclusive culture can save lives.

Women have always worked. But when women entered the U.S. labor force in large numbers during the 1970s, equal pay did not follow.

In this episode of What Does It Profit?, Dr. Dawn Carpenter explores the history of women's labor rights—from the rise of the Nine to Five movement to the equal pay fight led by Lilly Ledbetter. Through organizing, unions, and the law, women challenged workplaces that relied on their labor while undervaluing their work.

Featuring labor historian Lane Windham and the cultural legacy behind 9 to 5, this episode examines why wage gaps persist, why voice still matters, and what economic justice requires when essential work goes unpaid—or underpaid.

Because the laws exist. The gaps remain.
And when women do essential work without equal pay, the question endures: What does it profit?

This season on What Does It Profit, host Dr. Dawn Carpenter steps into the worlds where women are least expected—and often least welcomed. From firehouses to funeral homes, construction sites to game design studios, meet the women breaking barriers and reshaping the meaning of work itself. Their stories reveal courage, solidarity, and the power to build a more inclusive future of work.

Subscribe now to hear how these women are redefining what's possible—and what's profitable—for us all.

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