What does it take to change the status quo?

At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this year, we witnessed a ceiling-breaking moment, when in a video projected on the large screen Hillary Clinton visually burst through a photo montage of our previous 44 male presidents to the sound of shattering glass. She smiled at the camera, which slowly pulled back to reveal her standing “live” by satellite from New York, surrounded by a cohort including a number of little girls. I sat on my couch, with my two daughters (who are 10 and 13), applauding the gimmick. She is making history after all, as the first female candidate of a major party to run for President of the United States.

Looking directly at the camera, Clinton said, “If there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch, let me just say I may become the first woman President. But one of you is next.”  I applauded in my own living room and hoped that this was demonstrating for my daughters that anything is possible for women.

Earlier in the evening, Hillary’s husband, and the 42nd President, Bill Clinton, said “this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything,” and called her “the best darned change-maker I have ever known.”

What does it take to be a change-maker? Here are pieces of advice from eight of the women I’ve spoken with who are changing the status quo themselves.

Set the agenda

“I have learned over and over and over again the importance of being intentional, of setting the agenda, of knowing what it is that you want to have as the outcome and being willing to own up to that, to be responsible for that.” –Gloria Feldt, founder of Take The Lead Women, an organization whose goal is to reach leadership parity for women by 2025.

Be authentic

”The most impactful, potent leaders are those who are most authentic and most true to themselves. I think it can be easy to try to imitate the people that we look up to. Instead, what I’ve learned is most important, is piecing together the things that I admire about the people I’m learning from — but then expressing these things in ways that are unique to me. If I were to just try to follow or pretend I was somebody else, it wouldn’t be the the most true and distinctive version of of my highest leadership.” –Abby Falik, Founder Global Citizen Year, a non-profit whose mission is to make “bridge years” the norm between high school and college.

Embrace failure

”I think people need to stay humble no matter how successful they get. The nice thing about being an entrepreneur is you’re reminded of that every day because you fail every single day, no matter how successful your company appears on the outside. People don’t really like to talk about that, or they imagine that somebody in that position doesn’t fail. Actually it’s not true at all. I fail literally every day, sometimes several times a day. All I can hope is that my successes are outweighing those failures at the big picture level.” –Mariam Naficy, founder of Minted.com, a marketplace for designers to sell their work online.

Speak up

”One of the things I say all the time–and I think the advice that was given to me at one point–was that you have a voice, and it needs to be heard. People don’t need to agree with what you say, but you have a need to be able to say it. Speak up, speak often and speak loudly.” –Teresa Younger, CEO of The Ms Foundation For Women, the organization co-founded by Gloria Steinem, whose mission is to ”build women’s collective power to realize a nation of justice for all.”

Have humility

“For anybody who does work with underserved populations, if you approach it with arrogance, it’s inevitably going to fail. But if you’re driven really by a desire to understand what somebody needs and wants, then you’ll be able to offer something beneficial.” –Noa Meyer, Global Head of the 10,000 Women Initiative from Goldman Sachs which provides resources to women entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Have integrity

”My parents always taught me that the best thing that you can have is integrity and that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks if you know what you’re doing the right thing.” –Christina Stembel, Founder of Farmgirl Flowers, which supports local flower farmers.

Take it one step at a time

”I think Paul Graham is famous for saying this with Y Combinator startups: ‘Do something that is non-scalable and just start. Just lay one brick. There’s going to be thousands and millions of bricks that you need to put on top of that, but just get started.’” –Stephanie Telenius, Founder of Vida, an app that enables access to fitness and healthcare through mobile devices.

Go for the moon

Go to the hardest problems, not the easiest. If you can solve the hardest problem, you will, by necessity have solved the downstream, or easier problem. If you think about the John F. Kennedy ‘Man To The Moon’ speech, going for the moon wasn’t just about reaching the moon. It was that in trying to reach it, you will, by necessity, have solved all of these other problems, like creating alloys that can survive temperatures that have never been experienced by anything man-made before. All of those things were solved en route to getting to the moon.” –Talia Milgrom-Elcott, founder of 100kin10 whose mission is to place 100,000 excellent STEM teachers in schools by 2021.