Women To Watch Awards 2026 honors LaFonda Willis

LaFonda Willis is a distinguished and award-winning stock market lawyer and strategist and the founder of Women in Capital Markets (CapX), a pioneering platform helping women achieve wealth, freedom, and sovereignty through capital markets, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence.

She founded Women in Capital Markets (CapX) because she believes:

1.      Women can and should be stewards of capital.

2. Women can leverage their own gifts, talents, expertise, and skills to create financial independence.

3. The financial security we desire comes from within, not from without.

Armed with a foundation as a former teacher and education leader, LaFonda brings a clear lens and practical approach to wealth-building, teaching women how to master the market and make their mark. To help democratize and normalize information about investing, LaFonda created Compound Capital, a newsletter providing investing insights to help readers compound knowledge and capital in the AI economy.

Before founding Women in Capital Markets (CapX), LaFonda was a securities lawyer at an Am Law 100 law firm in Washington, D.C., and served as a federal judicial law clerk for a federal district and federal appellate court, which oversees four jurisdictions.

Some of LaFonda’s most recent accomplishments include being featured and recognized by Black Leaders Worldwide as:

• A Woman to Watch in 2025 and 2026

• A Woman You Need to Know in 2025 and 2026

• A Top Leader in 2025

LaFonda is also distinguished listee of Marquis Who’s Who in America, and an elected an American Bar Foundation Fellow—a prestigious honor extended to only one percent of lawyers in the United States and its territories, and 900 lawyers internationally.