THEY are the women to watch.

Take Shaa Wasmund. The online entrepreneur has just helped to establish a venture-capital business that will invest in social networking sites. Next month a shopping site called Osoyou.com will be launched with her backing, aimed at “fast fashion” women shoppers.

She is also behind Shiny Media, which has 32 blogsites devoted to everything from football to shoes.

Wasmund has come a long way since growing up in Silicon Valley, California – her first name means Sunshine in Navajo – and she is still only 35.

She studied at the LSE where she was hired by boxer Chris Eubank to promote his fights. She then provided PR advice for Sir James Dyson before working with Sir Bob Geldof on the travel website Deckchair.com.

Her partner in Bright Station Ventures is fellow internet entrepreneur Dan Wagner and this alpha female reckons her rapid rise has taught her how to work productively with the alpha male.

“Men will take opinions from women that they wouldn’t necessarily take from other men,” said Wasmund. “Two men may have a confrontation, while a man and a woman will compromise and end up with a win-win situation.”

The philosophy has helped propel Wasmund into the list of the top 35 women under 35 that has

been compiled by Management Today, the business magazine, for its July issue.

Among them is a woman who was promoted to be the youngest partner of the world’s largest law firm while on maternity leave. Another was a single-mother taxi driver who was thrown off televi-sion’s Dragons’ Den but whose business is now worth £5m.

Aside from their precocious careers, what these 35 have in common is a talent, a focus and a drive that leave others trailing.

“I am very competitive, I don’t like losing at anything. Therefore it makes me very driven at all times,” said Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, who is Kurt Geiger’s creative director.

She flourishes when working with other “eccentric alpha males”; as does May Jennings, director of the Core Business, a brand-licensing firm that is quoted on AIM. “I wanted to go further. I had the ability, so my boss gave me the directorship,” she said. It made little difference that she was only 23.

The successful start young; indeed, the two youngest on the list are 24.

Sidonie Kingsmill, global marketing director of Metro International, said: “Confidence is the fundamental thing. We have to have the confidence in ourselves to achieve what we want.”

But not everyone has it all the time. “What I see so often is that people have children and then say that they don’t want to work any more,” said Kingsmill. “And that is a huge shame.”

So here it is – the one thing that still discriminates against women: motherhood. Recent research by the government has found mothers face the worst prejudice in the workplace.

Crunch-time usually comes in the early thirties. Some women take the plunge knowing the risks and hoping their boss is of an enlightened disposition; some shun “the mummy track” and rely on husbands or boyfriends; others have children in their early twenties, then go for a career; while yet others strive to get as far as they can by 30, freeing them to take time out.

Finally, some opt out of the struggle entirely. Recent research by London University’s Institute of Education found that a third of women graduates will never have children.

“Big business is built for men, and women can have an uncomfortable experience having to learn the rules of the game,” said Kingsmill. “That’s why they start their own businesses.”

Our women agreed that having a senior woman above them was positive. Sangeeta Desai, senior associate at Apax Partners, said: “My role models have always been senior women, both at Apax and Goldman Sachs, where they really stand out.”

So what do the bright young things think the next decade will hold? “Let’s see how we can work together as men and women in teams that complement each other,” said Jennings. “It’s a combination that has been proved to work.”

THE 35

Sarah Willingham, 33 Responsible for the Pizza Express group’s acquisition of the Bombay Bicycle Club restaurant chain, she was appointed development director of parent company Clapham House seven months after joining in 2004.

Nicole Kar, 32 Apartner in London law firm Lin-klaters, Australian-born Kar specialises in antitrust law, advising corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions and their exposure to the legal consequences of breaking competition laws.

Sidonie Kingsmill, 33 The global marketing director of Metro International is one of few female newspaper board directors in Britain. She is responsible for marketing the brand in 21 countries. The free-press label has become the largest international newspaper in the world.

Nichola Lawton, 28 Co-founder and lead scientific adviser of DNA Clinics, Lawton, a biomolecular science graduate, is boss of a 37-strong chain of clinics. Uniquely, her clinics provide support and counselling for customers taking tests to see if they are related to someone else.

Erin Hepher, 31 Hepher, an LSE graduate, founded Aura, an events and relationship marketing business two years ago. A former marketing director at Bain & Co, her clients include M&S and BAT.

Kate Hall, 34 Associate director of Arup, civil engineer Hall is the first woman and the youngest at her level in Arup’s infrastructure division and is project manager for the 2012 London Olympic Park.

Emma Baylis, 32 One of KPMG’s youngest female directors, Baylis heads its M&A tax practice in the Midlands, having joined eight years ago from Grant Thornton. She is now seconded to a community project for young people in Birmingham.

Melissa Clare, 31 The first female drilling-rig manager in the offshore oil industry, Clare has risen through the ranks at Global Santa Fe since joining in 1998 as a trainee engineer. She was the only woman in her year to study mechanical and offshore engineering at Robert Gordon university.

Charlotte Crosswell, 34 Previously head of international business development at the London Stock Exchange, Crosswell is president of London-based Nasdaq International, responsible for the exchange’s Far East business. She recently announced Nasdaq’s plans to set up a Beijing office.

Harriet Wallace, 29 Global policy co-ordinator at the Treasury, Wallace is a close adviser to Gordon Brown. A Cambridge graduate and Kennedy Scholar at Harvard, she recently accompanied Tony Blair on her second G8 summit.

Rachel Lowe, 29 Dragons’ Den spurned Lowe and her Destination Dublin board game, but orders at her company, RTL Games, already top £5m this year. Lowe’s 15 Destination games now outsell Monopoly, and she recently signed deals with Disney, Pixar and Warner Bros.

Shaa Wasmund, 35 She has worked for inventor Sir James Dyson, boxer Chris Eubank and Sir Bob Geldof, who persuaded her to become a founding director of Deckchair.com. Her most recent ventures include Bright Station, a $100m investment fund for online startups; the creation of the social networking and shopping site Osoyou. com; and the Startup Gym.

Tif Loehnis, 34 Loehnis set up the UK branch of the US literary agency Janklow & Nesbit in 2000. It has had eight bestsellers in 18 months, and a growing client list includes Stephen Hawking, Sir Sean Connery and Tilly Bagshawe.

Sangeeta Desai, 31 Having already held positions at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, Desai joined Apax Partners in 2005 and specialises in leveraged buyouts in the retail, consumer and media sectors. Desai has an MBA with honours from the Wharton School of Business.

Emilie Goodall, 25 After graduating from Oxford, Goodall was “keen to work for the not-for-profit sector, but not so keen on working for free”. An analyst at New Philanthropy Capital, she advises big business on its charitable donations.

Catherine Barton, 33 Barton is the youngest of 638 partners at Deloitte, Britain’s second-largest accountancy firm. Made a partner at 31, Barton specialises in advising insurers on the financial risks of their business. A keen hiker, she plans to scale Ben Nevis this summer.

Lucy Lake, 33 An advisory member of the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, Lake is also director of the international programme of the Campaign for Female Education, working to ensure girls in Africa get the education they need. Lake has coordinated Camfed’s campaign in Africa for 10 years and was promoted to deputy executive director in 2005.

Niki Cleal, 33 Having spent 10 years in the civil service in both the NHS executive and the Treasury, Cleal became director of the Pensions Policy Institute in 2006. While at the Treasury, she led two independent reviews – Sir Derek Morris’s review of the actuarial profession, and Richard Lambert’s review of business-university collaboration.

Charlotte Clark, 35 Clark is joint owner and co-direc-tor of Inca Productions, a fashion-events producer for clients as diverse as Julien MacDonald and Diesel to Siemens and Hewlett-Packard. Clark and her business partner Nina Ferguson started the company in 1998, and it now has a turnover of £4.2m.

Claire Lawrie, 32 Lawrie is a strategy senior manager in Accenture’s energy practice, advising multinationals, national power companies and energy ministries. She has worked with officials in Azer-baijan, Angola and Canada.

May Jennings, 24 Jennings, a London College of Fashion graduate, became the youngest director of a publicly quoted company in 2006 when the Core Business floated on AIM. The firm develops beauty brands, and has won numerous licensing contracts, most recently with the Elite model agency.

Sophie Field, 24 Field is an associate at Merchant Equity Partners and one of the youngest female private-equity professionals in Europe.

Jennifer Irvine, 31 Irvine started her daily-delivery healthy meal service The Pure Package from her kitchen, but has now relocated to New Covent Garden market, London.

Sarah McVittie, 29 Co-founder and chief executive of 82ASK, a text-message service that allows people to text any question and receive an answer within minutes, McVittie is an economics and Chinese graduate.

Leone Razali, 30 Executive director of mortgage finance and structured finance at Lehman Brothers, Yale graduate Razali was shortlisted last year for Young Achiever of the Year by the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, 35 Farrar-Hockley is creative director and board director at Europe’s largest luxury shoe retailer, Kurt Geiger. She joined from Selfridges in 2002, where she was head of ladies’ accessories. It is her job to manage relationships with the likes of Gucci, Prada and Marc Jacobs.

Christine Baalham, 33 Baalham runs Investec’s UK core equity assets, with more than £1 billion under management. But she is not just a numbers bod. She graduated from Cambridge in 1995 with a first in natural sciences.

Shezel Hatteea, 32 Hatteea joined AMV BBDO through JWT in 2003 and brought in three key accounts that year – Camelot, IPC and BBC World. Her reward: becoming the agency’s youngest board member at 28.

Sonya Branch, 32 The new senior director in the markets and projects section at the Office of Fair Trading, Branch was previously the youngest partner at Clifford Chance, the world’s largest law firm.

Hasfa Abubacker, 33 Abubacker’s Pitch TV teleshop-ping channel has an impressive financial record – turnover has tripled since she bought it from Richard Desmond in 2005. While eight months’ pregnant, she negotiated a deal to get Pitch product promotions into more than 400 shops in Britain.

Sally Schofield, 35 In recognition of her outstanding contribution to British business, Schofield was invited this year to a reception hosted by the Queen. As chief operating officer of the mining finance business Latitude Resources, Schofield manages its Chilean copper-gold exploration programme.

Samantha Burlton, 31 Frustrated by the lack of readily available organic products, Burlton set up her own online organic department store, So Organic, in 2005 and is now a major figure in the organic-food industry.

Katharine Roseveare, 30 Roseveare set up her agency Intelligent Marketing at the age of 26. With a turnover of £2.5m and a team of 40 people, Intelligent Marketing now has clients that include Diageo, HSBC and Tchibo.

Jennie Johnson, 35 Johnson gave up a six-figure salary to found the childcare chain Kids Allowed in northwest England in 2003, after securing £5m in startup funding. She plans to expand her chain of three nurseries to nine.

Charlotte Simmonds, 31 Simmonds is one of a few female senior managers in the construction indsutry. She reports to the board of Tube Lines, a London Underground PPP partner, and is responsible for environmental sustainability.

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