When Melissa Alexander left the Memphis-based Cushman & Wakefield affiliate where she'd been part of a top-producing industrial team to launch her own brokerage business in a new city, she was forced to hit the ground running.

"I was in a bit of a square peg, round hole kind of situation," Alexander, now a senior vice president at Foundry Commercial in Nashville, says. "I had the experience but didn't have the book of business in Nashville for someone to say yeah, join my shop. I faced a lot of skepticism, especially in a sector like industrial where there aren't a lot of women at the table. I was saying, hey, I'm here. I'm ready to work. I'm ready to hustle. Just give me a desk, a phone and a laptop."

Alexander and co-panelists Marissa Limsiaco and DeLea Becker will tackle the ins and out of striking out on your own to develop your own firm in the closing panel of this year's Women of Influence event in Deer Valley. She says she ultimately found a "very entrepreneurial" option in Foundry, where she wasn't discounted for being a woman.