“Women have been entrepreneurial even before society accepted that they are equally able or capable to run a business as a man, but my personal opinion is that the role of motherhood for so many often devalued this realization since being an active parent & a professional are still frowned upon in most of our working world.”
Leap-In: Inspiring Career
Role Models for the Next Generation of Women Leaders
The revolution for women has been a long time coming—
think since before the beginning of the written history of our civilizations. As an ally in the space who is an advisory member of BRAVA Investments and a close friend of CEO and Founder Nathalie Molina Nino, I’ve become an even stronger champion for equality. That being said, it’s amazing to me that gender equality has taken this long to become a constant subject of conversation given the number of fires lit towards it throughout the past 40 years alone. My understanding of the issues women have faced changed after I finished Leapfrog: The New Revolution for Women Entrepreneurs. Though this is not a book review, there are so many valuable features in this that should not only serve to strengthen women’s culture, but also illuminate how and why when women come together and bring with them the men who champion them that true changes are possible to our civil society. Women have been entrepreneurial even before society accepted that they are equally able or capable to run a business as a man, but my personal opinion is that the role of motherhood for so many often devalued this realization since being an active parent and a professional are still frowned upon in most of our working world. Mothers
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could be the most entrepreneurial people on the planet. And it’s not enough that many successful, powerful men credit their mothers. Those men had access to capital from day one. Women truly began a way to empower their own lives only in the late 80s when their access to capital became a legal right. Nino emphasizes constantly that the advice women are given and the “path” they are asked to walk is narrow, limited and often intended to maintain the status quo. The status quo that not only causes issues with equal pay, but even more crucial than that—that limits equal opportunity for investment. If we were to approach investments blind, the way that the world’s top orchestras audition candidates to join them by having them play behind a screen, I’m certain access to capital would be different. But until the last women seeking access to capital is NOT asked when they plan to stop and have children, we won’t change that paradigm. Take Hack #33 from Arlan Hamilton: “...before you go out to raise, think about what success is.” Arlan is a VC bringing diversity to a field that currently funds a “rounding error” of capital to women of color. Success was different