Women Entrepreneurs Mean Business: programme announced
Ahead of the Women Entrepreneurs Mean Business Summit, we were delighted to announce the full programme.
We hosted an incredible line-up of celebrated women entrepreneurs, high profile thought leaders on women’s economic empowerment, policymakers, academics, activists, with Bank of America as the summit’s headline sponsor. We were also delighted to welcome Blackstone Charitable Foundation and Sail Creative as leading sponsors. Together, the Foundation, speakers and attendees are united by a common refusal to wait the 250+ years it is currently predicted to take for women to have economic equality with men.
We welcomed audiences to a host of sessions across the summit’s four days, exploring areas like including women in supply chains, barriers to tech and digital inclusion, gender stereotypes in the media, access to finance for young women entrepreneurs, and leadership – all as they intersect with gender stereotypes. Additionally, the summit saw the Foundation launch its important new research report on how gender stereotypes affect women’s journeys to entrepreneurship.
Highlights included inspiring opening thoughts from Hillary Rodham Clinton, keynote speeches from Hon. Julia Gillard AC, the 27th Prime Minister of Australia, on breaking barriers for young women entrepreneurs, and Linda Scott, author of Double X Economy, on including women-owned businesses in world trade. We’ll be hosting two masterclasses from DHL on e-commerce for women entrepreneurs, fantastic in-depth panel discussions with visionary founders, activists and leaders like Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and representatives from major corporates such as the Coca-Cola Company, PayPal and Google. A conversation between Cherie Blair CBE QC and award-winning social entrepreneur Chioma Ukono, an alumna of the Foundation’s Road to Growth programme in Nigeria, shed valuable light on the amazing impact of supporting women business owners. We also be showcased our flagship programmes HerVenture, Road to Growth and Mentoring Women in Business, and brought the voices and experiences of women entrepreneurs like Shirin Behzadi, Savvycom Founder Van Dang, and Feminism in India Founder Japleen Pasricha to the forefront.
Together, these sessions and the report set out the clear case for eradicating the gender gap in entrepreneurship and supporting women entrepreneurs, as well as identifying strong calls to action for different stakeholders at every level.
The Summit is free-of-charge to attend and entirely online, open to anyone who wishes to join and help lead the charge to stop women entrepreneurs being held back. Registrations are open now, however if you can’t make it sign up to our e-newsletter here to be sent recordings of the sessions afterwards.
