Road to Leadership

There continues to be a vast gender gap in entrepreneurship. Closing this gap is a crucial part of advancing women’s economic empowerment and boosts the global economy.

Women entrepreneurs are powerful changemakers and their role is fundamental to the advancement of economic equality, which has positive outcomes for everyone.

Despite this huge potential, women lack visibility and positions of leadership as their roles are often limited by harmful gender stereotypes, societal and cultural norms which undermine their status, ability or influence.

If we are ever to achieve our goal of economic equality for women, it is crucial to elevate women’s leadership positions in business environments. We aim to do this by developing women entrepreneurs’ confidence and leadership skills, ensuring they are aware of their rights, and supporting them to identify and challenge systemic and structural barriers that undermine their rights.

Our solution

Our Road to Leadership training was developed in 2021 and is designed to equip women entrepreneurs with what they need to grow their confidence, voice and decision-making as leaders and changemakers, and to influence the environments that hold them back.

Since launching, Road to Leadership has supported nearly 750 women entrepreneurs.

How does it work?

The training is delivered across two or three sessions, either online or face-to-face, with each themed on a different topic: leadership and communication and, dependent on the context, sometimes also a session on advocacy.

These sessions give women entrepreneurs:

• Awareness of the gendered structural barriers they face
• Understanding of their own leadership and communications styles
• Introduction to different leadership styles, including feminist leadership
• Skills in delivering impactful, influential messaging to different stakeholders
• Communication tools to effectively promote and pitch their businesses
• A grasp of how they can assess and work with the communication styles of others
• Advocacy strategies, tools and techniques in order to influence change in society
• Increased confidence in leadership and communication
• Inspiration to succeed as leaders in the form of role models
• Boosted professional networks

Where is it delivered?

Road to Leadership was piloted successfully in 2021 with women in Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria and Kenya. The programme is currently delivered in Guyana, Kenya and South Africa.

We have ambitions to bring this important and in-demand training programme to new low and middle income countries through funding partnerships with the private and public sector, supporting our goal of reaching one million women by 2030. Please get in touch to discuss how we can collaborate to bring Road to Leadership to even more women entrepreneurs worldwide and support their leadership development.