Finance industry network 100 Women in Finance will be hosting the largest ever international meeting of female investment managers and asset allocators during Global FundWomen Week in November, with the intention of facilitating capital introductions for women.
“The pandemic, coupled with technology, is acting as a great leveller in improving access to capital introduction opportunities for women managers,” said Ulrika Robertsson, co-founder and COO of Impactus Partners and Chair of 2020 Global FundWomen Week.
The virtual event will take place from 9 to 13 November, replacing previous in-person regional conferences, and will be hosted on capital introduction tech platform iConnections, backed by JP Morgan.
“At a time when the majority of the world’s investors are working from home and unable to travel to build new connections and raise capital, this format will be critical to ensuring allocators can continue to identify new investment opportunities, and that female managers can attract the necessary capital to bring their ideas to life,” added Robertsson, who is based in London.
100WF’s FundWomen Week will connect around 200 allocators with more than 180 women founders and managers from the alternative, as well as the traditional asset management industries.
“Progress on diversity across the investment industry requires a collective effort and a fundamental change in mindset and culture,” said Sara Rejal, senior director, investments, Willis Towers Watson.
She continued: “Although these efforts will take time to bear fruit, we need to be challenging ourselves as an industry to do more now. Improving diversity is key to building a stronger investment industry; in fact our research has shown that teams with more diversity typically produce better long-term outcomes for clients, so it is critical that all players in the industry continue to challenge the status quo.”
In addition to representation from North America and Europe, Global FundWomen Week will include allocators and managers from Asia and Australia for the first time- making up 12 percent and 20 percent of the total, respectively.
Michael Weinberg, head of hedge funds and alternative alpha at APG Asset Management, who is one of the allocators participating in the event, highlighted the importance of harnessing cognitive diversity by working with managers who are shaped by different experiences in order to generate new ways of finding alpha.
