Towards a More Inclusive Business World: Insights From Leading Women

In an inclusive world, everyone feels safe and empowered. “I want one-half of the world’s population to have just as much power and influence and money as the other half,” says Cloed Baumgartner, Innovation Enabler and Expert for Circular Economy, Impact Funding, and SDG. “Every woman in this world has the right to shape her life and career in her own way. And this must also be visible structurally, in all laws, and in women’s own bank accounts. I call for quotas until women have 50% of the power, influence, and money.” Cloed is also one of the long-standing mentors at enpact, where creating a more inclusive, collaborative business world is a core value that encodes the organization’s DNA. 

In the enpact universe, you can find constellations of amazing women entrepreneurs, mentors, innovators, experts, and leaders, lifting each other up and pushing towards change around the world every day. Their impact in the different spaces continues to inspire us. For this reason, we launched the ‘Celebrating Women in Business’ campaign to highlight their work and the importance of giving consistent, sustainable support to women in business spaces. 

The purpose of such a movement is to promote female entrepreneurship, take part in reshaping the business scene by highlighting different perspectives of women in the business world, and pave the way for a more inclusive global economy. 

Widening the circle of women inclusion in our space

In 2020, we held the tenth edition of our flagship product, the International Mentoring Program with a focus on supporting women in tech. 15 scale-up business owners, operating in seven countries, and empowering women in various tech spaces across the globe, joined the program to receive an 8-month mentoring experience to grow, build global partnerships, penetrate new markets, and hence empower more women across their journeys – soon we will share with you insights from their final bootcamp!

In this article, we share with you impressive insights from outstanding women entrepreneurs. They share their experience with building a business and reveal their thoughts on gender diversity and showcase different perspectives of women in business.

“When you educate a man, you educate an individual. When you empower a woman, you empower generations” – Florence Toffa from the Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative

The campaign ‘Celebrating Women in Business’ was kick-started with featuring incredible businesswomen from our Empowering Entrepreneurship Initiative (EEI). We collaborated with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in showcasing the stories of four incredible leaders and EEI participants: Yun Pratiwi, CEO & Founder of Central Borneo Guide; Florence Toffa, CEO & Founder of Mobile Web Ghana; Yasmeen Khamis and Farah El Masry, Co-Founders of Doodle Factory.

The domino effect of inclusion in the business world

“When it comes to the business world, greed has to be taken out of the equation. Businesses, regardless of their scale, cannot grow without first prioritizing the well-being of their employees; giving them more freedom, autonomy, flexibility, and enough financial and educational support for them to be able to focus on growth,” says Nayrouz Talaat, Founder & CEO of Direxiona – an Egyptian platform for professional female drivers.

Nayrouz’s core advice to women in business: “Creating a business, led by you, is creating more opportunities for others; so always keep working on the value you provide to others, and to yourself.”

Equal opportunity to shape the growth of ecosystems

From PDL India, Shweta Tiwari, Co-founder of Startup Réseau – a network of Startups, Enterprises, Capital, Markets, and Services shared a crucial insight: “We need to provide equal opportunities to women in these three areas: Board representation, Women Fund managers, and Women angel investors.” Without providing opportunity for women to play a role in decision-making that influences the direction for the ecosystem’s growth as a whole, we will be unable to achieve true change. This means more equal representation in investment communities, in Venture Capital, and in policy-making committees. 

Shweta gives three key tips that can guide every woman in business to succeed: 

• Identify a real problem; 
• Do not chase perfection – it’s a process of discovery; 
• Don’t be afraid of failure – it’s the best experience one can get and it will only make you wiser and stronger.

While we are always proud to celebrate International Women’s Month every March, the only way towards affecting change is to provide consistent, sustainable support. So if you’re a woman founder or leader, we want to hear about your experience in your ecosystem, uplift your work and share your own insights on our channels. Feel free to reach out to us at sn@enpact.org