Features | January 20, 2016

Suzanne Biegel: How investing with a gender lens can create a powerful women effect

David Bank
ImpactAlpha Editor

David Bank

I caught up recently with Suzanne for ImpactAlpha’s Returns on Investment podcast series. She explained there’s not a single gender lens, but rather multiple lenses. (Indeed, you can read more about them in ImpactAlpha’s Gender Lenses section.)

Listen to ImpactAlpha’s interview with Suzanne Biegel in our Returns on Investment podcast.
The first lens is women’s entrepreneurship. “Whether they’re high-growth high-tech women entrepreneurs, whether they’re women entrepreneurs doing ground breaking thing with social impact in emerging markets, there is a body of evidence that says, ‘When we get capital into the hands of women entrepreneurs, good things will happen.’”

A second lens is the products and services a company offers. If those products positively affects the lives of women and girls, such companies can be gender lens investments, even if they are male-led. And a third lens is a business’s commitment to gender equality “in ownership, in leadership, in supply chain, in distribution channels.” With her friends at Criterion Institute, Suzanne has an updated whitepaper about upgrading your due diligence with a gender lens.

Women Effect, her new organization, will bring investors, philanthropists, wealth advisors together. “People want to find co-investors,” Suzanne told me. “They want to find things to invest in. They want to develop their strategy. And they want to be able to really collaborate to create new investible vehicles that meet their objectives….to move more capital with more velocity, with more strategic intent towards a gender lens, and towards the women effect.”

Listen to ImpactAlpha’s interview with Suzanne Biegel in our Returns on Investment podcast.