Dates: Click here to be notified when the next program is scheduled.
Format: Live and in person. (Contact case@fuqua.duke.edu if you want to discuss a virtual offering for your group.)
Cost: $1,900-2,600
Do you want to explore unlocking capital or deploying capital to benefit women and girls? Are you excited about the power of women to make markets? Do you want to contribute materially to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals around women and girls? Are you ready to get beyond the talk and get to the strategies and tactics of action?
This 3-day intensive course is designed to help you navigate the emerging world of gender smart investing so that you can develop tangible strategies and practice to more easily and quickly integrate gender smart investing as part of an overall investing practice. Two of the top globally recognized pioneers in gender lens and impact investing will lead the training, sharing their insights and working with you on the key practices of gender lens investing.
What is Gender Lens Investing?
Gender Lens Investing uses capital to deliver financial returns while improving the lives of women and girls and their communities. Investors, funds, philanthropists, and governments around the world are focusing on these outcomes as part of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #5. In the last six months, the US government and a dozen other development finance agencies have launched multi-billion dollar campaigns for gender lens investment as a tool for community and economic development, aiming to leverage private capital.
Why invest in women?
- Credit gap: Women-led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) worldwide face a $1.4 trillion shortfall in access to credit despite women anecdotally having lower non-performing loan rates than men.
- A multi-trillion dollar opportunity: According to a McKinsey study, closing the gender labor gap could add $28 trillion, or 26 percent, to annual global GDP in 2025.
- The world’s largest emerging market: The female economy represents a market more than twice the size of India and China combined. By 2028, female consumers will control around $15 trillion of global consumer spending.
- Investing in women pays dividends in other areas: When women earn a competitive income, they spend 90 percent of it on their households, food, healthcare, and education.
Given these trends and the emerging appetite for deliberate integration of gender analysis into the investment and decision-making process, it is important for professionals and individuals to be more deliberate about how they make investment decisions and how they integrate gender thinking into all stages of their investment practice.
What Past Participants Say:
Our inaugural program in March came back with a stunning net promoter score of 95. Participants raved about the comprehensive, practical content, the knowledgeable facilitators, and the deep experience and insight of fellow participants in the room. More from our March participants:
“The depth of material and tools provided will enhance your knowledge in this field, and the exercises will send you away with an action plan to move yourself or your organization deeply into gender lens investing.”
“The instructors brilliantly managed to make the material relevant to each and every one of us!”
“Becoming gender transformative with our money is a mandate for any socially conscious giver and investor. The Getting Gender Smart training with Suzanne Biegel and Cathy Clark is the most powerful first step we can take on our values-aligned financial journey.”
“The program was phenomenal!”
Who Should Attend?
The course is designed for those to develop a smarter, more practical approach to investing for impact through the gender lens of positive impact on women and girls. The training is appropriate for people who want to create structures within their existing organization for more gender smart investing, or create new structures that enable additional capital deployment, or people that advise them, including:
- Professional investors
- Impact investment fund managers
- Wealth managers and advisors
- Philanthropists
- Consultants
- High net worth individuals
- NGO leaders
In order to guarantee the interactivity and learning potential of the course, spaces are limited. Each registration will be screened by CASE i3 at Duke University which reserves the ultimate decision on admittance.
Learning Objectives
To harness the power of gender lens investing, you’ll learn how to develop a customized gender smart investing strategy, including:
- Evaluating your own objectives and those of your key stakeholders;
- Exploring the markets for impact investing, including opportunities in both public and private markets;
- Integrating gender lens practices across the key steps of your investment process, including due diligence, structuring, and closing deals, governance, managing for impactful exits, and portfolio management.
- Evaluating and performing gender lens screening and due diligence of funds, both public and private, as well as of individual deals;
- Understanding current practices in impact measurement and management from a gender lens perspective and opportunities to improve gender outcomes in your existing portfolios; and
- Understanding the range of available resources and consultants available to help you along the way and how to select and work with them.
You’ll emerge with tangible frameworks and tools to develop your own unique gender smart investing approach.
View previous program agenda here.
Program Format
Case studies and a focus on insights from everyday practice will be at the heart of the training. You will be provided with ready-to-use frameworks, tools, and materials to work on during the workshop and to take with you and use as you turn your strategy into practice.
Pre-course preparation: The course starts with short pre-readings and videos, released 15 days prior to the training via our online learning platform. These will require 1-3 hours of your time prior to the session.
In-person training: Hands-on, tactical, face-to-face training with our professor and practitioner team starts at breakfast on Monday, September 9 and concludes after lunch on Wednesday, September 11, 2019.
All training sessions are held at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, in beautiful Durham, North Carolina. All meals are included in the program fee. Hotel accommodations are not included in program fees. Click here for a list of hotel recommendations.
Certificate of completion: Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business will award a certificate of completion to participants who have successfully completed the Getting Gender Smart program and assignments, as judged by the course instructors. The Fuqua School of Business was ranked #1 business school in the world by Bloomberg Businessweek in 2014 and attracts and nurtures a new kind of leader who has the power to bring out the strength in others and move teams forward toward a common purpose.
Post Course: There are two opportunities for continued learning and feedback after the training:
- Getting Gender Smart WhatsApp Group: A peer group for conversations and learning to continue. This will be free for all participants who complete the course and unmoderated by course instructors.
- Getting Gender Smart 1:1 Coaching Sessions: The chance to get personalized feedback as you develop or revise your gender strategies after the course. This option will be available at an additional hourly rate with one or both of the course instructors.
Trainers: The course is co-designed by the CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing at Duke University, a global leader in impact investing research and education, and Catalyst at Large, one of the most sought-after consulting firms on gender lens investing worldwide.
Reserve Your Spot:
We do not have a training scheduled at this time. Click here to be notified of future program dates.
