2022 Annual Report 20 30% Club France Investor Group The financial industry is a sector that starts off with an unbalanced gender parity in which the C-Suite is largely dominated by men. As shown in Deloitte’s latest report, women held 21% of board seats, 19% of C-suite roles, and only 5% of CEO positions in 2021 within global financial services institutions. The numbers speak for themselves, and sadly they have not changed much in the past 20 years. Where there is darkness, there is also light. While there is still much to be done, there is also hope that the financial sector could benefit f rom the “multiplier effect” which refers to a positive, quantifiable increase of women at the senior leadership levels for each woman added to the C-suite. So how do we get women added to key positions in financial services? To answer this question, on the 27th of October 2022, we had the honor of having two successful women, Amanda Pullinger and Virginie Maisonneuve, share how they broke the glass ceiling and how they are paving the path for the next generation of women. Amanda Pullinger was no stranger to being the only woman in the room which is why she is now helping women across the finance industry. After a f ruitful career in the hedge fund industry, she is now the CEO of 100 Women in Finance, whose mission is to strengthen the global finance industry by empowering women at every career stage and to achieve “Vision 30/40” - 30% of senior investment roles and executive committee positions held by women by 2040. To reach those targets, many barriers need to be broken down. The first key driver for change for Amanda is visibility. Women often are hardworking and put job completion as their top priority. However, working behind a desk all day leaves women little time and opportunity to network, speak on panels, and attend important events. This leaves women in the shadows. On the other hand, putting women in the spotlight will change people’s perceptions of them. People will see women as experts in their fields and recognize women for their competencies. To achieve this, the priority for managers is to actively give women opportunities to be visible, and women should seek out opportunities to be visible even if it could mean being uncomfortable at the beginning. To illustrate how visibility can be influential for others, Amanda shared with us a personal example in which she was inspired by the success of Margaret Thatcher. Amanda was the first person in her family to go to university, and like Margaret Thatcher, she went to the University of Oxford. Even though Amanda never met Margaret, her public visibility as Prime Minister of the U.K. gave Amanda someone to aspire to as a young woman. That is why Amanda believes it is important to increase the visibility of women because it has a positive ripple effect on other women’s trajectories along the way. The second challenge is to demystify the financial sector. If the next generation of women have female role models of senior investors and understand how it is possible to become one, this will be a game changer. That is why 100 Women in Finance launched a “Jump Start” program for university students to decode the financial industry by explaining different players and key roles in the sector as well as ways to obtain an internship in the field. Amanda believes it is not too late to educate and motivate women at the university level. What is more important is to cultivate a corporate culture that could attract female talent because it is the culture that drives women to join an organization. Overall, Amanda is cautiously optimistic for the future generation of women in the financial industry. Virginie Maisonneuve, Global CIO Equity of Allianz Global Investors, sets an example of how women could succeed in the sector. She is a global investment leader with over 35 years of performance track record in asset management. She highlighted the changes that she noticed during her career as a woman in the financial industry and that although the environment was still very imbalanced, some progress had been made f rom the time she started in the late 80s. One of the key points she made is the one of “ownership,” i.e., that it is important for women and all investment professionals who want to lead more impactful and better performing companies to “own” and lead actions to support its transformation in diversity in general and gender specifically (“just Fireside Chat with Amanda Pullinger, CEO de 100 Women in Finance, and Virginie Maisonneuve, AllianzGI’s Global CIO Equities
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