Today is International Women’s Day — a great opportunity to celebrate the past accomplishments of fierce women that paved the way for all of us to realize our dreams and create new opportunities for others. While this day recognizes women making great strides in leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship, the fact remains that less than 3% of venture-backed startups are led by sole female founders and that number fell even further last year during the pandemic. If all start-ups are created equal, why do we see so few that are women-led? The sad truth is that women CEOs in business are still a minority and continue to face an uphill battle when it comes to funding and support.
Efforts like International Women’s Day are a motivating reminder that there is still much work to do in advancing women in leadership roles. We know gender diversity impacts performance and when we consider 1/3 of tech positions going unfilled because we lack diversity in our workforce globally*, we cannot afford to leave women out of the equation.
My co-founder Lori Mazan and I are proud to have started a company that is female-founded, female-led and governed by an all-female board of directors. While we are grateful to be an exception, we know it is now our responsibility to support all future leaders and lay the groundwork to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship.
When we started Sounding Board our mission was simple: to develop the world’s most impactful leaders. To date, our company has democratized leadership coaching globally for thousands of employees at all levels of a company, recognizing that development is most impactful when it can be personalized to the leader and creates agility for the organization. It was important for us to do that at scale through technology so we could shift the paradigm of what leadership looks like.
Join us to support 2021 IWD’s #choosetochallenge and recognize the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Let’s celebrate women’s accomplishments, and raise awareness against bias and take action for equality. Years from now, we can look back and be proud that, no matter the gender, we were all part of making a difference and changing the face of leadership.
*IWD 2020 Data