Investing Women Angels has joined the latest cohort of Pathways Pledge signatories, continuing our commitment to women entrepreneurs and women in investment.
Alongside our co-signatories Burness Paull, FWB, and Cazenove Capital We’ve committed to a ‘high-level’ pledge, which includes the design and implementation of diversity reviews to ensure access and equal opportunities, reviews of internal team structures and incentive models to help drive gender diversity and addressing female entrepreneurs’ needs at both pre-investment and post-investment stage.
By joining Pathways Forward, Investing Women Angels pledges to:
#1 Engage in corporate partnerships to attract more female professionals to angel investing, expanding the pipeline of women investors from outside traditional networks.
#2 Ensure our commitment to female angels being seen not just as participants, but as leaders within the investment ecosystem, with increased visibility of women in angel leadership positions.
#3 Encourage more female founders to becoming investors themselves – engaging with our portfolio regularly to support meetings and events to attract new angels.
#4 Recruit more senior female role models to mentor and support early-stage female founders.
#5 Participate in data collection initiatives on diversity to support the measurement and capture of data on female founders, levels of investment and composition of teams with UKBAA and Pathways Forward.
#6 Work to increase diversity within female founded companies to ensure mixed teams at leadership levels.
#7 Carry out further research on the barriers, disparities and challenges faced by female founders in accessing investment and scaling their businesses.
Now into its third year, Pathways Forward recently held its second annual Female Founders Growth Summit with 300 founders and investors in attendance including some of the UK’s fastest growing scaleups. The initiative was launched in September 2023 following the publication of the Scottish Government-commissioned Pathways: A New Approach For Women in Entrepreneurship report.
The Stewart Report has led to the launch of a number of initiatives including the Scottish Government’s Pathways Pre-Start initiative, which incorporated microgrant funding alongside place based support. In addition, the Pathways Fund, and the Entrepreneurial Education Pathways Fund, has collectively seen over £6 million being awarded across multiple projects across Scotland over the past 24 months.