Meet 2 Women On A Mission To Change The World With The Help Of Cartier
Originally published in Essence by Kimberly Wilson
Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy.
Being a female entrepreneur, however, takes a special kind of grit, resilience and hard work that well — only a woman could handle. The gap in access to capital, expertise, and opportunities for female entrepreneurs remains, despite the increasing share of women-owned businesses across the globe.
Last year, for example, U.S. startups women-founded startups received 1.9% (or around $4.5 billion) out of around the $238.3 billion in venture capital allocated. A stark difference in comparison to their male counterparts.
Thankfully, the Cartier Women’s Initiative is looking to challenge (and change) these roadblocks for women across the world. The highly lauded program has been supporting and rewarding highly influential women entrepreneurs in nine regions around the world every year since 2006, awarding a total of $7,440,000 in financial backing to 298 women from 63 different countries.
“The core of our initiative believes in the importance of two things: 1) business as a force for good, and 2) the role of women in it,” says Wingee Sampaio, Global Program Director of the Cartier Women’s Initiative. “Business as a force for good leads us to walk the talk at Cartier, but also in our corporate commitment to support impact entrepreneurship to create social and environmental change. We are keenly aware of the challenges the world faces, and we do not believe in leaving half of the world behind in designing and solving these challenges. The world needs all of us to create the change we all need. The pilot DEI program category is also inspired by this.”