Glasswing’s Commitment to Ensuring a Gender Equal World

This year’s International Women’s Day theme, Break the Bias, reminds us of the opportunity and responsibility we have to challenge stereotypes and consciously build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world.

As a woman-majority VC firm, and since our inception, we have paved the way and taken a leadership role in ensuring we Break the Biases present in our industry. We have purposefully and mindfully developed a culture that ensures we connect with, hire, include, and promote different voices, lifting those traditionally marginalized.

Breaking the Bias requires all of us to understand and recognize when bias may be present and consciously challenge it. This understanding and recognition provide a lens that we at Glasswing have applied to all aspects of our firm, from hiring and internal policies to informal team norms. It is not just giving someone a seat at the table but ensuring they are welcome and that their voice matters.

Our efforts have also extended to our portfolio companies, ensuring the founders we back are just as committed to Breaking the Bias as we are. As a result, Glasswing portfolio companies are building diverse and equitable teams, which drives their success across all metrics.

It is essential to embrace these values from the top-down. Breaking the Bias is a team effort, and everyone has to be on board, from executives to employees.

As we continue to broaden our impact in our ecosystem, we have, together with our portfolio companies, led by example. We are proud to have stellar women across leadership positions at our portfolio companies, and we spoke with a number of them about what Breaking the Bias means to them.

To Julie Johnson Roberts, Co-Founder and CEO of Armored Things, “Breaking the Bias means that we are striving for a day where having a woman founder or CEO is not a surprise, but rather an equal expectation at the most senior ranks of leadership in an organization.”

Neala Polachi Cetola, VP of Customer Success at Labviva, shared that Breaking the Bias for her is “ensuring I am doing my part to advocate and support female colleagues at all ages and all levels…I will always strive to do everything in my power to ensure other women do not have to experience bias and when I can, call-out or correct gender bias when I see it.”

Betsy Bilhorn, Co-Founder at trender.ai, views Breaking the Bias as “taking the idea, the experience, and the person on their own merit. Being comfortable with someone that doesn’t look like you or have your background and seeing the potential of what that person is bringing to you.”

Julie, Neala, and Betsy, along with all of our portfolio companies, are working in lockstep to build a better today and an even better tomorrow. Breaking the Bias offers the opportunity for all of us to push boundaries and create a world where we value and celebrate our differences.