Women In Financial Services: An MBA Mama Perspective
Last weekend, I attended the Toigo Foundation’s Fall APEX event in Washington DC. I was admitted to Toigo earlier this year after deciding that I definitely wanted to make a career switch into financial services.
Toigo’s mission is to foster the career advancement and increased leadership of underrepresented talent by creating mechanisms for greater inclusion from the classroom to the boardroom. I support Toigo’s mission 100%. When I first heard about Toigo, I knew I needed to apply. Thankfully, I was admitted as a Toigo Fellow, opening up a vast network of financial services professionals in the areas I’m interested in, namely: private wealth management, venture capital, private equity and impact investing.
While attending the Toigo event, I could not help but notice the low percentage of women. From my observation, there were about 25% women in attendance. This is consistent with the underrepresentation of women in the finance industry. A speaker at the event — who was representing the National Venture Capital Association — spoke about efforts to make VC a more diverse and inclusive industry. This was music to my ears. I am currently in contact with the representative from NVCA to get a better idea of how their diversity/inclusion initiative is being rolled out to potential diverse candidates. In addition to networking with students from top business schools, one of my favorite parts of Toigo Fall APEX was a training about valuation fundamentals. We also got the opportunity to network with leaders from the IFC as well as asset management professionals.
Toigo also brought alumni in to speak with us about being a woman in finance. The phenomenal panel was called: #WorkLifeMatters — Women Achieving Success Through it All where women in financial services shared their experiences as wives and mothers in a male-dominated industry . The speakers were candid about their experiences and offered some gems about the challenges of dealing with maternity leave issues and taking time away from careers to have children. After listening to the panel of very ambitious, accomplished women — some of whom were mothers — I am more convinced than ever that I got it right by deciding to have a child before business school.
In order to attend time-intensive events like Toigo Fall APEX, I need to make arrangements for Nyah’s care. This is not easy and can be costly.
Organizations can be pro-active about expanding their reimbursement policies to include childcare costs in addition to transportation.
I maintained contact with Nyah while I was away — checking in with phone calls to tell her goodnight and hear about her day. Nevertheless, it is never easy to leave her when I’m traveling for business. I blogged about this before. Check it out here.
I am very passionate about gender diversity, and am thrilled to be able to use the MBA Mama platform to share my experience with the organization. I’ll be blogging about Toigo more in the coming months. In the meantime, visit toigofoundation.org for details.
