2 Years of #MovingForward
Two years ago, a question came up among four founders:
“As an entrepreneur, if I experience harassment or discrimination, where do I report it and how will I be protected?”
No one had a good answer, and from this conversation, a movement was born. Exactly two years ago, on International Women’s Day in 2018, we launched #MovingForward to increase transparency and accountability of venture capital firms around diversity and inclusion. Since then, we’ve worked to foster a community of investors who are committed to moving this industry forward by publishing external anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, as well as providing reporting channels. Today, we’re proud to highlight some of our achievements in the past 2 years, and announce a few exciting new projects!
170 firms over 23 countries
In 2018, we launched a directory of diversity, inclusion, and anti-harassment commitments with almost 40 venture capital firms including 500 Startups, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz. Since then, we’ve had more than 170 firms commit to our movement, across 23 different countries. In the past year, we expanded our presence in Europe and reached out to VCs associated with Berkeley, California, including the University of California, Berkeley associated firms. We’ve also begun to work with accelerators and angel networks.
2 Guides viewed 2.3K Times
To help educate VCs on strong policies, we published comprehensive guides about how to write these policies and establish points of contact.
1 Letter of Support
In 2019, we published a letter of support for new legislation in Massachusetts, US that equalizes harassment and discrimination protections in venture.
17 Teammates
We grew our #MF team from 4 to 17 amazing people across the US and Europe.
17 Publications
Our work has been covered in 17 publications across 5+ countries, including CNN, WIRED, Les Echoes, and Forbes. Check out our op-ed in The Atlantic.
3 Events and 10 Panels
A couple of highlights from the events we hosted:
- Diversity Lab in London where we had productive and eye-opening conversations about the state of investor ←→ entrepreneur relationships.
- Anti-Harassment Policy Workshop co-hosted with The Purple Campaign in San Francisco. We had representatives from over 36 VCs in attendance and helped guide them to reread and improve their policies to be more robust.
As we dive into 2020, we’re excited to share new projects and initiatives:
Congrats to Katharine! Our new Chief of Staff
We’re super excited to introduce our new Chief of Staff, Katharine Jiang, a UC Berkeley alum, engineer, and aspiring founder. In the next year, she will join Ginny Fahs, our Executive Director, by leading outreach in the US, supporting our Europe team, and managing our existing and future projects. Katharine joined #MovingForward in September 2019 and helped drive our outreach effort in Berkeley, CA. Welcome, Katharine!
VC Policy Tiers
To commit to #MovingForward, a firm must write a policy and elect a reporting point of contact. We want to help firms create even stronger, all-around policies that follow best practices in regards to definitions, the actual policy, consequences, and reporting.
As mentioned above, we hosted a Policy Workshop in 2019 to do just that. Now, we’re excited to share our research and reflections that came out of hosting the workshop and evaluating the policies currently in our directory. Look out for a Guide for firms on best practices and how to improve their existing policies.
Resources for Entrepreneurs
Up until now, #MovingForward has primarily supported VCs and investors in their commitments for inclusive and harassment-free workspaces. However, this movement was built for and to protect entrepreneurs. If you’re an entrepreneur, how can you build an inclusive and harassment-free workplace? In 2020 we’ll be building products specifically for you. Sign up at the bottom of this post for updates!
Thank you for supporting this movement.
It’s been quite a journey. Thank you to everyone who has committed to our movement, supported us, and inspired us to keep pushing forward.
To stay in touch and keep updated about future news and events, please follow us on Twitter (@MovingForwardVC) or sign up for our mailing list! You can also send us a note at hello@venturemovingforward.org.
