Category: Financial Sector

Ellevate Launches New Fellowships to Support Women in COVID

A fellowship granting fund, EllevateHER Forward equips women who have been economically impacted by the pandemic with tools and resources to return to work.

NEW YORK, May 5, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Ellevate Network, the largest community of women at work, launches EllevateHER Forward, a fellowship granting fund designed to alleviate the economic burden of the novel coronavirus pandemic on women and support their journey back to the workplace.

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Ellevate Network will provide $250.000 in matching funds to support Forward Fellows. (Image Credit: EllevateHER Forward)

EllevateHER Forward Fellows are equipped with comprehensive membership packages that include networking opportunities, a wide range of professional and personal development programming, online resources, Ellevate’s signature 12-week virtual program Squads, and access to a community of over 150,000+ women. Contributions made to the fund will be matched up to $250,000 by Ellevate Network.

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Elect Women by Funding Them at Every Level: Paula Hodges

I was sitting in my office, wincing at the mid-afternoon sun bouncing off the gold dome perched atop the New Hampshire State House five years ago. The slant of the light created a glare that made it hard for me to look interested in the droning of a DC consultant who had cornered me there. He had scheduled meetings with operatives like me to talk about something “big” and “early” in the First in the Nation presidential cycle in New Hampshire – a $15 million spend to “draft Elizabeth Warren.”

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Photo by chloe s. on Unsplash

Warren had just been elected to the U.S. Senate three years prior. His idea was nested in a paid and earned media schtick. He had donors. He had ideas. I was the lone progressive infrastructure staffer who had just gotten a crash course on running the state’s super PAC coalition to elect democrats up and down the ballot. I had seen a glimpse of the battlefield ahead and could have cared less about his ideas, mainly because he wasn’t actually looking for feedback.

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#EmbraceAmbition Convenes to Challenge Gender Norms

The Tory Burch Foundation, a  nonprofit organization empowering women,  is bringing together leaders, activists, and performers for an event billed as The Summit: Challenging Stereotypes and Creating New Norms. The Embrace Ambition Summit (#EmbraceAmbition) will be held on March 5 in New York at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.

#EmbraceAmbition
The #EmbraceAmbition Summit features an array of leaders and speakers discussing how to challenge gender norms and open up new options for women and girls. (Image Credit: #EmbraceAmbition Summit)

Speakers will include:

  • Tory Burch – Executive Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Tory Burch LLC, an American lifestyle brand, and Founder of the Tory Burch Foundation;
  • Gloria Steinem;
  • Yola – Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and musician from Bristol, England;
  • Ashley Judd – Author, actor, leader of the #MeToo movement and founding member of Time’s Up;
  • Tina Tchen – President & CEO of Time’s Up, and formerly executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls;
  • Sylvia Earle – Founder of the marine environmental organization Mission Blue;
  • Claudette Colvin – One of two survivors of the Browder v. Gayle U.S. Supreme Court Case that ended bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama;
  • Diane von Furstenberg – Fashion designer, philanthropist and Founder and Chair of her eponymous company;
  • Mellody Hobson – Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments;
  • Deja Foxx – Founder of @GenZGirlGang, an online community of womxn; and
  • Anne Finucane – Vice-Chair at Bank of America, and Board Chair of B of A’s European Bank.

The Tory Burch Foundation-convened Summit will include stories and conversations featuring female leaders from Hollywood, business, science, entrepreneurship and youth movements who will tackle “challenging stereotypes and creating new norms.” The all-day summit will include performances, including short stories, spoken word, and music.

Attendees will be able to connect with women-owned businesses at the entrepreneur marketplace, visit the Tory Burch Foundation pop-up shop, and network with other attendees. Applications to attend have closed, but anyone can sign up for the free live stream of the event.

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When Work Resonates with Your Values: Maricella Herrera of Ellevate

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Maricella Herrera, vice president of Operations and Strategy at Ellevate Network, “a community of professional women committed to helping each other succeed.”

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Maricella Herrera (courtesy of Maricella Herrera)

What do you wish you had known when you started out in your profession?

When I first started out, I thought my career was already laid out for me; I was going into my first job at a bank, I would rise in the ranks, get more responsibility, go to business school, go back to finance and keep going until I retired. It was what was expected. I never really understood that to be completely happy, I needed to find something that didn’t just intellectually stimulate me, but that resonated with my values. I didn’t know you could build a career in an area that was about doing good. When I first started out, social enterprises were nascent. Not many people were thinking about them. I wish I had known I could find my passion and what I’m good at in one place, and that it wouldn’t necessarily be what everyone else thought I was supposed to be doing, and that that was ok. My background is in business and finance, so knowing I can use those skills to make a difference in the world is exciting.

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Family Fdn in Atlanta Gives Big for Global Work Focused on Women

CARE RECEIVES COMMITMENT OF NEARLY $7M FROM THE ARTHUR M. BLANK FAMILY FOUNDATION

The organization dedicated to fighting global poverty by empowering women and girls partners with Atlanta family foundation to invest in communities and save lives

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The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation outlines these core values for community engagement, and is now extending its grantmaking to address global poverty issues by empowering women. (Image Credit: Blank Foundation press kit)

(Atlanta, GA) On November 14, 2019, CARE announced a three-year $6.8M grant from The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to support international programs that foster economic development, influence policy change, and provide humanitarian aid for people affected by natural and man-made disasters. The partnership marks the first strategic international expansion of The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s philanthropic efforts, which promote positive change in peoples’ lives and build and enhance the communities in which they live.

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Coca-Cola Foundation Makes $1 Mil Donation to Girls Who Invest

December 9, 2019 — The Coca-Cola Company is marking its 100th anniversary as a public company today with a $1 million grant to Girls Who Invest from The Coca-Cola Foundation.

Girls Who Invest (GWI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusion in investment management, with a specific focus on increasing the pipeline of women entering the industry in frontline investing and leadership positions.

See Philanthropy Women’s previous coverage on Girls Who Invest.

Girls Who Invest will receive $1 million in funding from the Coca Cola Foundation. (Image Credit: Girls Who Invest)

The grant will provide scholarships for approximately 40 women at U.S. colleges and universities to explore careers in investment management by participating in rigorous, four-week on-campus training programs at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Notre Dame or the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

The academic program is followed by a six-week paid internship at one of GWI’s more than 100 partner investment management firms in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, during which scholars work alongside investment management teams.

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BIG NEWS: Allison Fine Announces 2020 Congressional Run

2020 is gearing up to be a landmark election year. The American Presidential election is well underway, and new faces and standing politicians alike are finding ways to come together on issues surrounding women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate change, and the economy.

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Allison Fine has officially announced her 2020 run for Congress, where she hopes to represent New York’s 17th District. (Photo Credit: Allison Fine For Congress)

Adding to the potential for some great progressive victories in 2020, activist Allison Fine has announced her official run for Congress, where she intends to represent New York’s 17th District, and her hometown of Sleepy Hollow, New York.

A pioneer of online activism and a self-described “unapologetic feminist,” Fine is an author, a social change thought leader, and the founder of the Network of Elected Women (NEW), which connects women who hold local office around the country. She has also served as chair of the national board of NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as the president of her synagogue, Temple Beth Abraham.

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Helping Women Entrepreneurs Build Assets in Fresno, California

Jenny Flores, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Bank of the West

Editor’s Note: This Q&A is with Jenny Flores, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for Bank of the West. Grameen America recently announced a new collaboration with Bank of the West, which is donating $2 million to assist with the launch of a new Grameen branch in Fresno, California.

What is the relationship between Bank of the West and Grameen? Does Bank of the West provide the funds and Grameen evaluate the loans and administer the program?

Building on a relationship started in 2017, Bank of the West made an initial $1.5M investment to provide lending capital to Grameen’s Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York branches, helping to establish Bank of the West as one of Grameen’s key business partners in the U.S.

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Wealth Transfer Coming Up: How How Women Will Shape It

Editor’s Note: The following essay is authored by Jenny Xia and Patrick Schmitt, Co-Founders of Free Will, an award-winning social venture with a mission of supporting world leaders in law, design, and philanthropy. To date, more than $850 million has been committed to nonprofit organizations through Free Will. They discuss implications of the upcoming wealth transfer to women.

In the next two decades, an estimated $30 trillion will be inherited in the US as the large and prosperous Baby Boomer generation passes its wealth on to the next generation. This is the largest wealth transfer in human history, and may be the single greatest opportunity for philanthropy ever.

This demographic wave is beginning to thrust “planned giving”  and “bequests” (giving through wills, trusts, and a few other avenues) from the outskirts of mainstream philanthropy into the spotlight. 

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Investing in Gender Equity with a Better Tax Structure

Here at Philanthropy Women, we are primarily concerned with how gender equality movements are being cultivated through charitable giving. However, we occasionally like to step out of our silo and bring in news about how gender equality can be fostered through our collective distribution systems known as governments.

Which is why, today, we want to talk about Elizabeth Warren’s proposed ‘Wealth Tax’. According to Nancy L. Cohen, author, historian and thought leader on gender and American politics, “Warren’s wealth tax would be a massive investment in gender equity.”

Warren’s proposed tax structure might be the biggest boon yet for gender equality in the U.S. (Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

“Senator Warren’s proposed wealth tax is a massive investment in gender equality – and if enacted, would be a gamechanger for women and girls across the US,” said Cohen, further describing the tax plan as a “bold investments in universal childcare and early education” that would “raise wages for childcare workers” and “unleash the potential of American women – increasing workforce participation and helping to close the gender wage gap.” 

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