 First I'd like to welcome Carmen Correa, CEO of Promohair, a lender in social enterprise advancing gender equality in Latin America. Carmen has more than 30 years of experience, including at the Inter-America Development Bank. She's led organizations such as Endeavor and Uruguay, Avena Foundation, before joining Promohair seven years ago. Welcome Carmen. Ellie Turner is the deputy agriculture lead at 60 decibels, where she supports impact investors in social enterprises and leads the company's work on climate resilience. Ellie has over 15 years of experience working on development programs and impact evaluations, mainly in the global south. So welcome Ellie. Marlene Malero Suarez, co-founder and CEO of ELSA, a Lima-based startup that helps companies prevent workplace sexual harassment in Latin America. Marlene is a labor lawyer and worked for more than 15 years as a lawyer and partner at a law firm in Lima, Peru. She teaches gender and labor law, as well as leadership for women in the main law schools and business schools in Peru, and has not one but two TED talks, which you also watch. So, Carmen, I'd like to start with you in part because Carmen and Promohair were, I believe, was the center of the gender lens investing world last week with their Glee Forum in Medellín in Colombia, which I was fortunate to attend. Impact Alpha was a partner. There was conversations about everything and all things gender lens investing, but can you give us some of the highlights, Carmen? Yeah, of course, and thank you very much, Dennis, for being there, for participating in the Glee Forum. Basically, the Glee Forum was last week in Medellín in Colombia. More than 500 people attended the same from 24 countries. We did have more than 130 panelists, and actually it was a great event that showcased that there are great opportunities in Latin America to invest with the gender lens. There is much to be done yet, but, of course, we have to keep unlocking capital into Latin America with this gender perspective. We need also to be working in coordination with other organizations. We need to actually communicate much more the stories out there. We were able to take some of our beneficiaries to the event, so we were able to showcase those stories and the impact you can generate when you invest with the gender lens. So very happy to be here and very happy, Promohair, on the results of the Glee Forum next week. Fantastic. And Promohair has perhaps one of the longest track records of investing in women in Latin America and lending to women. How do you think about measuring your impact? And why would you focus on measuring that impact? For us, measuring is key. When you don't have data, when you don't have information, you cannot actually get to know the impact you are generating. So we are doing a great effort. We have a whole team looking into data, doing the assessment, and also we are working with third parties. For example, with 60 decibels. This will be the second year. We have 60 decibels analyzing and doing an assessment on the different programs we have in place. So we are not only working with them, we are also working with microfinance rating for the financial services. So we are trying to keep up and get to know what it's going on with the services we provide, the impact we are generating. And actually, we are trying also to keep up, for example, reviewing the theory of change of Promohair, getting to see the outcomes, the outputs, and getting to know if the KPIs we have in there are the right ones. So that is an ongoing exercise. As an organization, we learn that we have to invest in measuring, and we are trying to do so. Can you give us an example of how you use data and then whether it's your theory of change or your lending operations, how you then use that to improve and drive more impact? Well, with data, we get to know what is working, what is not working, the initiatives, if the initiatives we have in place are generating an impact. And that allow us to keep improving, that allow us to keep developing new programs, new services. With also Malena, we have been working with her internally at the organization. So to get to know internally what are the changes we have to make. So with our beneficiaries and internally as an organization, we keep actually using that data to keep improving. And this year you've launched not one but two gender bonds in Argentina, gender bonds, which are institutional grade. It allows you to tap local capital markets for capital to lend to female entrepreneurs. How are you thinking about measuring the impact of those? Is it different than your other programs? It is. Actually, yes, we are very happy. We launched two gender bonds in Argentina. This was quite a big step for promujer and for the whole impact investment industry. Because it's the first time that an organization, not the traditional organizations that go into the capital market issues such as gender bonds. We were able to democratize the opportunity of anyone who wants to invest $300 to get into the capital market and invest in promujer. On the other side, we are able to keep up with the financing needed for promujer itself while we are securing that we are going to be able to deploy more funds for our beneficiaries. So basically, we are very happy with the bonds. We are going to be measuring the amount of loans we are providing. But we are going to be measuring also the number of women that can improve their living conditions with these loans. So we have a set of metrics that we are going to be measuring every three months. Actually, we are going to be measuring and we have a local university in Argentina, Universidad Tres de Febrero. They are the ones also supporting us and measuring the impact we are generating. Thank you, Carmen. I'd like to bring in Ellie. Ellie, we're talking about sort of pushing beyond standards, but can you help us set the baseline? Let me talk about emerging standards for gender loans. What is out there? What are people doing that's sort of the baseline? Sure. So I think a lot of the standards that are out there are... So I guess I'll start by saying I love standards. Standard metrics really help for comfortability and accountability and it's something that we really promote at 60 decibels. But I think the standards that are out there for gender loans investing are really about criteria and helping you identify which companies to invest in, but stop short of actually measuring the impact of those investments, right? And so you understand, okay, is this company owned by a woman? Does it employ women? Does it target women? Amazing. Invest in those companies. But I think the next step where it really needs to go is to understand, okay, what is the experience of the women and is it really having that impact? And you can really only do that by collecting the data, by listening to the end stakeholders, by understanding, okay, great, 30% of the workforce is women. Let's talk to them. Let's figure out what their experience is and let's improve that. So I think a lot of the metrics that exist right now are really around sort of how you decide which companies to invest in and which really count as gender loans, but the next step is really measuring impact. Great. Maybe let's back up a bit and share specifically what you are doing to go beyond that because I think it's super interesting and we should know more about it than how you're actually doing it. Yeah, sure. So for anyone out there who doesn't know, 60 decibels is a social impact measurement company and our methodology is really listening to end users and making it really easy for companies and for impact investors to get the voice of the end beneficiary and incorporate that into their decision making. And so we do that through remote based phone surveys. It's a really very simple technology and we use standardized impact metrics that are not gender specific, but that are standardized for all impact investing, right? And so we look at the end users' quality of life or what their net promoter score is or how their life has changed. Maybe I work in agriculture, so we look a lot at how their income or their production has changed. And really the most important and it's extremely simple thing to do to understand gender is to disaggregate that data and look at the difference in all of those metrics between the two genders. And we have a way of sort of indexing that and looking at your gender experience score, which is on the top five metrics, what's the difference between the way that men respond and the way that women respond and if women aren't responding in the same way as men, you have a problem. And it's really, it clearly sort of illuminates that something isn't working and where you need to dig deeper to make sure that women are experiencing the same if not a greater impact than men. It's funny, you think impact investors, they care about the impact of their investment, they'd be actually speaking to the humans on the end of that investment, but it's actually not fairly common. And so I wonder if you could share how investors or businesses are using that type of data to improve their performance. Sure. So, I mean, it is becoming a lot more common, I think. That's something that we've worked hard on, but you're right, not everyone does it. And so they use it in two ways, right? So usually it can be used to demonstrate your impact, which is often the interest of the investor. It's often in the interest of the company if they're trying to raise capital from an impact investor. But then on the other side, it's really about improving a product. So understanding what are the challenges faced specifically by women, maybe that men aren't facing, and using that to improve your product. So for example, we work with like an advisory service that provides information to farmers in Ethiopia about when they should plant and how they should treat their cows and all of the things that you give advisory services on. And we did a study and found out that men were more likely to respond to the messages. They are more likely to be the phone owners. They were more likely to then take up the practices that were being recommended. What that means is then they are more likely to increase their production and get the earnings and have control of those earnings. And so what they did when they received the data and these insights was to really, okay, how do we design this in a way that can reach more women? It has to, you know, let's focus on this sort of secondary listeners and promoting listening to it on a speakerphone with your whole family or in a community or doing the calls at a time that work better for women or making those calls shorter so that they're not as disruptive to the household duties or just different things that you can change about a product with those insights once you really understand how that end user is actually using it. You've done some, I know I've seen some of the reports on agriculture in other areas. What is 60-bett vessels doing around women and gender and how is it thinking about that as a practice? Sure. So, I mean, we think about it in terms of the needs of our clients who are impact investors and businesses. And it's really sort of two different things. One is what I've been describing so far, which is really just understanding that differential impact in order to just be gender-aware and understand how women are experiencing it versus men. And that's just what I've described, which is disaggregating the data and digging into the differences. I think the sort of next level is those businesses that seek to transform gender in some sort of way, right? So to build agency, to empower women. And so we're incorporating these different kinds of questions and metrics and sort of modules that you can use on top of these customer experience surveys to really understand, okay, has a woman's decision-making power in the household changed? Has their experience at work changed or whatever it is that that business is aiming to do? But those are all really tailored to, I mean, they're standardized and they're tailored, right? So you choose the ones that make sense with your impact thesis. And those take longer to impact, right? Like, they take longer to realize. So it takes longer and you should use those types of things later in the life, whereas I think that the experienced differentials you can catch sooner. Great. Thank you. Marlene, you were also in Medin last week. What were your takeaways from a data or impact standpoint? What was the discussion about? Well, thank you. And yeah, very glad to be here. And my view was there was an evolution on an evaluative impact with gender lens investing. For me, the traditional has been, for instance, to know the team you are founding or the team you are investing in, how it is disaggregated by gender. That would be very traditional. And then still it's something like lots, the only thing lots of investors do. Very traditional, but still what lots, the only thing they do. Then the second would be what are you doing with your initiative, your program, your startup or whatever to be founded? And who are the final beneficiaries of that? And I think that's also a traditional viewpoint and that's how it's been going on. But then I think that in the discussion within the glee, I actually saw two new approaches. One was the strength of intersectionality within the discussion. And when it was not on the panel, someone was raising the question in the public. So I think this is something that is coming and coming and should be coming even more because we tend to talk about gender as an anonymous of women, first mistake. And the second one is we only talk about women as we are like one type of women with one kind of characteristics and one time of needs or whatever. And the second new standpoint or viewpoint I actually saw, it's how you look at the teams you are investing in. And that's where we come for instance with ELSA. What ELSA does is that we help organizations prevent sexual harassment at work and we measure it in an anonymous way so we don't wait for a claim or a report to be filed but we ask everyone in the organization. And that is something you can take care as an investor in the teams you are investing in. Okay, you look at what's the impact on the public or on the clients you are working with is but you usually don't look at the impact within your own team. So that's something new, something we do but something I also saw was being talked about within the GLEE. You know, it's interesting and ELSA specifically helps women, empowers women to prevent or address sexual harassment in the workplace. But how are companies, tell us a bit more about how companies are using it to prevent and the data they are using to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. We actually, what we do is we work with organizations that most of them come from the private sector but we have also interventions with public sector, with non-profits and also international organizations. We have worked with all those kind of organizations and we measure it. We have a two entry information tool. It's a B2B SAS, it's a software and it collects data in an anonymous way. It asks questions and the questions vary depending on your previous answer. So it gives metrics on the real incident of sexual harassment at work. For you to have an idea, only 1% of people that go through sexual harassment actually file a report. And the incidents, it's about 35% on average. If it's women, it's around 40%. If it's people from the LGBT community, it's more like 50%. So there is a real gap between the information organization gets through the whistleblower lines for instance and what actually is going on within the organization. So this data is used to automatically create an hyper-personalized action plan for each organization. So what we are actually doing is using data to create a strategy. And that, as with probably a lot of other things, works. So we have reduced the incidence of harassment by 60%. In organizations we have been working with and that's because the initiatives or actions they are taking are more effective and more efficient because now they have the information to do what actually works. And the other thing is that with ELSA, the main affected ones by sexual harassment still are women. But we also cut by age for instance, so it actually affects more younger women within the workforce. It affects more after-descendant women as well. And the manifestations or expressions of harassment are more focused on the body for instance, so the way it's manifested actually changes. We also focus on economic vulnerability. So those, for instance, who earn less than $330 a month are more exposed to sexual harassment as well. So we focus mostly in LGBT communities. So we not only go through women, but we have several cuts. So this is information as well for the organization to be able to look out and target more their actions. I'm just realizing now we have gender lab up there, but you re-branded to ELSA. What was it? What's the acronym? The ELSA, it's for espacios laborales sinacoso, which would be a workplace free of sexual harassment. There was a very public, prominent incident of sexual harassment at the Women's World Cup this year with the Spanish director of football. He had a great, I think, way of thinking about that and talking about how data could actually explain exactly what happened when that incident caused so much confusion. People had different opinions, but talking about how data helps explain. One thing we like a lot about data, when we run ELSA within an organization, something we look forward to do is to talk to people in the leadership positions, because then it stops being Marlene thinks this, because it could be Marlene, it's too sensitive, it's the right word, right? It's too sensitive for this or maybe she's just imagining. And then you change that sentence for 35% of the people working within the organization thinks that, no, that's making an homosexual joke is no longer a joke, things like that. So the message goes a lot clearer. And that also helps to explain things like what happened in the Women's World Cup and all the debate that went around. So if you remember what happened, I mean, he kissed her, right? And when she was receiving the cup or she was receiving her medal. And there was a whole debate within the social media. And some of the evidence he was providing to claim he was innocent, for instance, was a recording within the airplane when they were returning home and they were celebrating and they were also making jokes about the kiss. So they were saying why she's making jokes or the team is making jokes around the kiss if she's then going to file a report. And well, nine out of 10 people do not understand what sexual harassment at work is. Even if we are talking about manifestations that involve bodily contact, you know, as our unwanted sexual attention, as is the act of the kiss, which is a physical act. But still, nine out of 10 have problems acknowledging that could be a way of sexual harassment. And then people started saying, like, well, why she didn't file the report immediately? Why she waited for some days, one or two days? And the other thing is they were saying is, and he was saying as well, is why she didn't reject him when he kissed her. And then one, and actually came from one member of my family, said, yeah, well, before kissing her, she actually carried him. So if she carried him, why wouldn't she be expecting to be a kid, something like that? Well, three out of four people, 75%, put the responsibility of the harassment in women on doing something to provoke it or not stopping it. So the data shows or helps to explain everything that has been going on on the debate where we are as a society or as a global population really about the problem. And so it's focusing on the root causes. And if you focus on the root causes, then you can address them because it's okay to focus on the cases that already happen. You have to attend them and remedy them. But you also have to focus on prevention because you have to stop those things from happening. And from that, you need to address root causes. Thank you. Love that example. We're going to move to Q&A in a bit. So if you have questions, just think about them. We'll just call on you in a moment. But Carmen, you mentioned your work with 60 decibels. I think we learned in our prep calls there was a lot more collaboration here than we realized. Can you share a bit about each of the projects you're working with 60 decibels and Elsa? Yeah, basically, and Ellie will be able to share much more than me. But basically, when we were analyzing from her, we were trying to analyze, okay, the grants you provide, what type of impact those grants are generating in those women, in their families. They have improved actually their living conditions. What else they have done? What is the baseline on when you provide a loan? What are you providing besides that loan? You are providing education. So what is the impact of those programs? What is the impact on other type of services that we provide? But Ellie, I don't know. Maybe you want to share a little bit more about the measurement you did with Promoher. Yeah, I mean, I think just the one key thing to add there is that with microfinance, we're able to do a microfinance index where we're able to look at borrowers across the whole world that are participating in different microfinance organizations. And we measure these impacts across 100 different MFI's and so it's really special to be able to see, okay, here's a performance benchmark. We've asked this question to thousands and thousands of individuals who are borrowing and we can then see sort of how these women that are receiving that loan for Promoher compared to this overall experience that on average a borrower would have with an MFI and that just sort of speaks a little bit to the power of standards and serialization when we do these types of assessments. So that was sort of using a partner for understanding external impact and also I believe is more internal look at Promoher's operations. Yeah, in the case of ELSA, we did apply ELSA in Bolivia. So we did, it's where we have more employees. We have more than 900 employees in Bolivia, so we did a huge assessment there and we are trying to improve the things that with Malen, we found that there are things that we can keep improving internally. I don't know, Malen, maybe you want to share a little bit of that assessment. Yeah, that's a great experience we had in Bolivia with 20 organizations. One of them was actually was indeed Promoher. And I think it's very important because more and more organizations have a gender practice, DNA improvement practice. Sometimes it has to do with the heart of the core of the business or what the organization does and it's the case of Promoher. But that doesn't mean you have a perfect and safest environment. You still have to work because society happens. Something we have seen with a lot of ELSA organizations before they joined ELSA or a new organization that is talking to us is somehow they think that what happens in the world, in society, in Latin America, which is very majestic doesn't happen within their organization. Somehow society hasn't managed to get within the organization that's impossible. So I admire a lot of organizations that go through ELSA because it takes a lot of courage to actually ask the people what you were mentioning earlier. It's like they are growing and growing on that practice but usually what you focus on is in your output. What policies do you have? Do you have a whistleblower line or not? And that's it. Do you train your employees? That's it but you don't see the impact of those measures or actions you are taking. So it's more like that way it's just a compliance check but the compliance is meant to change things really. More actionable. Ellie, perhaps this is a question for you. Coming back to the emerging standards, what do we think they're getting right or wrong or what would you, at an industry level, you'd like to see more of? I mean I think I sort of already answered this but I mean what I would like to see more of is more about the woman's experience. Whether it's, I mean, you have these categories of criteria that have to do with maybe you're targeting women's leadership or maybe you're targeting the woman as the consumer or the woman as the employee but there are not yet, I'm aware of standard metrics for what that female experience should be as an employee or as a consumer or what you want to hear back from them and so I think that that is sort of the next step and the next gap that remains to be seen. Carmen, working with outside investors or funders, are you, what is your experience with so-called standardization or expectations for reporting? Is there sometimes a misalignment between what they're asking and what you'd like to be collecting or what you could be? Well basically the investors are requesting more data. The investors are requesting us to be measuring much more the impact. It's not enough to actually state, okay I'm delivering 150 loans, okay, what is the impact of those loans? What are you achieving with those loans? What are those women achieving with those loans? So we have to be very well aware of that and basically in some cases, what it's important actually to be kind of aware is that you have to invest to measure and we are doing a great investment in setting up the team that is doing that assessment in actually hiring someone at 60 decibels or others so you need to invest and that investment it will actually allow you to get access to new investors and will allow you to get access to showcase your success story. So it's a worthwhile investment we have to do as organizations. In some cases yes, you will find investors that would like you to be much more in the type of data you are gathering but you have to negotiate as always. At some level though you're also saying it costs money to do this type of evaluation and impact investors and funders should be aware of that with their own expectations. Yeah and actually they should, someone should be paid also for that type of investment. We are willing to do an investment but also we have to be looking for someone else to support us as organizations to do that investment too. Great, so let's put that up for questions. Is there, right here ma'am? Hi my name is Jeanette Gurung and I, we run a standard for women's empowerment which none of you seem to be aware of which is so frustrating to me as always. About eight years ago we designed the WPlus standard and we did so in a way that not only measures and quantifies impact for women's empowerment but monetizes it. And the intent of that was to provide, as Carmen said it costs money to measure and so we're trying to provide a market based way to one incentivize projects, not necessarily companies, could be companies to do more for women's empowerment, number one. And to generate revenues that would also pay for that measurement cost as well as paying for additional activities for women's empowerment. And three most importantly to my organization as a not-for-profit is that we require at least 20% of the value of the credits that are generated that are WPlus credits sold on the market. At least 20% of that must be provided as a payment to women's organizations inside the project that's being measured. And just, I could go on and on, I will not. We have a website, we have a lot of information about us. We were in the iris approved network of standards but somehow people keep overlooking us. We work with the World Bank, work with the Gates Foundation and many others. And also I think we have a way to use a methodology jointly with a carbon standard and a carbon methodology so we can label carbon offset with a label for women's empowerment and it achieves a higher premium price for that. So thanks very much. Thank you. No, it's interesting because we hear about carbon credits all the time. Have you all come across? Gender's a co-benefit? Gender credits? It can be a co-benefit of a carbon credit. I think co-benefits. Is this something you all have seen in the marketplace? I have not, no, but it's super exciting and I've seen it sort of obviously with carbon but with other impacts as well, this idea of monetizing specific impacts which I think is super cool. I think you have to really put a value on something that you want to achieve and passing it on to the consumer I think is always a great idea. So super excited to learn about that. Any other questions? Right away. So how do you think about the element of time and how you measure impact and what are proxy metrics that you can use in the time when you do create an investment if you don't see the impact right away? Especially because the time frame investments are super long. Sure, so I think it really, it depends on the investment and the impact you're trying to achieve and so usually the first thing we'll do is we'll sit down with the investor in the business and say like, what's your impact thesis? What's the expected time that you would anticipate that it would take to achieve that and from there we can sort of back out the outcomes that we would want to see sooner or should we just wait one year, two years, three years to do this study when we think that something could happen. But I think it really is completely dependent upon what the intervention is as to what the early proxies of success would be. I have a follow-up question for Allie as well. We've talked a lot about the standard and you talked about the gap to what phase two might look like. I'm curious if you have an idea of what that kind of like North Star in that second phase would be. It seems like you've been thinking about this for a while so you talked about the experience of an employee or a leader in the space like what is the North Star of that experience? That's a great question. Again, I think there are, there's probably a different North Star for different categories of investment, right? So women's empowerment is one dimension and so that is probably, those metrics are probably that North Star there but other gender lens investments are really focused on something that's completely separate from empowerment and so would need a different North Star and so I think what I would like to see at the end is maybe a set of two or three metrics and five categories each or something of what are these buckets that investments are getting toward and is it the employee experience, the women's empowerment, a decision making in a household or is it something else and then having specific metrics about the woman's experience for each of those buckets I think. I don't know if you guys are welcome to chime in if you have a North Star. Hi, thank you for this interesting conversation. I'm, I work in gender based violence and gender based violence is usually an unintended consequence of something else and so there are cases where impact investors come into communities and I work a lot in indigenous communities with new investments which increases economic well-being and then increases issues around that, alcohol drug use and so on. As an impact investor if your focus is economic well-being you're not thinking about these issues and you're definitely not paying for that kind of assessment of potential negative consequences. So my question I guess is are there other players in the field that could step in and try to measure that, monitor that, help with some of the cost and time that's involved in looking at those potential negative consequences? In our case we pay a lot of attention to gender based violence because actually we are very well aware of when you empower women you get to empower her she will play a totally different role at the family level so she could be seen as the person who comes with that needed income and she will be like in a pedestal but on the other side she can be seen as someone that can get out and she will be suffering gender based violence so we keep track of that we are very well aware we have in place different programs to support women to identify what is gender based violence because actually most of these women associate gender based violence with a punch but there are different you know more than me that there are various different ways of suffering gender based violence so we are very well aware of that and we keep track of that that is one of the key things that we keep track I said I mean gender lens investing I think these are very clear cases of that but I feel like there's investors that aren't necessarily investing in women for example in this case we're maybe adopting a gender lens when you're not investing in women you're investing in other things could surface some of those issues please ma'am hi at this conference we're in a community that embraces gender lens investing we embrace investing in diversity I'm just curious given what's happening particularly in the US right now with the lawsuit that happened against Harvard to kind of out reverse discrimination how do you all see that you would just whether it be gender investors or working in the gender space are going to navigate that they're currently that same organization when after Harvard is now going after fearless fund and also making new windows about going after others that are fearless fund just if you don't know they fund in women entrepreneurs black women entrepreneurs so again it's I mean if any community there is to figure out how we're going to navigate this I'm just curious what your perspective is on that and how you see it in holding so you're referencing the Supreme Court decision against affirmative action and as it starts going into our space to be clear those were race specific decisions correct but your question is how and what's to stop it from being a slippery slope into gender investing I can go yeah I can go from two viewpoints because I'm a startup so I receive investment and I also work with companies that are multinational some are you know headquarters based in the US and they have the NIA programs and initiatives and they are being sued so those you know that's like another backlash of that the corporations are being sued again because of those programs and then as an entrepreneur and I'm a Latino founder so sometimes I can benefit from funds that are directed towards Latino founders or women or things like that so I think there was a panel I think it was just yesterday within the DNI track and they're already allocating funds because they are anticipating they are going to be sued so probably there's going to be an extra backlash in this environment and I'm from Peru so I work in Latin America and then the backlash is also felt there we don't have the US legal system that goes through the rulings we have mostly things going through laws but then we have parliament and then we have congresses that are starting to ban initiatives that were promoting quotas or things like this and they are using the Supreme Court ruling as one of their arguments so the backlash is you know going out of the US as well and in different fields not only in impact investment it's going everywhere this is an amazing conversation thank you so much everyone it's a question for the panel so over the course of a lot of gender based programming over the last 30 years and sustainable development initiatives there's been as you've all noted an increased realization that if you focus exclusively on women that there is this massive backlash and so really the new emphasis are not so new now it's been good 10 years is that really you need to be including everyone in the family and that has been an evolution of learning so I'd love to hear the perspectives from anyone on the panel as to how and whether you would see maybe a family based approach that is not unintentionally excluding men or husbands in this particular equation so that there is a buy-in and therefore genuine empowerment of women rather than seeing that empowerment as a threat interesting question basically men are usually the ones who have access to different specifically when we are speaking about financial services so we are the ones excluding usually from the financial services we are the ones that require that access and we are concentrating our efforts on giving women the access to the funds they need to develop their own businesses to have access to different type of services so basically it's not excluding men but trying to give women the access to the services they don't have so it's kind of we are half of the population and we are actually only 6% of the funds invested in Latin America are going to women-led companies so 94% of the funds are going to men-led companies so we have to change that equation so it's not kind of leaving the men out actually we are the ones out of the equation we need to include much more women I interviewed an entrepreneur at your forum last week who was exclusively lending to women and part of his pitch is that they'll then employ the husband once they have money to create businesses that employ the husband there is a knock on effect other questions? I've alluded to it a few times we have adopted it at 60 decibels and we are members of 2x and we've helped other companies to adopt it but again it's criteria it is not impact measurement so it helps you what I said at the very beginning it helps you figure out what is investment and am I making one and it helps get some of the data from the companies you're investing in but it doesn't measure impact so I think we need to do both but it's a good baseline it's a great baseline and basically they are also working on a certification so I think that it will help the industry to set that baseline but as Ellie was stating it's not measuring the impact itself but it's very much needed Hi there Hi there I was curious if talking through beyond metrics looking at the whole architecture for measuring impact if you could share maybe an example or had any thoughts about what would be an example for where you see this next generation of impact measurement with the gender lens looking from kind of the different strands that you've been mentioning around data around institutional incentives is there a firm or is there an emblematic case out there that really exemplifies where the industry should be moving towards and what are those key enabling factors across like an architecture for measuring impact Yeah, I don't have a great example but I guess I can say that the thing I would want to see in the next generation would be similar to what I would want to see for all impact measurement the investors and the companies make it a part of their day-to-day operation their regular business operations to understand the voice of the end beneficiary and so like Carmen was talking about how hard it is to get the resources to do the impact studies and that's because it's still like as far as we've come it is still not something that is baked into the investment it's something you're either doing through like a grant or like a special technical assistance facility or like you know it's not something that it's not like accounting that like every business has to do and it should be accounting right like there should be a function or should there should just be a line item where you just every year every two years you check in with your end users and you say how's your quality of life how are things going for you what challenges are you facing that's that's what I would want to see and it's not gender specific of course but see what you guys Yeah, I totally agree and we need to keep standardizing we need some methodologies out there that we can all use and hopefully open and for free at some point but of course we have to be very open also to be and keep adjusting our self to what it's needed because non-program is the same as the other one so it's kind of very difficult you standardize and you have a baseline but on the other side you will have totally different programs out there so it's kind of adjusting yourself to measuring your impact according to what your organizations your objectives are I would add something there I think could be sound obvious but to really be aware of what impact means and not confused by output but the real impact which is at least I think at this point so what are the changes in the lives of the end users and to ask the end users as part of that then I would expect not only the I respect donors for instance or the ones that are providing the resources to ask for those kind of studies as well for instance so it's like our encouragement system and I would expect to for gender to be part of the impact measurements that it's like a must do because half of the population and their lives and the things they go through and the impact is different with them and when we don't put a gender lens perspective there then you know things that we are not meant to happen can happen Marlene you mentioned in our prep sessions that some of your data is being used here in the US and elsewhere can you say a bit about that? Yeah we actually hold the biggest data set of sexual harassment at work within Latin America in big corporations that's the scope and we have like 110,000 data entry points so it's really the biggest at least in the Latin American region and it doesn't exist in the US as well the samples the papers in the US use are 200 or 2000 so we are partnering with academics from Stanford with Berkeley and Washington University and students from data analytics or people analytics or researchers are using the data to create knowledge that is also the purpose of a tool as we have we have the data open for researchers and translate it into English if anyone is interested as well it's available for research and with that we expect also impact in social policy in public policy I mean because sometimes the law if we talk about public policy as materialized within law it has some solutions but if those solutions are only legal and they are not changing or serving the people they are supposed to serve they are not good so with our data we can also modify things or suggest things that are to policy makers. As a baseline my recommendation would be pick up no more than four KPIs so find those that will really showcase the impact we are generating and try to actually gather the information for those then you can go much more in depth whatever you can invest it will be more than what you are doing right now but basically you can start with three four KPIs and then you will be investing I don't know you will probably I think the question about alternative methodologies like there are definitely methodologies out there that are like modeling using predictive analytics to say what your impact could be but I've never seen one that's like a user friendly tool that anyone could access right it's actually like a pretty in depth process to go through like all of these questions about the context that you're in and the markets that you're serving and all of this so it's a great idea I think I would love to see it developed but it's not something that I personally am working on or I'm aware of and it actually depends on the amount of data you have because we do it we have the amount of data to predict with 85% of accuracy and still there is a 15% gap and we have a lot of information and if you have like less data points your accuracy is like 70% 60 something percent and also the the population you're measuring or the context has to be kind of homogeneous as well and I guess that the kind of projects you measure or you do are not necessarily the rule but I do think that technology is bringing a lot of new possibilities and solutions so probably there's something not as accurate as we would like to but something that would lower the costs maybe I mean I'm a startup and if you were a founder only 1% of the BC funds would be for you would be available for you and the BCs they increasing they I mean if you ask a BC now how much of your portfolio has female founders for instance just female founders now they know the answer and if you ask that question like three years ago they would have to start counting in their minds while trying to answer so at least now and it's a very poor at least I'm sorry they're counting but then you know sometimes they say like 15% or something like that and then they say but they are not enough female founders so they're not like female founders or female founders of things like that and but the LPs the ones that are giving the money to the BCs that's how it works are starting to ask more and more for how or in whom they are investing so what I think is going to happen for BCs at least for venture capitals and for impact investors I think it's you know they are more advanced within this path but the other ones are way behind but they have to report so they are being obliged by the ones that are giving the money to report and that's a change I think they are going to be to have transparency practices and of course then you have the impact thing on the startups and yet that's going to be hard to measure again and with the startups it's going to happen for instance we measure but because we are two measures so it's part of what we do but for other startups it doesn't work like that so it's going I think to happen the same it's going to cost you need resources to fund the measuring of the impact or you need an investor to go through 60 decibels for instance to measure the impact on a startup or fund it so it's going to happen the same here we have to change our mentality we don't have to see measurement as a cost it's an investment whatever we measure we will be able to change to actually showcase the impact so for us it's an investment we are investing a lot of money but it's a good investment it's those type of investment that we need to fulfill just to respond quickly on the idea of time because it's a great point you're exactly right and it's something we really designed our model around and it actually goes back to the theme of standard metrics it is the reason that doing a study with us doesn't take very much time on the part of the founder of the management team I mean if promo here signs up for a study we tell you this is the MFI survey you spend an hour on the phone you give us phone numbers and then we say go run your business we'll do this and we'll talk to you in 12 weeks and then we'll show you the results but it's very much designed from the perspective of like this is what we do this isn't what you should have to do you don't have time for this we've standardized it we've made it super easy for everyone now we certainly get partners who want to brainstorm metrics but it's not required we have developed these standard metrics for different industries and across all of them so you can have an off the shelf impact study without it taking a ton of your time