 First, you know, and it was a great intro, I'll just share, I'm Liza, I lead U.S. investments at Axion Venture Lab, where we focus on fintech investments that are increasing not just access to financial services but affordability and well-designed financial products for low-income individuals and small businesses around the world, so focus on, in addition to the U.S., Latin America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. After the past few years, we've been kind of continuing our thinking on gender and expanding our thinking on gender. Because we know that women in the work that we do continue to be disproportionately underserved by the financial system in emerging markets, they're 10% less likely to even have a bank account and operate roughly a fifth of small businesses but have a third of the credit gap, so really underserved, and that presents an opportunity. There's a almost $2 trillion credit gap that women, small business owners, in emerging markets face, and we see that as a big opportunity for the fintechs that we invest in. So with that, we'd love to introduce here Asya and Shariar to kick things off. Maybe starting with you, Shariar, could you just share a little bit about yourself and about your work at Trucker? Yeah, thank you for that. I'm Shariar. I'm the CEO and co-founder at Trucker. Trucker is a fintech based in Pakistan, and we focus on the transportation sector. We provide loans to truck drivers and truck owners, whether they're first-time truck owners or have been in the business for a while. This is a sector that has not been previously banked, so banks have not provided financing to the trucking industry there for various reasons. So truckers have had to resort to other sources of financing, which includes loan sharks and other sorts of maybe going to your family, and it's a pretty sizable industry there, but for the last 50 years, truckers have been sort of neglected. So we saw the opportunity there. Previously, I had a trucking company, so I've grown some trucks myself for a while. So we saw that opportunity, and it's actually pretty close to our hearts, so we're sort of solving that problem in the region. Amazing. And I think for most folks in this room of Pakistani fintech focused on truckers wouldn't be the first thing that came to mind when you thought about gender. Would love to just understand, I mean, seeing your commitment to this girl over the last year has been really incredible. Would love to just understand how you first started to think about gender and where you are now. Sure. So just like any other company, when we started hiring people, there's a lot of resumes would come in and we'd hire people, and I'd ask the HR people why aren't women interested in joining a trucker? So they said that women just don't like coming to logistics. As I said there, I don't accept this as sort of an explanation because logistics is a big sector in Pakistan. It's not just driving trucks. There's also, you know, there's sales, there's marketing, there's corporate sales, corporate departments that have supply chain departments, and all of these areas where women could make a contribution, and so they said, well, they just didn't have an answer to it. So I went searching and we actually found a region in Pakistan, which is in the third desert, which is like 400 miles from Karachi, and this region previously had nothing, but in the last 10 years, they've developed like coal mines and different power projects in that region, and in that region, there's indigenous female truck drivers. Like the entire region is covered by just female truck drivers, and I'm like, this is great. I mean, the whole Pakistan has zero truck drivers, and this like far away region in the desert has 100% female truck drivers. I said, we need to take this and sort of try and apply this to the rest of the country because if it can be done there, then it can be done sort of, and that's where we got really interested in that initiative, and then it sort of all came together because we, you know, we met Axion introduced us to Roots of Impact, Roots of Impact got interested in the mission, and then they connected us to Valley for Women, and so then we started working with USAID also on some initiatives, so the whole sort of thing came together very nicely, and now we're sort of working towards, you know, this initiative together. Perfect, and that's a fantastic segue, Asya, maybe just kick things off with a little bit about Value for Women and yourself when you work there. Sure, happy to. Can everyone hear me okay? Too loud. Okay. My name is Asya Troitansky, and I'm Associate Director for Inclusive Investment and Business Practice at Value for Women. Really pleased to be here and to Axion Venture Lab for dreaming up this event, and for helping to lead the charge in promoting gender inclusion in the FinTech sector, which is a cause that's near and dear to our hearts. So a bit about us, for those new to Value for Women, we are a global organization seeking to make gender inclusion everyone's business and in partnership with the private sector, and the idea is that we're working towards is, or the goal that we're working towards is driving improved opportunities for women, be they employees, leaders, decision makers, customers, clients all across the value chain, and we see a lot of potential in working with the private sector actors, particularly in the impact space, but not exclusively to do so. We have a global team that's locally embedded in emerging markets. I'm one of two that's based in the US, but we work in Africa, Latin America and Asia, and we work with our partners to come up with solutions that are context specific and relevant, and what we do with how we support trucker in Pakistan is going to look very, very different than how we support an impact fund that's investing in agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. So that's a bit about us, and I'm just really happy to be here having this conversation. Sure. And maybe it'd be great to get a bit more on how you think about this problem specifically and what opportunities you see for fintech companies to address gender inclusion. Definitely. And I think you already started talking about this, Liza, but we're here because the potential for fintechs to positively impact women is really staggering. In emerging markets, women are 32% of women are unbanked, which represents almost a billion women around the world. And even for those women who are being to have access to financial services, 73% are dissatisfied with the services that they're receiving. It's not meeting their needs, their preferences, their financial needs in their everyday life. So that's a really, really big problem. So why is this happening? Because most women are still, they think that the only solution that they see as sort of the way to get banked is through banks, and brick and mortar banks are really hard to access due to traditional and sometimes restrictive social norms, women have restrictions in mobility, right, and sort of how far they can travel. They also have what's called time poverty, right, the triple burden that they face in terms of home and work responsibilities, not to mention all of the document expectations in order to to register for formal account with with a bank, right. And so fintechs offer a really promising solution. And while they are not a panacea by by any means, they can help to overcome some of these constraints around mobility, time, just the complexity of accessing accounts through through through formal banks. And then maybe just one more thing to say, which is that for fintechs, right, there there's just a tremendous trillion dollar opportunity in in banking the more of the of the women's market, right. So fintechs then stand to gain in terms of the quantity of customers that they can bring on, but also the quality of customers. There is now ample evidence to show that women are good customers perform really, really well and are often loyal and take out multiple products with different financial institutions. So in financial terms, speak, you know, they have similar lower customer acquisition costs, they have higher lifetime value to banks. And so tremendous opportunity. Sorry. And one more thing, just to paint the picture, which is just like, if it's so obvious, right, like if fintechs are so obviously the solution, why aren't they already designing with women in mind? And there are there have been like 80 page reports written about this. But I'll just sort of point to a few factors, because it's important to think about these as we move into the solutions part of the conversation. So one is just having giant blind spots, right, and making assumptions that women and men in a given market will have the same financial needs, preferences, behavior, right, the one size fits all gender neutral approach, which we know does not work and does not respond to women's actual preferences. Another piece is having too few women in decision making power in in fintechs leadership and in the product design teams, which exacerbates that blind spot. And again, designing for all but really designing for for men and not for women. And then another piece is that when fintechs first launched, they have a lot of pressure to prove their models as quickly as possible. And they make the assumption which is actually not backed by evidence that men are going to be that men are more likely to be early adopters. And so they design for men. And then they fall into this self perpetuating cycle of continuing to design for men. And it takes a very conscious pause and reflection to to to apply gender lens and to begin to become more intentional about designing for women and for men in a given market. I just painted a bleak picture and I didn't mean to but I did want to I did want to sort of highlight that there are kind of big barriers and obstacles that we as a sector need to work to overcome. And there are promising solutions and ideas out there. And I'm excited to get into that as we move forward in the session. Yeah, it's incredible context and I've definitely seen a lot of examples of those challenges and also opportunities in our own portfolio. Shariar, for you, you're the founder of an early stage company. How do you think about prioritization? How do you think about kind of the right entry point? You know, once gender became a priority for you? And kind of what's what's next for you as you're thinking about gender? So so for us, it wasn't I mean, from day one, you know, we we had the mindset to, to hire, you know, men women both into the into the sector, right? So into our company. So so for us, it wasn't we didn't have to prioritize it was it was like, it was a given for us. We just we just faced a lot of resistance when we when we started doing it. And I think a lot of it starts with, you know, one of the things that we have decided is that we're going to make it attractive for women to enter the space. And that means starting at recruiting at at universities and colleges. So we start talking to we have a good network there. We start talking to universities and colleges to to place women into those jobs, right? Because they're not the the three, four sectors that women look at first is probably going to look at those sectors. So that's sort of what we're looking at in terms of where to start. One of the things that really stood out for me. I visited Bangladesh last year. And you know, I was visiting a senior government official there. And you know, he looks at me, he's like, you know, you know, the reason why we're doing better than you guys now. And you know, Bangladesh box over one country at one point, he said the reason is because and I said, I don't know, tell me. He's like, don't repeat this. But it's because we, you know, we have women in our workforce, like half, you know, half of the workforce is like women. He's like, that's a real reason, you know, we just don't, we just don't like advertise it. I said, well, okay, I mean, that's, you know, that's nice. So but but it really stood out because it's, it's, I mean, in some levels, it's true, right? I mean, the participation in Pakistan is quite low. And there's so much talent, it's like talent sitting on the sidelines. You know, I think, you know, you see energetic women who are balancing, you know, home and sort of other things. And like my own mother, for example, she's one of the few sort of broke the glass barrier in terms of women law enforcement in Pakistan. So, so that's, so she never took like no for an answer. She didn't care it was a male dominated space, you just went in and you know, now sort of it's very senior there in law enforcement. So, so it's, it's very possible. I mean, you just have to have the attitude that, you know, it can be done and just sort of work on good, good policies and good programs to sort of execute that. Yeah, and you started to allude to this earlier, but I think I just can't stand the suspense. So how many women truck drivers do we have? Sorry. So so we, we don't, we don't employ truck drivers. We're a marketplace that connects, you know, truckers with shippers. But in that desert region, there's about 250 female truck drivers. So our staff, so we have about 15% women in our staff. And we started at about 0% essentially. So, so we're trying to build that up to about 30 40% over the next year. That's our sort of target. And, and it's across. So it's not just in one area, for example, you know, if we were to just hire all females in our tech team, for example, right? That's, that's okay, you can do that. But we want it across the board. So we've actually hired women operations. We actually hired a female in in recoveries in the truck stand, which is like a job that even I wouldn't want to take. So so that's that's that's cool that the stuff like that is happening. For sure. Appreciate the question. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to interrupt it. It's not yet question time. But I'm very curious, when I think of trucking and transportation in women, I always think of safety issues. So, you know, truckers are on long roads by themselves, there are inherent safety issues and issues associated with Uber or, you know, taxi drivers, there's a reason why it's not common for women to take part of the role. Could you speak to what some of those issues are for? So, so there's, there's two kinds of safety. Do you mean like safety in terms of road accidents and stuff like that? What do you mean? Safety being being a woman, safety of physical, right, sexual violence in a more vulnerable position being out there. Yeah. Right. So, so there's the organizations that we are, that we're working with, they focus on, on these kinds of matters. There's a, there's an organization called CTLC that, that in particular, looks at sort of women's safety in, in the workplace. So working with them to build, to build systems where there's a response mechanism, there's a first response, for example, that they can, you know, before there weren't even, I mean, if something happened, you'd have to contact the police and that's not, you don't really want to do that. You want to sort of, people want to stay away from contacting the police in those kind of countries. So there, there are these organizations that are coming up and they, they liaison with, with private sector people to, to sort of make it comfortable for women to, to approach them and, and you can call them and sort of get help immediately. And so, so just working with them to sort of, you know, build that. So, so there are ways to, to make that environment better. And yes, that, that is a concern. Obviously, that is, that's one of the barriers that prevent women from wanting to join, you know, these kind of industries in Pakistan. Thanks. And last question on my end, before we move into some discussion groups, but I think this is a good segue. You alluded to it earlier, but, you know, you all, you know, found these women in the desert, who are driving trucks and brought this to, you know, your investors and others in the ecosystem, who I think at all levels, both on the investors, you know, our limited partners, but also grant funders and, and you mentioned Roots of Impact, have kind of wrapped their arms around you. We'd love for you to just speak quickly to the ecosystem and, and how some of that has kind of enabled this work or enabled you to, you know, make progress and, and kind of push this work forward. Yeah, I think I think this, I mean, without the support, it makes it a lot more difficult to, to, to do these things, right? I mean, we're already trying to build a new, new company that has its own challenges. So if you're taking on such a challenge, which is against the wind, I mean, I don't think it would, it would necessarily work out too well, to be honest. So the help is, is, is I think it's, it's invaluable. I don't think you'll be able to, to start. I mean, it's a starting spot, right? And then there's learnings that, that these organizations have had in different countries, which might be, you know, that can be applied to Pakistan. So I think that that helps a lot. So it's both just not just resources, but also the learnings that, that we, we get to see, I mean, designing a program with, with value for women, you know, they worked across the globe in different, different countries. So, so I think that sort of stuff really helps, right, in terms of getting this also done. Anything to add before we move into. I'd love to add, because I think what Sherry really touched on was the importance of bringing women into, into the workforce. And I'd like to offer just a few sort of guiding principles is too strong or a word, but maybe some, some practices that we've seen in gender inclusive product design, like vis-a-vis clients that sound okay, just to compliment. And I think it's best illustrated through another example, rather than sort of sitting up here and you know, walking you all through a complicated framework. So I'll just talk about one more, one other FinTech player, because I think even though we didn't work with them directly, there's a nice financial alliance for women case study about them that's publicly available. And they do a lot of things. They exemplify a lot of the principles of gender inclusive FinTech design. So this group is called time. And they are a digital banking group that's focused on financial inclusion for the underserved in South Africa. They started in 2019. And in just a few years, we're able to bring in almost 6 million clients, just over half of whom are women. Now the just over half is actually pretty remarkable because, unlike microfinance institutions, FinTechs disproportionately reach men rather than women. And so there are some reasons or some factors behind why they were able to bring in so much so many women. They didn't start as a women focused group from the get go, although they were focused on designing for their users who are underserved under both unbanked and underbanked in South Africa. And they quickly realized that women were particularly unbanked and underbanked as is true in many contexts around the world. And so they sought to design an easy to use product that women could easily access. So how did they do it? They tried to figure out, okay, where like where are the women like where do they where do they go every single day? Right. And so and one of those places where women go every day is the local grocery store convenience store to get foods non perishables for for for their home. And so they partnered with a large chain of these little local grocery stores and set up kiosks to onboard women to to to this digital financial product. And they made it very easy to register less than five minutes. And they didn't leave it to just this little kiosk, which might be intimidating, even though it's in a familiar place still might be intimidating, right? Like new technology. What is this? They they kind of brought in digital plus human touch. So they set up an ambassador program. They recruited local women from these different neighborhoods just to to women the kiosks, right? And and bring in new customers. And then the product itself, super easy to use, easy customer interface, clean, no jargon, no complicated language, no complicated financial terms and available in in how many 12 of South Africa's local languages. So super cool. Lots of intentional design. One other really cool two other cool things they did. One is they didn't just sit on their laurels, they continued to talk to women, they did focus groups, they did very intentional market research with their women users. And they were and they realized that women wanted other products, they wanted savings products, they wanted insurance product. And so they designed those specifically based on research that they were carrying out with women and the conversations they were having. And then the the other thing that they did was that first on an experimental basis, they started to offer these other product at very low fees. They didn't know if they were going to be profitable or not. And they studied the the performance, the repayment rates of their women users, and very quickly saw the the business case for serving women and realized that they could be profitable even offering these product at very low rates, because women were such strong performers in their portfolio. So just a lot of intentional design and several key principles that I think apply beyond this specific fintech. So one, the not assuming that one size fits all and just not assuming in general like not assuming right like collecting data and figuring out what are women's actual preferences and needs on a day to day basis, and using lots of types of data. So market research being one, right, focus groups, observation, and then using their own data, doing sex disaggregated analysis, forming the business case, understanding how are women actually using the product? What are their preferences? And then the digital and the human touch, the go to very intentional go to market strategy, pursuing partnerships with other institutions, right, in this case, the grocery chains for them to actually place their kiosks. And then lastly, the diverse leadership piece. So at this point, only two of the their 11 C suite members are women, but they recognize that this is an area of growth and improvement. And I think, you know, trucker also is really committed to this, I think there's recognition supported by evidence that having diversity in all of its forms in the leadership brings better, better quality in decision making and better services and solutions for diverse segments, including for for women. So those are some of the building blocks. And I'm sure you all have other ideas that we can get into. Absolutely. Now with that, I want to introduce three other incredible facilitators that we have here today from from different organizations. Actually, let you introduce yourselves, but maybe we'll start with Daniel. Hi, my name is Daniel Goldfarb. I'm founder and executive chairman of Lendable. We're an impact asset manager. We've deployed about $450 million to fintechs and emerging markets. We introduced internal DEI and 2x related criteria. Three and a half years ago, started that process, introduced a gender lens to our investment criteria about two years ago, are now launching our first gender fund. So I've been on this journey and really excited to learn with you. Hi, everyone. I'm Deanna Buncheva-Gooley and I'm a senior advisor focused on digital finance at USAID. For those of you who don't know USAID, this is a US agency for international development. So it's the largest international development agency in the world. USAID provides aid in disaster situations, also funds for economic development of countries, COVID vaccines the past few years. It only operates in emerging markets, obviously. And I am in the technology division and currently one of my biggest activities is I am managing what's called Women in the Digital Economy Fund. And that's a presidential initiative looking to close the gender digital divide in the digital economy globally. And there will be a lot of announcements coming out about that soon. It's a very exciting activity. Hi, I'm Laurie Spangler, founder and CEO of courageous capital advisors. I focus quite a bit on mobilizing capital, particularly with a gender dimension across investor typologies. So institutional investors, family offices, foundations and mobilizing it for the asset managers and the entrepreneurs that are going to use it to generate the impact. What I always remind investors is that with respect, they are enablers of impact. They don't actually generate impact. And so if they really want to put their money to work for impact, they need to understand the underlying business models and really think about how they can support, advance, accelerate, especially the achievement of our gender objectives and how they deploy their capital. To also add to Daniel's introduction as the gender commitment of Lendable, I am the first female board member of Lendable. Even better. Amazing. Are we back? Oh, OK. Is he nodding? Perfect. And before I introduce my colleague Eugenia, who's going to talk about logistics, I just want to bring two goals that I'm thinking about and we'll be thinking about in these conversations. And I'll invite you to think about also, we've been really intentionable, intentionable, we've been really intentional about bringing different layers of the ecosystem. So we have investors, debt providers, limited partners who are investing in the investors, DFI's, consulting founders themselves. And two goals I'm thinking about for this conversation are one, in our peer groups, what are the other really interesting things that are happening in gender inclusion? And what can I learn from the other people who are doing what I'm doing on a day to day basis? And then we'll mix things up and move into mixed groups where we can learn better how to better collaborate as an ecosystem. What are the opportunities to work together? What's not working in what we're doing now for other stakeholders in the ecosystem? And how can we start to kind of build those relationships and move things forward that way? So with that, I'll hand it over to you, Eugenia, who's going to talk about what will happen next. Thank you so much. And we are going to a fun part. If we were on Zoom, everyone would be dropping off because nobody likes break out rooms, but we're stuck here. So we're going to we're going to do a little bit of like engaging activities. So we're going to have three groups. Two facilitators will be leading each group. So we're going to have founders and operators at group A. And we would ask people to proceed there. And Asya and Sherry are will be leading the group with the founders and operators. Don't go anywhere, please. I'm joking. I'm joking. Then we're going to have direct investors in entrepreneurs and in startups led by Liza from VentureLab and Daniel from Landable. And then we're going to have a group of LPs, DFIs, nonprofits led by Lauren and Diana. I'm Eugenia, by the way, I'm a head of community at VentureLab. I work directly with Liza and lead in the community. So I also have cards. I'm going to distribute it for you and then everyone who has like red, green and blue to the second part of our workshop, you're going to come together and kind of see the ways we can collaborate, but it's later on. But I will give you a card right away. So am I forgetting something? I think that time we're going to have 20 minutes for each stage like we're going to discuss 20 minutes first, then we're going to present one or two sentences of each group. Like what did you learn? What was interesting? So we're not going to do like a boring debrief. But and then we're going to mix up and going to discuss once again. So we have 20 minutes for each group discussion. And I think we can start. So again, entrepreneurs and operators led by Asa and Sherry are just here on this table. And it's like a children garden. It's very fun. And then we have another group which is Group B with the investors in entrepreneurs on this stage with Liza and Daniel, please there. And then here we're going to have a group of LPs, non-profits and who else we have? DFI's, etc. So and if you have a question, which group you should go to, feel free to ask me. I hope you had a good time discussing in between the groups of your peers, investors, entrepreneurs. So now it's time to do a quick not debrief, but more like what did you learn? What was impressive for you? So we're going to share and we're going to start with a group of entrepreneurs and operators. It's literally five minutes because we want to do another round as well. Anyone from the entrepreneurs want to take the lead presenting? Asa. I'll share just two nuggets. One is we talked about the difference between having women customers, which is great, but that not being the same as actually making sure that the products that you're offering are high impact for women customers. So one of the people in our group is working with an organization that some of you might have heard of 60 decibels to actually validate the impact and improve the product. That was one. And then another we one of the people in our group talked about convincing a bank to better design for women. He operates in an advisory capacity and he said that the way that he was able to do it by looking at their data and showing there was a missed sort of like he was leaving money on the table like there was this big group of sort of women entrepreneur clients that that weren't being served with the with the product that they were offering. And they needed to go like a bit more upmarket and what they were sort of in the middle. They needed to design a product to better serve the missing middle. And they and looking at the showing them in their own data was very compelling. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I say and investors. Anyone wants to share from you. Everyone is so excited to share. Yeah. I'll just share one thing that that I learned. You know we talk a lot about product design for operators and for founders and startups. But I think heard two really cool examples of product design at the investor level one being lendable in their gender fund using an interest rate step down to incentivize different gender outcomes depending upon what the company is is struggling with when it comes to gender. So I thought that was a really cool example of how we as investors can be thinking about product design and what that looks like with our own capital sources. Thank you so much, Liza. And the biggest group anyone wants to wonderful. We were very participatory very as capital should be. So we really lost what can you do with being the investor? What can you do to accelerate gender priorities? And the two we're going to share. One is be clear about who you're backing and really think about that. And the second is the power dynamics. So jail. So I don't know if I've teed you've teed me up for the right talking point. No. You shared. Timeout storytelling. No. In understanding the who in your in your work, actually women. Oh, so I work within the native CDFI industry and native women are in leadership roles for 80 percent of the industry. And that's on a board level and that's on an executive level in our region of the country. Clients served, I believe, is about 56 percent women. And so the point is, is that women in leadership is normal and it's interesting to come into this space and to leave our communities and realize that we're not telling a really powerful story that is an example of I don't want to say systems change in action because I think it's actually it comes from honoring traditional cultures of the Northern Plains tribes and region and lifting that up. There. Thank you. And Susie. Thanks. Hi, everyone. I'm Susie and I work at the Criterion Institute and one of the things that criteria is always known for is being the power of people. And what would mean by that is that we think about finance not as a system of capital, but fine as a system of power. So we look at the way to change finance is to change the power dynamics that operate in finance. So we've been working on a system of standards around our system standards of practice around what does it mean to do investment, not necessarily only who you invest in, but the how of your day to day investment in your processes, in your structures, in your analysis and develop an entire system of standards and practices of analyzing the current power dynamics that are happening in a process structure analysis and proposing practices that shift those power dynamics and really working with asset owners who are understanding they have power and are willing to use that power to shift the power dynamics in finance to help those. So really looking at the how of doing investment, not just who you invest in. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. So now we go into the second part and we have 15 minutes to do so. So everyone who has a red card facilitators, first of all, you stay at your spots. So everyone who has a red card, could you please shift to this circle? And then everyone who has a green card over here and with the blue cards just if you can follow me outside, it's just in this area. And we're going to discuss how we can collaborate. Facilitators will facilitate and then we will be done because we're running out of time and it's been a great conversation.