Diversity is a key metric that we consider when evaluating investments, both in the public and private sectors. We often talk about the public side – in particular, getting more women on the boards of public companies. However, on the private side, the following article, written by Janice St. Onge, president of the Flexible Capital Fund, a Clean Yield investment, highlights how women entrepreneurs are being left out when it comes to raising capital. There are no easy solutions, but we believe that the first step is recognizing our biases and actively working to combat them.
To that end, over the past few years, we have started analyzing diversity within our impact investments, and this is what we’ve found: While one-third of our investments are women run, less than a quarter of our investment dollars are in those organizations. That being said, several of the funds we are invested in have multiple investments in women entrepreneurs. There is plenty of work left to be done by us and others. In 2019, Clean Yield will continue its efforts to identify and invest in women-owned businesses and to work with our current investments to improve the representation of women in their organizations and investments.
You can check out Janice’s article here:

Janice St. Onge: Changing the faces of our investment community