Future IM/Pact is fighting inequality by bringing more women into key decision making roles in the investment industry. Future IM/Pact works with young women and industry partners to increase awareness and access to investment management by providing networking opportunities, skill development and investment competitions.
Here are the core stats that highlight this challenge:
– 41% of women at university don’t even consider a career in Investment Management
– 80% applicants for any given role in the investment team are male
– 6% of portfolio managers are women
Sophia Croker, a member of the Investment Team at TDM, has been involved with Future IM/Pact since her time at university.
“Future IM/Pact helped me to better understand investment management as a career choice and build a network with those women already in the industry alongside like-minded students.
What I love about Future IM/Pact is its end-to-end approach which is firstly solving the lack of female talent at top of the recruitment funnel, but also solving the retention and under representation issues so that those early in their career can look forward and see role models in the industry.”
– Sophia Croker
This year, TDM played an active role in the Future IM/Pact Investment Competition where hundreds of female entrants were given the opportunity to pitch an investment thesis across a variety case studies. Given TDM’s focus on fast growing technology businesses, and our strong belief in the power of great People and Culture, we thought it would be a worthy exercise for students to dive into making the investment case for Airbnb.
Investment Team members Sophia and Ben Gisz helped judge both the heats and the finals. As part of the prize pool, a student from the winning group will be offered an internship position as a part of our Investment Team over their university summer break.
“We were impressed by the depth and quality of research, as well as confident presentation skills, across all teams. The students were able to demonstrate a strong understanding of the investment they were pitching, and put themselves in the shoes of a capital allocator.” – Sophia Croker
We firmly believe that People and Culture are the beating heart of generational growth businesses. The DNA of great cultures is built on diversity and inclusion. Diversity flames both the creativity of thought and innovation, and inclusion ensures that the fire is seen.
Our core business is making great investment decisions as a team (further illustrated by our core value, Hunt as a Pack). We view diversity of people and thought as the key input for maintaining effective conversations as well as avoiding the critical risks of group think and individual biases.
We’ve experienced the additional effort that it takes to recruit an equal number of women – after all we receive c.10x more applications from men for any given job opening in the investment team, but we know the extra effort is not just important but critical to our future success. To achieve this though, we need to support an organisation focussed on solving this right at the root of the cause and we know it is going to take time – and that is why we look forward to partnering with Future IM/Pact for many years to come.
Checkout the Future IM/Pact site for more details on events and initiatives.
