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Sallie Krawcheck Empowering Women with New Fund
On Wednesday, former Citigroup and Bank of America executive Sallie Krawcheck announced the creation of a unique index fund that will promote women within the business world. The first of its kind, the index fund is a result of a partnership between Pax World Management LLC and the company Krawcheck recently purchased, Ellevate.
Formerly known as 85 Broads, Krawcheck renamed the company to Ellevate, a name she came up with to represent the empowerment of women. Ellevate is a network for professional women committed to their advancement through networking, education, and investments. The company has a wide range of members from all backgrounds that include entrepreneurs, board members, and CEOs, and spans 130 countries.
According to Ellevate’s website, “Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentages of women on their boards of directors outperformed those with the least by 53% on return on equity, 42% on return on sales and a whopping 66% on return on invested capital.” However, only 16.9% of those boards are comprised of women.
Krawcheck’s newly announced Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Index Fund will have much of the same aspirations of Ellevate with the main goal of promoting gender diversity. In addition, the fund will decide which company to invest in based off the findings of a Gender Analytics team. The team will use specific factors to make their decision. These factors include:
- Women CEOs
- Women CFOs
- Percentage of women in senior management
- Percentage of women on the board of directors
- Whether there are up to three women on the board of directors
- Whether the company is signatory to the United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles
The United Nations Women’s Empowerment Principles is a set of values that seek the empowerment and equality of women in the workplace, community, and marketplace. Some of the values include fair treatment of men and women, the health and safety of both genders in the workplace, and corporate leadership for gender equality.
The principles and factors above are applied to companies and ranks them in a system. The ranking system provides a clear idea as to which companies work hard to promote gender diversity within the boardroom. Krawcheck takes things a step further by donating a portion of Ellevate’s revenue to the index fund.
With the help of Sallie Krawcheck, women everywhere have another ally to help further the gender equality movement and lend support within the business world.