Since our inception five years ago, Future IM/Pact has grown and adapted to the changing needs of the industry by expanding our reach beyond just female university students to women in their early careers and now to professional investors at all levels who are ready to unlock their potential and build a sustainable and flourishing career and life they love.
Where it all started
Back in 2016, Mercer research highlighted the significant gender disparity across investment management with less than 25% of women holding front-office investing roles and less than 10% in key decision-making roles. At the time, 9 out of 10 applications for any investment role were men and there was a general lack of awareness about the industry and career pathways, particularly among young women.
To tackle this long-acknowledged issue, Future IM/Pact was formed as a collaboration of super funds and fund managers who were sick of admiring the problem and wanted to be part of the solution. We started with eight founding partners and focused our efforts on increasing awareness and perception among women at university through tailored events, social media, advocacy and facilitating intern and graduate opportunities.
How we’ve evolved
While we made headway inspiring and enabling young women to explore investment management, we knew the industry rarely recruited straight from university so expanded our remit to early career women working in related fields with around 2-5 years’ experience. These are exceptional women working in key feeder roles such as investment banking, management consulting, corporate finance and other technical roles that apply numerical nous and curiosity. We help these women launch their professional investing careers through high-touch events, industry connections, mentoring, self-development experiences, career advice and opportunities.
Where to now?
Once again, we’ve expanded our impact by addressing the biggest challenge facing the industry today – retaining great women.
We believe to create workplaces that support women, we need to build workplaces where everyone can do their best work. This can only be achieved when leaders and teams turn the focus inwards exploring how their strengths and shadows show up in ways that serve themselves and others, and ways that don’t. This inner game of leadership and human flourishing is central to our expanded remit and will be supported by great content, interactive events and immersive, high-impact programs.
The cumulative effect of this evolution is that by supporting industry to bring their best selves to work and bring out the best in others, we inspire the mentors that support the generation we’re reaching at university and in their early career. And when those women have launched their investment management career, we can support them to build the mindset and behaviours that will support a lifelong and fulfilling career in this hugely influential industry.
If that resonates, there are new ways you can partner with us. If you’d like to hear more, contact us for a chat.
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