{"id":89038,"date":"2020-03-28T19:42:43","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T00:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=89038"},"modified":"2020-03-28T19:42:43","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T00:42:43","slug":"international-womens-day-conference-brings-community-and-knowledge-to-chicagos-female-founders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/international-womens-day-conference-brings-community-and-knowledge-to-chicagos-female-founders\/","title":{"rendered":"International Women\u2019s Day conference brings community and knowledge to Chicago\u2019s female founders"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ruiqi Chen<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Startup incubator 1871\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day conference started with a call-to-action from CEO Betsy Zeigler.<\/p>\n

\u201cFund, found and scale tech companies,\u201d Zeigler said to the crowd of roughly 200 women, many of whom were female startup.<\/p>\n

According to research company Startup Genome, over a quarter of Chicago\u2019s startups are female founded, more than twice Silicon Valley\u2019s rate of 11%. However, women entrepreneurs here face many of the same funding and company growth challenges that exist all over the world.<\/p>\n

Under the International Women\u2019s Day theme, \u201cEach for Equal,\u201d the conference promoted equality in tech and entrepreneurship through a series of workshops providing advice and information about women\u2019s business and professional issues.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Workshops addressed topics such as female product design and women in private investing, and the day ended with a keynote session with Desiree Rodgers, Obama\u2019s former social secretary and CEO of Black Opal cosmetics company.<\/p>\n

In the panel about women in venture capital, or private investing, Rumi Morales, a partner at investment company Outlier Ventures said women entrepreneurs were getting more funding than before but they were still at a disadvantage compared to their male counterparts. She cited statistics from data analysis company Pitchbook that said women received $3.4 billion, or 2.7% of all venture capital, in 2019.<\/p>\n

Morales put the number into perspective with another statistic. In 2019, investment company SoftBank alone funneled $5 billion into male-founded coworking company WeWork.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was beyond pissed off when I saw these statistics,\u201d Morales said.<\/p>\n

She said more women investors could be a potential way to bridge this investment gap. Again citing PitchBook, Morales said women make only 12% of venture capital decisions in the U.S., but women investors were also twice as likely as men to invest in other women.<\/p>\n

Attendee Carol Fleishman, CEO and founder of education startup Turnkey STEAM Labs, said she enjoyed learning about the reality of women\u2019s business funding, even if the numbers weren\u2019t encouraging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe statistics are kind of dismal,\u201d Fleishman said after the workshop. \u201cIt definitely seems like an uphill battle.\u201d<\/p>\n

For others, the biggest takeaway wasn\u2019t the data presented but the sense of community that grew as each discussion unfolded. Erica Pascual, author and business consultant, said she found the workshops to be valuable because they started a conversation with other ambitious and driven women.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing around women who have that desire to be more, to do more and to impact more, that\u2019s huge,\u201d Pascual said.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Women walk into a keynote speech that concluded startup incubator 1871’s International Women’s Day conference. (Ruiqi Chen\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ruiqi Chen Medill Reports Startup incubator 1871\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day conference started with a call-to-action from CEO Betsy Zeigler. \u201cFund, found and scale tech companies,\u201d Zeigler said to the crowd of roughly 200 women, many of whom were female startup. According to research company Startup Genome, over a quarter of Chicago\u2019s startups are female […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":635,"featured_media":89039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,28],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-89038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-general-interest","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nInternational Women\u2019s Day conference brings community and knowledge to Chicago\u2019s female founders - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/international-womens-day-conference-brings-community-and-knowledge-to-chicagos-female-founders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"International Women\u2019s Day conference brings community and knowledge to Chicago\u2019s female founders - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Ruiqi Chen Medill Reports Startup incubator 1871\u2019s International Women\u2019s Day conference started with a call-to-action from CEO Betsy Zeigler. \u201cFund, found and scale tech companies,\u201d Zeigler said to the crowd of roughly 200 women, many of whom were female startup. 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