The Purse Podcast

Barbara Clarke is the Co-Founder of The Impact Seat LLC and Chair of the Board of The Impact Seat Foundation. 

Launched in 2021, The Impact Seat Foundation strives to create a world in which women, particularly women of colour, succeed as business leaders. Barbara’s vision of full stack philanthropy melds impact investing, advocacy and grant making to accelerate an expanded and equitable economy for all. 

As one of the top U.S. individual investors in women-led innovative tech startups, Barbara’s iconic investment strategy has inspired many others around the world.  Currently, she serves on a variety of boards, including Founders First Capital Partners, an innovative revenue based financing firm formed to support diverse small businesses around the country. 

She is also a founding member of Astia Angels who invest in impactful high-growth companies led by inclusive teams with women leaders. 

In addition, Barbara served as one of the founding members of the Portfolia, Inc Board of Directors. Portfolia is a venture fund focused on investing in the solutions women want in the world. In 2022, Barbara released her Amazon best-selling book, “Build Your Board, Build Your Business”. 

A polyglot, Barbara speaks five languages and splits her time between New England and Berlin.

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Julie Castro Abrams is the founder and Managing Partner of How Women Invest, an early stage venture firm focussed on high growth, tech enabled women-founded enterprises. The firm is a culmination of her lifetime of work propelling women founders to launch and find success with training, capital and networks. 

Julie brings her extensive experience identifying and supporting early stage entrepreneurs and twenty years as a CEO and board director. She is bringing her extensive networks, leadership and entrepreneurship experience to disruption of the venture landscape.

An active investor and advisor to start-ups, and as the leader of the nation's largest microenterprise and microfinance organisation for 11 years, Julie has helped launch over 6,000 women into successful businesses.

Today she is advising the SBA, White House and Congress on national legislative initiatives to address economic opportunities for women. She serves on the California First Partners Project as an advisor regarding corporate board diversity. In her role as Founder and CEO of How Women Lead, she has been a driver of legislative initiatives and transformation in the US and California. 

Julie serves as an Advisor to financial services firms including the fin-tech start-up LENDonate and Nia Capital. She previously served as an advisor to Beneficial Bank and as the Governance Chair for the Association for Enterprise Opportunity and the Women’s Funding Network.

As the CEO of How Women Lead, she is at the centre of the movement to disrupt antiquated, unequal systems by propelling women into even greater leadership roles and increasing opportunities for all women. Julie has been an essential driver of the ecosystem for women on corporate boards in California. Julie has been a national leader in the movement and drove the successful passage of the groundbreaking Senate Bill 826, requiring public companies to have women on their boards.

The recipient of many accolades, she has been awarded the More Jobs Genius Award, the Morgan Stanley Innovation Award, Cisco’s Innovation in Technology Award.

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Anna Sofat, known as the Voice of Women’s Wealth, is passionate about money being a force for good in business and beyond. As an award winning and highly qualified financial planner until recently, she had advised private clients for over 20 years.

She is a regular contributor to national press and TV and has been a judge for various industry awards over the years. In the past she has chaired the Nucleus Financial Services Advisory Board and was non-executive director at Fair Finance, the micro finance social business.

Anna is a graduate of Hull University and has a Masters from LSE. She holds the Chartered Financial Planning and Certified Financial Planner qualifications.  She has been awarded the Unbiased.co.uk’s Financial Adviser of the year and was recognised as the Top female Adviser by Financial Adviser. In 2019, she was awarded the Women Financial Adviser of the Year by Professional Adviser and voted its Personality of the Year in 2020.

Anna founded Addidi, a financial services boutique for women. Addidi was regularly featured as one of the Top 100 Advisory firm by the New Model Adviser and won the Money Marketing Small Adviser of the Year Award in 2018. The firm was sold to Progeny Wealth in 2019. Prior to founding Addidi, Anna was the MD at Fiona Price & Partners, providing financial advice for women by women.

Having founded Addidi Angels, UK’s first women business angel, she is an angel investor in a number of businesses and an advocate for female founders.

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Julia Elliott Brown is a highly respected entrepreneurial advisor working exclusively with female founders, with a wealth of experience in inspiring, coaching and supporting high-growth potential businesses.

As a serial entrepreneur working in the start-up industry for over 25 years, Julia has built, funded, and grown several successful companies from fashion-tech, consumer data, publishing, e-commerce to consultancy, and is highly experienced in raising investment finance. Julia is an advisor, mentor, workshop leader, accomplished public speaker, and a long-standing judge at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. She is the founder and CEO of Enter The Arena, providing investment expertise and business coaching for female founders, host of leading business podcast Fundraising Stories with Female Founders and author of RAISE: The Female Founder’s Guide To Securing Investment.

Supporting start-ups every step of the way, Julia is committed and highly involved with her clients as they progress through their growth journey. As strategic advisor, she helps clients to navigate the scaling and investment process effectively, developing fundraising skills, leadership skills, business acumen and the confidence needed to enter the arena and smash down the barriers to success. 

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Vicky Pryce is Chief Economic Adviser and a board member at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

She was previously Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service. Before that she was Partner at the accounting and consulting firm KPMG after senior economic positions in banking and the oil sector.

She has held a number of academic posts and is a Fellow and Council member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Society of Professional Economists and a Companion of the British Academy of Management. She was until recently on the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and is a member of the Advisory Board of the central banking think-tank OMFIF and of the Economic Advisory Group of the British Chambers of Commerce. She is also a Patron of the charities Pro-Bono Economics and Working Chance.

Her books include: “Greekonomics: The Euro crisis and Why Politicians Don't Get It”; “It's the Economy, Stupid- Economics for Voters”, with Ross and Urwin; “Redesigning Manufacturing”, with Nielsen and Beverland”; and “Why Women Need Quotas”.

Her latest book, “Women vs Capitalism”, was published by Hurst in November 2019. She is a frequent contributor to media broadcasts and debates on the economy and on the economic rationale for gender equality. She is co-founder of GoodCorporation, a company set up to advise on corporate social responsibility, is a Freeman and Liveryman of the City of London, was the first female Master of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants and has been sitting on the City’s Members Diversity Working Party.

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Victoria Ross is a Chartered Financial Planner for Progeny Wealth. 

Progeny bring together independent financial planning, asset management, tax, HR and private and corporate legal services, under one roof. Victoria has 18 years experience within financial services, during which she also completed the qualifications as a chartered financial analyst and chartered managerial accountant. 

As a financial planner, her key drivers are ensuring women reach out for and receive appropriate financial advice and that younger generations are financially informed.

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Sally Mueller is the Co-founder and CEO of Womaness. 

Womaness is a high-performance collection of modern menopause products developed for women, by women that offer solutions from head to toe (and everything in between). With community, education, and inspiration, Womaness sparks the power of menopositivity.

Sally is a consummate business builder specialising in retail and brand innovation. Her trend-forecasting Midas touch has benefited companies such as Target, Who What Wear and VERSED skincare, among others.

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Shaun Richards is an independent economist who specialises in inflation measurement and monetary economics. This follows a career in the City of London where he specialised in derivatives (mainly options) on interest rates and bonds.

Shaun has also worked in Tokyo. He is a Bank of England watcher which covers the issues of monetary policy and money printing or quantitative easing (QE). Shaun also traded as a local on the London International Financial Futures Exchange where he mostly traded futures and options on future and present UK interest rates.

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Listen to previous interviews with Shaun Richards here: episode #68, episode #47 and episode #29.

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Ruth Shaber, MD is the Founder and President of the Tara Health Foundation, which promotes health, well-being, and opportunity for women and girls through innovative evidence-informed programs. She is also the Co-founder and Board Chair of Rhia Ventures, a group of foundations and investors that collaborate to bring new types of capital and enterprise to the field of reproductive health in the United States.

Ruth had a robust career as an Obstetrician and Gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente from 1990 to 2012.

Ruth was featured in Forbes 2020 Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit—and Pushing for Change for her contributions to the field of impact investing.

Ruth holds an MD from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from Yale University.

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Anna Poberezhna is a sustainable development and technology entrepreneur. She is the founder for ClearHub which is reimagining resources, industrials & infrastructure to rebuild peace, security & prosperity. Anna is a mentor, published author, speaker, life-lover and daughter.

She is a Fellow; part of the Sustainable Finance Live initiative, Blockchain Climate Institute; and a mentor at SWAN.

*Women in Mining, Responsible materials, Minerals diplomacy, TEDx, Responsible Finance, IWWA, UN COP24 (SIF Forum), Bloomberg Environment, Global Water Intelligence, The Water Report UK and EBRD publications and discussions. *

Anna is the first Ukrainian woman recognised for her exceptional digital talent by the UK Government (1 out of 3000 in 2016).

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