The Purse Podcast

Ayesha Ofori is the founder and CEO of Propelle, a pioneering investment platform designed to empower women to achieve financial independence.

As a former Executive Director and Private Wealth Adviser at Goldman Sachs, Ayesha personally managed over £500 million in client assets, working closely with ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

Motivated by a desire to bridge the gender investment gap and make investing more accessible to all women, Ayesha left her successful career in traditional finance to launch Propelle.

With an MBA from London Business School and a Master’s degree in Physics from Imperial College London, Ayesha combines deep financial expertise with a passion for helping women build wealth and securing their financial futures. To find out more, please visit https://propelle.io/

We cover the following in our conversation:

00:13 Meet Ayesha Ofori: From Goldman Sachs to Propelle

02:12 Ayesha's early money lessons

04:45 Women's relationship with money

09:52 The gender investment gap

16:05 How women think about investing

27:45 Challenges in financial services for women

34:24 Introducing Propelle: a female-focused investment platform

39:55 Fundraising challenges and successes

43:16 Understanding the gender gap in investment

43:42 Bootstrapping and early funding challenges

44:02 The impact of Google’s grant

44:23 Navigating the VC landscape

47:24 Building a strong team

52:17 The importance of advisors and mentors

57:49 Future roadmap and vision for Propelle

01:03 Encouraging women to invest

01:11  Final thoughts

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Merryn Somerset Webb is a senior columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, covering personal finance and investment, and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast. Previously, she was editor in chief of MoneyWeek. She published her second book, Share Power: How Ordinary People Can Change the Way That Capitalism Works - and Make Money Too.

We cover the following in the conversation:

Danish born Ida coined the term Femtech in 2016.
Ida Tin is the co-founder and former CEO and chairwoman, of Clue the most trusted female health app. Clue has more than 10m active users in over 190 countries.
Ida has been interviewed or featured in major media including The New York Times, New York Magazine, Forbes, Der Spiegel and Le Figaro. She was also a speaker at prestigious conferences such as TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, LeWeb in Paris, Forbes Most Powerful Women in Montreal, Slush in Finland and many more.
Before starting Clue, Ida led motorcycle tours around the world for five years in the motorcycle touring company MotoMundo she cofounded with her dad Hjalte Tin. She guided tours in Mongolia, Cuba and Vietnam amongst other destinations.
Ida attended various art schools in South Africa and London, and graduated in 2004 from the progressive social entrepreneurship BA level business school The KaosPilots in Denmark. Ida currently lives in Berlin and has two children.
She is now working on a new book about Femtech and is an active voice in the Femtech space. She is running three series of Femtech courses, from June 2024.

We cover the following in our conversation:

00:11 Meet Ida Tin: the pioneer of femtech

02:02 Ida's childhood

05:01 The birth of Clue: a revolutionary femtech startup

07:20 Challenges and vision in femtech

10:22 Understanding femtech and its impact

14:51 Addressing the gender health gap

19:58 The importance of diversity and inclusion

27:24 The impact of gender in leadership

28:19 The rise of femtech

29:30 Flo Health

31:22 Ethical concerns in tech

32:54 The importance of diverse leadership

36:35 Building trust and transparency

45:14 Imagining a new system

49:29 Leadership and emotional intelligence

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Ozge Dogan is the Founder of Karman Beyond, Türkiye’s first independent multi-family office – democratising wealth management for families.

Karman Beyond’s goal is to guide families – together with experts – to manage the unique potential of their wealth. Karman Beyond guides them to personalised, globally-minded solutions and go beyond traditional financial services, including risk management; tax and legal; governance and legacy planning; and lifestyle / concierge services.

As a next-generation family leader, Ozge founded Karman Beyond in response to her own family’s wealth management needs and the lack of a single, central, advisory solution. They seek to provide Türkiye’s families with the best access to the guidance and expertise they need – much like her own family originally required.

She is a strong believer in enacting positive social change, and is a Board Member at Yanındayız Derneği – a rights advocacy NGO promoting gender equality in Türkiye via the prism of universal human rights.

We cover the following in the conversation:

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Marypat Thenell Smucker, CFA, MA Economics, MS Finance, is Co-Founder and Principal of Parallelle Finance. She has published a range of research pieces on sustainable and gender lens investing, including Parallelle’s in-depth quarterly reports on sustainable investing and women in the global workplace. Her work has been featured on the CFA Institute's Enterprising Investor site. She has contributed to sustainable investing sites and provided numerous media quotes on gender lens investing. Prior to co-founding Parallelle, Marypat was a consultant in investment communications and editorial services for global asset management firms. She began her consultancy following a role as Managing Editor of institutional investment communications at T. Rowe Price. Before that Marypat worked in transaction services for KPMG. She began her finance career as an analyst at Emerging Markets Partnership, a firm which managed the first private equity funds for emerging markets infrastructure.Parallelle Finance is a leading provider of research on sustainable and gender equality-focused investing. The firm consults globally on sustainable and gender lens investing. Parallelle recently authored Gender Bonds: A Toolkit for the Design and Issuance of Gender Bonds in Africa, published in early 2024 by Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Africa. Gender bonds are positioned for growth in global fixed income markets, driven by high growth in women-owned businesses and ongoing funding gaps. In addition, Parallelle provides investment advisory services to U.S. investors and an analysis tool for U.S. and global investors to score public and private investments with an equality lens.

We cover the following in our conversation:

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Christina Teo is the chief builder of SHE1K, which is the world's first C-suite executive angel syndicate. She has built a community of 170 C-suite and senior executives who have invested $6m+ in 30 startups.

Christina has built her career mostly outside of Singapore. She started in market research, she then took on regional sales, marketing, product and P&L roles in technology and in companies such as Acer, IBM, and 3Com. During the dot com boom, she became the first country manager at Yahoo! Singapore, followed by launching the world's first Windows smartphone at O2, where she single-handedly spearheaded the business from scratch to $300m in revenue.

Christina retired for the first time at the age of 41. She went on to New York to pursue her personal destiny but returned as CMO of Hong Kong's CSL, carrying half of the company's P&L with a 90 person team.

Christina has lived in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, France, Italy, and New York, and pursued a master's in psychology at NYU, with a bachelor's at National University of Singapore.

We cover the following in our conversation:

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Vicky Reynal runs a London-based private practice that specialises in financial psychotherapy. She is the author of "Money on your Mind: the Psychology behind your Financial Habits", which recently won Best Book at The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards. With a dual background in psychology/psychotherapy and an MBA from London Business School, she has worked with people from a range of industries, public sector, and creative professions. She has years of experience as a psychotherapist in the private and public sectors, including the British NHS and has lived and worked in nine different countries across three continents.

We cover the following:

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Adeo Ressi is revolutionising global entrepreneurship and venture capital. As CEO of Decile Group, he helped launch nearly 50% of all new VC firms worldwide in 2023, and Adeo serves as Chairman and Co-Founder of the Founder Institute, which runs startup accelerators in over 300 cities worldwide and has over 7,000 portfolio companies. He is committed to solving the world's problems by having visionary limited partners back ethical investors to fund pioneering entrepreneurs. Adeo previously served on the Board of the X PRIZE, created the original SAFE note, drafted the Mensarius Oath for ethical investing, and founded companies with over $2bn in exits.

We cover the following in our conversation:

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Linda Scott is Emeritus DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, University of Oxford, as well as a visiting professor at Brown University where she teaches gender and economics.  She is the author of The Double X Economy, a 2020 book that deeply documents the worldwide and historical pattern of women’s economic exclusion and makes a passionate argument for the economic and humanitarian reasons to eliminate this destructive inequality.  Recognised as an outstanding work of science and economics, the book has been translated into 14 languages. Scott continues her work as a gender consultant for a wide range of major world institutions, such as USAID and the World Bank.

We cover the following in our conversation:

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Grace O’Brien is an award-winning Creative Director at AKQA, an international creative and innovation agency. 

Over the last 10+ years Grace has worked with global clients such as Volvo, TikTok, Nike and Jordan. Her work has been recognised by Cannes Lions, the WARC Awards, Fast Company, the London Design Museum, The Earthshot Prize and more.

Beyond the creative industry Grace is an accomplished scholar with an academic background in economics and a passion for climate action and gender equality. In addition to building Pink Chip with colleague and founder Sam Rowlands, Grace leads communications for Generation Climate Europe, the region’s largest coalition of youth-led networks pushing for stronger climate action, and advises UN-led women’s economic inclusion projects in the global south. 

Sam Rowlands is a Multi-awarded Creative Lead and Art Director at AKQA. She has worked with many local and global clients, such as Gucci, Nike, Toyota, and Tourism Australia, just to name a few. Her work has been recognised on the world stage, including at the Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show and Webbys. With a wealth of experience, Sam has also served as a judge at leading award shows across many categories, including creative excellence, innovation and visual storytelling. 

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Sam mentors numerous female creatives, offering guidance and support in navigating the male-dominated industry. As the visionary founder of Pink Chip, an investment initiative challenging investor bias against female leaders, Sam is dedicated to enlightening businesses and investors about the economic power of having women at the helm.

The launch of Pink Chip and its US index on International Women's Day in partnership with UN Women has delivered exceptional performance.

Backdated for over three years, the Pink Chip US Index has outpaced US benchmarks like the S&P500 by over 80%. Featured on Bloomberg and in renowned publications such as Forbes, this milestone marks just the beginning of Pink Chip's journey toward challenging bias against female leaders. Sam has been on the path to creating Pink Chip for over four years.

We cover the following in the conversation:

You can see more about Pink Chip via:

Website: pinkchip.org 

Instagram:@pinkchipofficial 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pink-chip

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