It’s okay for women to create personal wealth, understand financial management, start and grow businesses, run successful social enterprises, enjoy financial security and go beyond simply taking care of their livelihoods in order to build intergenerational legacies. None of this should be considered outside of our reach. And yet, even in the United States, for many women, and particularly for Black women, the impediments put in the way of achieving any of these goals often seem insurmountable.

The barriers can be quite daunting – structural bottlenecks, behavioral blind spots, and internal demons make it seem almost impossible for women around the world to build and create wealth on an equitable basis. Tackling these external and self-imposed challenges is an important part of my life’s work – and one of the reasons I chose to be a Steering Committee member for Invest for Better.

I’m fortunate enough to walk this journey with allies, mentors, and mentees. Together we are designing strategies, tools, and techniques that will result in breakthroughs.

Invest for Better (IFB) is an initiative that builds up women by engaging them in their personal spaces, equipping them with the resources to encourage and enable values-aligned investing. It has the potential to be an important disruptor by providing models that challenge and confront stereotypes. The IFB community creates new social pathways by providing a space for women to spend time and energy learning about investment and experiencing themselves as investors – in Invest for Better Circles. The format allows women to exchange knowledge about finance and investment in safe spaces and without judgement. The pace of learning is self-organized and flexible, and the Circles are designed as open systems where there is ongoing interaction with experts from many different communities.

Read the full article about building up women by Dr. Gillian Marcelle at Invest for Better.