Microsoft Reactor

🔗 What is the session about?
This event is part of a series of #12 workshops developed for female entrepreneurs under the scope of the partnership between Microsoft and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, to foster female entrepreneurship and opportunities for forcibly displaced populations in the tech sector in Brazil. The purpose of the sessions, to be held from March to October 2021, is to share content for the improvement of the business model and the expansion of the startups' future fundraising opportunities. Check out today’s event description below.

🔗 Agenda
Workshop #8: How to push diversity at the startup level
This workshop will discuss strategies that early stage startups can follow to ensure diversity. This discussion will include commitments startups can establish in recruitment and access to equal pay/promotion, education/training, mentoring and sponsorship whilst also incorporating a gender-inclusive value chain.

🔗 Who is it aimed at?
People should attend this session if they are interested in any of the following topics:

• Female entrepreneurship
• Tech startups
• Diversity and Governance

💬 Speakers

• Josie Middleton
  Works at IFC on projects focused on closing the gender financing gap across VC/PE funds and at portfolio level. She is the Program Lead of ScaleX, a program that incentivizes accelerators and collaborates with investors to tackle the lack of funding WSMEs receive. Josie has extensive experience with accelerator ecosystem programs and growth-stage companies, through a mixture of business partnership and pre-seed funding support, across a wide range of industries in emerging markets and Europe. Her past roles include working at the GSMA, Groupon, Accenture, Redwood London and at multiple early stage startups.

• Marcella Ceva
  Chief Investment Officer for Microsoft's WE Ventures venture capital fund, with over 12 years of experience in investment banking, M&A and fund raising in global firms such as G5 Evercore, Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP and Derraik & Menezes Advogados. Marcella accumulates over R$ 4 billion in advised transactions, including some of the largest debt restructuring transactions in Brazil. She has a Law Degree from Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, studied International Relations in Michigan State University, and specialized in Human Rights and Women's Health in Stanford.

• Stephanie Vak-Stephens
  Investment Officer/Gender Lead at IFC. With 12+ years of experience in finance, Stephanie is a private equity fund investor and currently covers all gender-lens investments, advisory and research initiatives across PE/VC at the IFC. Prior to IFC, Stephanie held multiple roles across business strategy, investment origination and portfolio management with Standard Chartered Bank in Ghana & the UAE and with the Royal Bank of Scotland in the U.K. She has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, an MSc. Finance from the University of Strathclyde and a BSc. Business Administration from the University of Ghana.

📌 This workshop was developed in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and is part of the initiative developed jointly by IFC and Microsoft to foster female entrepreneurship and increase inclusion and employability of women and Forcibly Displaced Populations in the tech sector in Brazil.

IFC—a member of the World Bank Group—is the largest global development institution focused on the private sector in emerging markets. IFC works in more than 100 countries, using capital, expertise, and influence to create markets and opportunities in developing countries. In fiscal year 2020, IFC invested $22 billion in private companies and financial institutions in developing countries, leveraging the power of the private sector to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. For more Information, visit www.ifc.org.

👀 How can you join the event?
When confirming participation in the event, you will have access to the session link. Sign up!