Cartier Women’s Initiative at INSEAD

Some of this year’s Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellows attending the Singapore INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Executive Education Programme (ISEP) also had the chance to be part of the first-ever SDG Week.

Women face more hindrances in starting businesses and are less likely to become entrepreneurs. To help break those barriers and support women entrepreneurs, INSEAD has joined with Cartier as the academic partner of the Cartier Women’s Initiative (CWI) since the Initiative was launched in 2006. CWI is one of the prestigious international entrepreneurship programmes in the world created to identify, support and encourage impact-oriented business ventures founded by women. Each year, the CWI Awards recognises 21 Fellows, seven of whom are selected as laureates – creative women who are making concrete contributions to finding solutions for the future of our planet. To encourage these inspirational women as they strive to address pressing global challenges, CWI Fellows receive business coaching, networking support, media visibility and prize money to accelerate the growth of their ventures.

In raising the profile of women entrepreneurs through the Initiative, INSEAD supports the success of CWI ventures from the fellow’s pre-selection through to providing coaching for the 21 selected fellows, mentoring for previous laureates, and also a presence on several juries by faculty and alumni. One of the key benefits of the CWI is that the Fellows are able to participate in INSEAD’s renowned Social Entrepreneurship Executive Education Programme (ISEP).

Some of this year's Fellows, full list available here

The ISEP experience allows CWI Fellows to work with other social entrepreneurs, impact business leaders and key actors in the social entrepreneurship ecosystem. Upon completion, they become part of the powerful global ISEP network of more than 800 ISEP graduates in over 80 countries. In 2019, eight Fellows attended the Europe Campus ISEP sessions and four attended the sessions on the Asia Campus.

Sharing her biggest takeaway from the programme, CWI 2019 South Asia and Oceania Laureate, Carmina Bayombong, founder and CEO of InvestEd, a Manila-based company that provides loans to students in need, said, “It has been a life-changing experience and I feel it has helped me avert some disastrous mistakes. I believe the most single powerful thing I’m taking away are tools and frameworks that I can use to effectively scale my organisation.”

CWI Asia Pacific fellow, Dr. Sara Saeed Khurrum is the co-Founder and CEO of Sehat Kahani, a female health care network based in Karachi that provides affordable services to low-income and underserved communities echoing the sentiments of her fellow participant. She added, “I think what has really impacted me is the leading with purpose session because it’s very important. The second was learning how and when to scale your enterprise. Sometimes the classic mistakes happen when scaling deep and scaling up, which we try to do together and here we learned the difference. Equally important was when to become a manager and when to become an influencer.”

While ISEP addressed mistakes to avoid for some of the women, for others it served as an encouragement – like for Priya Prakash, Founder of HealthSetGo in New Delhi, which encourages healthy nutrition and behaviour in children across India.

“ISEP has been a much-needed point of reflection. When you are an entrepreneur running your company day-to-day, you sometimes do not get the space to pause and take account for the future. One thing that has been eye-opening was an interaction with some of the mentors who were introduced during an evening of one-on-one discussions. That was eye opening because it instilled a lot of confidence in me just to know that there are a group of individuals out there, including investors and impact-oriented venture funds, which are committed to investing in social impact. Through that, I learned how to create an investable social enterprise.”

According to Claire (Yi) Yan, Founder and CEO of Cobbler’s Suggest – an online leather goods repair service that reduces waste and helps artisan cobblers in Shanghai upgrade their skills, find a thriving market, and earn a livelihood, the ISEP experience was, “like a door to a new world.”

“Now when I review the future of my company, I can apply what I learned from ISEP and evaluate my impact.”

Uplifting and encouraging women is vital to achieving many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG5: Gender Equality and SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth. To drive the awareness and importance of SDGs at INSEAD, the Hoffmann Institute for Business and Society organised the SDG Week in December 2019 on the Europe and Asia Campuses. The week featured talks, workshops and exhibitions with one particular session overlapping with ISEP.

Reflecting on the SGD Week, the women also spoke about why awareness raising is important and necessary for creating social impact.

“SDGs were new to me. I come from a pure business background, where I was trained for analysis, marketing and business management, and where growth, expansion and profit generation were the main goals,” said Yan.

“I now realise there are bigger goals than making profit or simply growing your business, and I believe this is an important perspective for any business leader to have. INSEAD is the cradle for future business leaders who will change the world, and it is great that they are aware of the existence of bigger goals like the SDGs.”

Bayombong added, “It’s important to have SDG Week to remind us to be united as social entrepreneurs and target the sub-goals of each SDG. It is very useful to have this especially for INSEAD students to remind them that these goals need to be attained.”

While SDG Week focused specifically on four SGDs related to the Earth’s biosphere, efforts are on the way to raise awareness for all 17 goals through INSEAD campaigns like #SDGSMART. Considering the vast possibilities, Khurrum mentioned, “There are many social issues in the world that the SDGs remind you of everyday. No one solution can help resolve all the problems. We need multiple solutions tailored to multiple geographies to solve these problems.”

By empowering women through such initiatives and raising awareness around the SGDs, INSEAD is building and cultivating the right environment for women leaders to create solutions to our global challenges. This school has long supported empowering women entrepreneurs and is today helping every leader step up and make business a force for good.

The Hoffmann Institute thanks our partners at the Cartier Women’s Initiative and looks forward to our continued collaboration. We encourage everyone to learn more about the Initiative and nominate inspiring women entrepreneurs at www.cartierwomensinitiative.com.

Images courtesy of Cartier Women's Initiative