The impact investing movement is growing as investors increasingly recognize the innovative approaches and opportunities for strong returns these investments can provide. We can now envision a time when environmental, social and governance factors will no longer be on the sidelines of investment considerations. An important contributor to this progress is the participation of women in impact investing. An increasing amount of female investment managers are at the forefront of impact investing, and many of these impact firms are led by women. This year over 50% of the firms selected for the ImpactAssets50 top manager’s list are led by women, as compared to less than 5% of traditional investment firms1. With this comes a great opportunity to move the world towards more gender parity and potentially higher returns; In the World Bank Group’s new Study on Investing in Women, returns were 10-20% higher for Funds with gender-balanced senior investment teams2.
EFM is not only a company led by women but has also achieved success thanks to our amazing community of investors, of which over 45% are women. In honor of International Women’s Day EFM celebrates the achievements of the women that have contributed to the success of our climate-smart forestry investments from the female investors who advocate for allocating capital to impact investing to the leaders of our firm, notably our CEO Bettina von Hagen, who has for over 15 years driven the success of EFM in a sector that very much lacks female representation. Our success has resulted in not only strong financial outcomes for our investors but also in the storage of over 6.5 million tons of carbon and the transition of over 100,000 acres to climate-smart forestry. We are grateful to be part of this movement and look forward to continuing to create opportunities for women across our team, our investors, and in the communities around our forests.
1https://hbr.org/2019/03/when-will-we-see-more-gender-equality-in-investing