Equity Lens Founder's Guide
The Equity Lens Founder's Guide aims to support and empower women startup founders in the Asia-Pacific region in navigating inherent gender biases that they currently face during the fundraising process even as broader systemic changes continue.
It highlights the gender biases that women founders currently face and then provides insights and recommendations for how to navigate and work around them and unlock the capital they deserve.
Additionally, entrepreneur support organisations in emerging markets can use and complement this Guide to ensure women founders get the right support when fundraising.
Jennifer is a Project Lead at Value for Women and brings over six years of experience in international development. Her expertise lies in spearheading initiatives focused on women’s economic empowerment, financial inclusion, and digital literacy across diverse regions including Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Alakshi brings to Value for Women 12 years of experience in developing and implementing sustainable solutions, with a specific focus on women's empowerment. Alakshi has established organizations focused on menstrual health and entrepreneurship, investing in innovative, impactful solutions.
Bernice supports the delivery of select projects across Value for Women's technical practice areas through research, project management, client relationship management and internal coordination. She brings over five years of experience working with tech-enabled businesses across Africa and entrepreneur support organizations such as Village Capital, Merck and iHub. In November 2021, she pivoted into gender-focused work, driven by a deep commitment to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment within entrepreneurship and investment.
Trina drives project delivery and planning for various projects related to applied research and technical assistance for investors and enterprises, at Value for Women. Trina brings almost a decade of rich experience in gender inclusion and public policy. Prior to joining Value For Women, she worked in advisory services at Intellecap Advisory Services and PRS Legislative Research.
Luis leads Value for Women's advisory services, strategy and a global team of consultants and advisors. Prior to his work at Value for Women, Luis led research on unpaid care work and time-use data for the United Nations Foundation. From Mexico, Luis has worked extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Southeast Asia. He holds a BSc degree in Business Administration from Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and a Master's degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, USA.
