Reflecting on the success of her team, Andrea Muffoletto said:
‘I am thrilled and honoured to have been part of the team that won GOTO. All the finalists were brilliant, and it was evident each team deeply explored the systems intertwined with their topic.
As a woman who hopes to one day start her own business, it’s gratifying that our topic resonated with so many people. With more awareness, we hope those embedded in the systems that perpetuate the gender funding gap will work to dismantle barriers and create more opportunities for women in the entrepreneurial space.’
From surveying 15 investors and entrepreneurs, they came up with their 'Theory of Change' model, which relies on the notion that people invest in those they are similar to, whether in terms of gender, race or background. It states that to promote diversity of allocations, you need to promote diversity among allocators.
To do this, they put forward a three-pronged approach to achieve long-term systemic change, to overcome the barriers to female founders. Firstly to inspire more women at an earlier age to enter the finance industry and become capital allocators, secondly to provide long-term mentoring and sponsorship to women as students and graduates, and finally to ensure more women's first jobs are within the finance industry and specifically the capital allocation environment.
They believe their solution could help address the £250 billion shortfall from the UK economy directly from women not starting or scaling businesses at the same rate as men.
The theme of this year’s summit was ‘Systems Reset’, reflecting the ways the pandemic has triggered economic, social and governance crises, that require us to reimagine and redesign our systems.
Discussing how their proposal fitted in with the team, Andrea added:
‘The past several years have proven that many of the systems currently in place are not serving our communities. Covid-19 forced the world to slow down, reflect, and question our ways of being. Now more than ever, we can challenge our systems. Our project team recognized this, and while the gender funding gap is nothing new, we figured the present moment is the perfect time to propose solutions to reset the systems contributing to this complicated issue.’
The team have first-hand experience of the hurdles facing woman entrepreneurs, with four of them either already owning or aspiring to own their own business. The experiences of teammates Emily Gill who has her own life coaching business and Asha Vettoor, who has her own clothing brand, were instrumental in forming the team’s idea. Bringing vital insights, the male team members added their thoughts as allies, helping to further dismantle bias within system.
In their presentation, they explained why existing solutions, like unconscious bias training or flexible bias training, aimed at tackling the issue were not working.
Explaining how the experience had benefited her MBA education, Andrea noted:
‘Overall, GOTO at Oxford Saïd afforded me the privilege of working with a brilliant, international, and diverse team to cover a topic I am personally passionate about.
The summit proved that there is no silver bullet solution for many of the world’s greatest issues and multi-pronged approaches that target models, organizations, and governments are needed to create lasting change. Adopting the systems mindset promoted throughout the course will be valuable as we leave Oxford and return to the workplace.’
