Women’s Progress, and Challenges
“Throughout my entire education, even as an engineering professor, I feel like I always have to prove something,” said Rachael Floreani, a University of Vermont associate professor and cofounder of cultivated (aka lab-grown) meat tech company Burlington Bio. She was one of two honorees, along with nuclear engineering professor and now green-focused venture capitalist Rachel Slaybaugh, speaking on the Women for Climate panel at Worth’s Groundbreaking Women Summit in New York City last week. They were joined by Daniela Fernandez, founder of the nonprofit Sustainable Ocean Alliance and VC fund Seabird Ventures. In short, these women know the world of tech, climate, and business as well as anyone.
They painted a mixed picture for women in their fields. In some ways, women face the same prejudices in climate, food, and environmental endeavors similarly found in other business sectors. “You walk into a room…you have five investors that are male. And the moment you walk in, half of them walk outside the room just by looking at you,” said Fernandez. Floreani told a nearly identical story of how male investors have perceived her. What’s more, women entrepreneurs have to worry that men who do show interest may be hitting on them, said Fernandez.
Running a seed-level VC fund, Fernandez can counter these prejudices and invest in promising women entrepreneurs. But she can only go so far. Seabird typically cuts checks of around $100,000. At deep-tech focused firm DCVC, Slaybaugh may cut $30 million checks for companies up to series C. “There aren't that many women founders by the time they get to series B and series C,” she said.
DCVC does not have any diversity criteria for its funding, she told me later. “We are a purely financial firm.” However, that’s not necessarily bad for representation, as numerous studies show that companies with diverse leadership (gender and ethnicity) are also stronger performers. So DCVC tries to nudge the companies it invests in to expand opportunities. “We help…when our companies are hiring executives, helping make sure they have diverse candidates in their executive pool,” she said.
It may help that diversity is coming to the investors who make funding decisions. Slaybaugh says she sees more female VCs in climate than in other sectors. Floreani also sees more representation in her business. “When I started talking about food, or when I started engaging in cellular agriculture, I'm finding a lot more women,” she said. “The reason [is], we make decisions about food, we make decisions about the healthcare of our families.”
So, one potential route to increasing representation in the tech business may be the mantra that purportedly guides all financial decisions: follow the data.
—Seán Captain, executive editor
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