For those involved in the slow crawl to gender parity, the 21st century has provided plenty to cheer about. On the campaign trail, in stadiums, on the big screen, in corner offices and in boardrooms, women are filling more roles and making their voices heard.
But that’s not entirely true in investment management, where funds run by women are rare, by some estimates less than 5% of the total. That doesn’t mean these women aren’t making their voices heard, however.
Throughout 2015, representatives of a global association called “100 Women in Hedge Funds” have toured the world, ringing opening bells on stock exchanges in cities such as Hong Kong, Chicago, New York, Toronto and London and holding educational events.
“We had women as young as 4 years old who came to those events,” says Amanda Pullinger, the association’s CEO. “When girls walk into an event that is predominantly women, they get a sense that this is something that women do, this is something that they can be excited about.”
100 Women in Hedge Funds, abbreviated as “100WHF,” is a global networking group for professionals in the investment management industry, particularly in the realm of alternatives and hedge funds.
Since it was founded in 2001, the group has grown to 13,000 members in 20 different locations across three continents, hosted more than 400 education events and connected more than 250 senior professional women through peer advisory groups.
The association has also grown beyond hedge funds.
“100 Women in Hedge Funds is where we began, but as the industry has broadened out and morphed, so have we,” Pullinger says. “We’re no longer just representing women who are in hedge funds. We’re now representing women in the financial industry globally, and we do have male members too.”
In June, the association established a Bermuda chapter, which reached its requisite 100 registered members in just three months.
“Every single location we’ve expanded to has started not because we planted a 100WHF location there but because a group of women located there said to us that ‘we want to bring this organization here,’” Pullinger says. “So it’s genuinely been a grassroots effort. We had no location in Bermuda a year ago.”
The association aims to enhance opportunities for women in fund management through three pillars: philanthropy, education and professional peer leverage. Its organic approach has attracted big names: In 2010, Prince William became a patron of the organization, and was joined in 2012 by his wife Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince Harry. In December 2012, Ivanka Trump, executive vice president for the Trump Organization and daughter of Republican presidential candidate and real estate tycoon Donald Trump, joined 100WHF’s board of directors.
This year, the association launched a campaign to bring more women into the investment management industry’s pipeline, beginning with its philanthropic efforts.
“This year we’re going to raise money for our own foundation, which is a first for us,” Pullinger says. “We want to reach young women at university and at business school who are already studying the right subjects to succeed in the industry. We want to inspire these young women by demonstrating through our senior and Next Gen membership that there are women on the investment side of this industry. That it’s a great career for a woman. We want young women to see that in aiming for a role such as a CIO of an endowment or a foundation you can have a stimulating career and make a substantive difference in the world.”
The group has raised more than $34 million for philanthropic causes and holds annual gala fund-raisers in New York, London, Hong Kong and Geneva. It has so far raised money for organizations such as the Clinton Foundation, DonorsChoose.org, the Child Bereavement Charity and schools damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
Much of 100 Women in Hedge Funds’ work has an educational focus, but it hasn’t addressed the pipeline problem: Women are pursuing undergraduate business degrees at a level similar to men, yet only one-third of the students in business schools are women. Of those, few are in the pipeline to become fund managers. Instead, they are using their education to become planners or to work on the sell side of private equity.
“From my experience, there’s a lack of knowledge of what this industry is,” says Erin Molloy, an association member. “In my college business classes, hedge funds and alternatives were not being discussed. The industry was very much under the radar in the classroom.”
Molloy, who works in marketing and communications at New York-based Gruss Capital Management, suggests that the industry’s image might be one reason for the silence. “Good things aren’t making headlines,” she says. “For hedge funds, there are a lot of negative headlines that can intimidate people in general. They have no idea that there are so many small firms out there that are wonderful places to work.”
That’s why 100 Women in Hedge Funds has turned its sights on women at the beginning of their careers—or still in school—to maximize its impact.