She Leads – Suzanne Biegel
This post is dedicated to honoring one of the most important women in our community – and, indeed, the ecosystem of values-aligned investing by and for women – Suzanne Biegel. Suzanne is an incredible leader, who gives life to Invest for Better’s tagline “women lead the way” in distinctively female ways. She’s brilliant and insightful. And she’s also extraordinarily generous. She excels at catalyzing new projects, organizations, and collaborations. And she exemplifies the meaning of grace. Suzanne is bold, restless, and ambitious about driving change. And she takes the time to lift us up when we could use a boost. She is a trailblazer, mentor, advisor, and connector. She leads.
You might think that Suzanne’s diagnosis of Stage 4 terminal cancer in the summer of 2021 would mean she would sit back and enjoy the English countryside. But Suzanne has a vision for change and so “she persists” and continues to inspire us all to do more. Read on to learn more about the legacy that Suzanne has already created and her invitation to us all to do more.
A Critical Connector for Invest for Better
It’s fair to say that Invest for Better would not be here in its current form without Suzanne. Fresh on the heels of her decision to close the Women Effect pilot– which was envisioned as a connecting point and curated community around gender lens investing – Suzanne flew from London to Boston to join the summit that produced IFB. She served on the IFB Steering Committee in those formative years, always providing the BEST insights, and – doing what Suzanne does so skillfully – she connected Ellen and Janine to one another. She continues to serve as a resource and donor to IFB, most recently making an appearance in our Activation webinar on gender lens investing.
An Ecosystem Builder
Suzanne’s accomplishments in building and shaping the gender-smart ecosystem are legendary. She founded, co-founded and led numerous ventures such as Clearly Social Angels, Women Effect, and Gender Smart aimed at promoting more and better gender smart investing. She knew how to evolve these efforts for more impact –including transitioning Women Effect’s intellectual content to the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, which then produced four important Project Sage research studies quantifying and cataloging the size and growth of the gender lens investing field. More recently, she merged Gender Smart, a global field-building initiative dedicated to unlocking the deployment of impactful gender-smart capital at scale, with 2X Collaborative to become 2X Global. In addition to her own entrepreneurial efforts, Suzanne continues to serve as a valued Board member, advisor, investor, and collaborator to other field builders.
Heading for Change
Her most recent creative engine for good, conceived in partnership with her husband Daniel Maskit, is a donor-advised fund to make investments and grants that would advance both climate and biodiversity solutions and gender equity, called Heading for Change. With an initial $1MM contribution by Suzanne and Daniel, it manifests Suzanne’s passionate belief in a model that forges issues, approaches, people and organizations to shape a better world. An impressive group of advisors will help steward the fund’s direction, provide counsel on investment decisions and support grantee and investee partners. Other donors – at literally any level — are invited to join and become part of an “inclusive community with a shared learning journey.” Invest for Better was privileged to serve on the host committee for this initiative’s launch event on April 25th (view event here).
Thank you, Suzanne. And thank you to all of Suzanne’s partners and colleagues and friends who continue to help make her ambitious leadership possible. We share your dream that if we work together, we will be heading for change.
