On March 8, on the occasion of the International Women’s Day, KvinnoKapital had the pleasure of organising a celebratory lunch with the participation of Barbara Stewart, CFA and the support of Storebrand Asset Management. Thank you all for coming, so great to see so many women from the industry gathered.
After a welcome by Anna Jönsson from Storebrand Asset Management, our host for the day, Claudia Stanghellini, Chairwoman of KvinnoKapital gave a short update on the purpose and activities of KvinnoKapital, an industry network for women by women. We are now more than 230 members, with a nice mix of experience, roles and companies which allows for many interesting meetings and discussions.
Barbara Stewart then took the stage to uncover her new edition of her Rich Thinking series, “Smart women and men: How they invest in themselves”.
Barbara is a Canadian researcher, writer and speaker focusing on women and finance, who has a long-lasting relation with KvinnoKapital and regularly finds her way to the Nordics. This Rich Thinking edition will be her thirteenth and characteristically it is released on the International Women Day.
This year, Barbara has focused her research on how smart women, and men, invest in themselves do be their best in their professional role. Her findings are based on a large number of interviews with women and men, using her extensive network worldwide, across ages, regions and professions.
Barbara concluded that there are three recurring themes on how to invest in yourself and during her presentation she shared many inspiring examples that can be found in the report
So what do successful men and women invest in?
Exercise and health, followed by travelling more and better, and consuming good food & wines were at the top of the list. And most importantly, these things were not seen as expenditures but as investments to be able to do the work, now and over the longer term. Investing in family relations, passion projects and education were often mentioned too.
One perhaps surprising finding was that twice as many men as women indicated that they invest in their mental health and Barbara gave some live examples of how successful leaders invested in yoga, mindfulness and therapy to regain their “happy” and stay balanced. Other important things that can help you is giving back and to make sure that you are in control of your time and not a victim of other peoples’ agendas.
Barbara ended her presentation with an open invitation to keep the conversations going both in the network but also with her, on LinkedIn, on twitter or through her web page, barbarastewart.ca where you can also access All Rich Thinking studies.
Next, moderator Julia Roording from the board of Kvinnokapital invited the panel consisting of Josephine Asklöf, High Performance Coach and lecturer, David Seekell Head of Sustainable Investing and ESG at Atle Asset Management, Alexandra Morris CIO at Skagen Funds and Wava Bodin, Founder and CEO of the fund platform Fundrella, up on stage to give their views on how to invest in ourselves to achieve success.
The panel agreed that you need to be able to recharge your batteries to be successful. Having “Me-time” is important It’s like an oxygen mask in the plane, you first need to help yourself to be able to help others, Wava said. What you do to recharge yourself all depends on your needs. Whether you want to take long walks in the woods, chill on sofa, read a good book or meet a tonne of people. And, Alexandra pointed out, you should be open with your priorities to manage other people’s expectations, also in your private life. It is also important to be open with your needs to let other people help you, especially when changing careers or going outside your comfort zone, finding a mentor is invaluable, David added.
So how do you get started? According to Josephine, setting up realistic goals and realising that this investment is not an instant reward thing but a marathon withs long-term benefits is crucial to succeed.
And, concluded the panellists, on a general note women could become better at helping other women, to support and encourage each other to let go of any bad consciences. Something for us all to bring back to our colleagues and friends!
Thank you all for attending. We especially want to thank Storebrand for hosting the event together with Kvinnokapital as well as to Fundrella for the much appreciated cupcake treat. We hope to see you all soon again at our next event 19 April, our career lunch!
