Women Impact Strategy
ThirtyNorth holds the strong belief that gender diversity in corporate leadership and on boards isn’t just the right thing to do — it is also the financially smart thing to do.
The Advent of the Idea:
A 2015 article caught the attention of ThirtyNorth. The article suggested that companies with women board members had better corporate performance than those without any women on the board. With this in mind, we began to do our proprietary analysis, a copy of which you can request here.
Despite research linking gender diversity at the top with stronger corporate performance, we saw few investment options that leveraged this compelling research. In fact, at the time, we saw no strategies that leveraged the gender diversity research to enhance an investment thesis. This is how the Women Impact Strategy Separately Managed Account was born.
Our Strategy:
The Women Impact Strategy is an actively managed portfolio of around 50 stocks focused on gender diversity on both the boards and within the executive ranks. The portfolio design generally seeks neutral weight across style, industry, and market capitalization to the Russell 3000 Total Return Index, allowing stocks with strong female leadership to drive our investment thesis. We join our voices with others as we actively vote proxies to support our gender diversity mandate.
We offer an opportunity to not only invest in a gender diverse leadership within your portfolio but also in a portfolio run by emerging female portfolio managers at a company majority-owned by women.
Our portfolio continues to have a higher percentage of female representation on both the board and in the executive ranks.
Relevance Today:
Gender diversity on boards has made significant strides since we began this strategy. While females have not reached parity on the board, it has become increasingly easier to find companies that meet our board standards.
The challenges within the executive ranks now presents as the larger hurdle. We continue to see research that confirms what we already intuitively know: diverse representation creates positive impacts within corporations.
As we manage the current portfolio, we are mindful that differentiation based on female management is becoming increasingly important. Our portfolio continues to have a higher percentage of female representation on both the board and in the executive ranks.
We celebrate the strides that have been made, and we look to contribute to the opportunities of the future.
To download our whitepaper titled, “Impact of Women in Corporate Leadership,” please fill out the form below.
Historical performance results for investment indexes and/or categories, generally do not reflect the deduction of transaction and/or custodial charges or the deduction of an investment-management fee, the incurrence of which would have the effect of decreasing historical performance results.
