Women’s History Month a Great Moment to 'Shine a Light' on the Strong Voices of Entrepreneurs

Jailan Griffiths, Nasdaq’s Global Head of Purpose and President of the Nasdaq Foundation, was a guest on Wharton Business Daily for a special episode of the SiriusXM radio show celebrating Women’s History Month.

Griffiths discussed the company’s renewed purpose statement and its initiatives geared towards advancing economic progress for all with host Dan Loney.

A full transcript of the conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, is below.

Dan Loney, Host, Wharton Business Daily: A pleasure to be joined right now by Jailan Griffiths, who is Vice President at Nasdaq. Jailan, great to have you with us for a few moments.

Jailan Griffiths, Global Head of Purpose, Nasdaq, and President of the Nasdaq Foundation: Thank you for having me, lovely to see you.

Loney: Thank you. So, what does this month, Women’s History Month, mean to you both personally and professionally?

Griffiths: For me, Women’s History Month reinforces the work that we do at Nasdaq, in terms of striving to make the investment world more inclusive and striving for gender parity, whether that is in career progression, pay, or access. When I look back at my career, there are definitely defining moments where the scales were unfairly tipped, and I would get so frustrated by it. And you know what really helped me, and what I’m so grateful for now, really, are the strong female role models who I now aspire to. They really helped me navigate those situations and figure out how to handle them and handle myself through them. I try and pay that forward now, whether as a manager or mentor myself, or in the work we do with so many amazing organizations who are each in their own way working to address gender inequality.

I think Women’s History Month really gives us a great moment to shine a light on those stories and strong voices to, I hope, inspire people to do more and get more involved.

Loney: One of the areas, seemingly, that Nasdaq focuses on is that “rising tide lifts all boats” kind of mentality in trying to improve everyone’s economic landscape. How are you trying to tackle that, and how do you think it’s going so far?

Griffiths: So, our purpose is an extension of our strategy, to “Advance Economic Progress for All”. And it’s not new to Nasdaq, but certainly the events in 2020 were a moment that gave us an opportunity to rearticulate why we do what we do at Nasdaq. Refining [our purpose] to “Advancing Economic Progress for All” allows us tie in the work we do as an organization strategically, with the impact we want to have – and are trying to have – in our communities.

So, that purpose, that improvement of the economic landscape, allows us to take our products, reimagine how they can be used, and make them work for more people in the world. Nasdaq is a unique juncture at the center of capital markets and technology. Our hope is by making the markets more accessible to more people, that we’re helping them build a better future for themselves and create new businesses and opportunities.

You can see that in the work that the Nasdaq Foundation and Entrepreneurial Center are doing. But you can also see it across Nasdaq as a whole. You can see it through the work that we do on anti-financial crime, or our efforts around board diversity. And then there’s the financial literacy program that our European Markets teams are spearheading in each of their regions. It also comes alive through the Goodworks program, which is our volunteering and matching program, and our Nasdaq employees are really engaged in it, and they want to support the work that’s done in their own local communities or the work and efforts we’re doing on a global level. They’re really so generous with their time and their funds.

Loney: How do you focus then on, from the investing perspective, sending out that message that the path to being an investor is one that’s really available for everyone right now?

Griffiths: The Foundation has a program called the New Investor. Within that program, we’ve got two efforts that really [focus on raising] that awareness. There’s the InvestHER Power series, which is a series of events designed to spotlight inspiring Black and Latina women founders and investors, explore their investing journeys, and learn the mechanics of how valuations happen or how to build portfolios, and hopefully inspire future investors through these role models. You know we’ve held two so far, Dan, and they were really well attended, they offered great insights, and the conversation around the room was extremely compelling. We’re hoping to plan and hold more of those across different cities in the country.

We’ve also got this series called the THRIVE series, which is a combination of interactive webinars, online education, and specifically, community activations. THRIVE convenes financial professionals, influencers, and entrepreneurs, and they make financial education accessible for millions of people, with the goal of helping them build generational wealth.

And then, within the Nasdaq business itself, there’s that financial literacy program I mentioned that’s run by our European Markets team. That’s keeping retail investors engaged and hopefully attracting a new generation of investors in Europe too. The way that they’re doing that and “advancing economic progress for all” is engaging in partnerships with local associations, local nonprofits in their regions and offering education programs that cover all aspects of investing from what the markets are to technology, crypto, and more.

Loney: Well, that component of financial literacy is something that we’ve talked about a lot on our show over the course of many years. We talk about it from a variety of different perspectives, and you just touched on the fact that we tend to focus on it a lot as a United States issue, but realistically it’s a global one where it gives us the opportunity to raise awareness in countries around the world as well.

Griffiths: It very much does so. And Nasdaq is a global organization, and that is why you can see this engagement across our regions. We’re really thinking about how we can apply that to our regions specifically. It’s not a one-size-fits-all [situation] but there is a need for [financial literacy] across the globe. By working it through, understanding who the right target audiences are, and [identifying] who is the underrepresented group in their area and what they need; thinking through how we can drive that level of financial literacy, and determining who are the best groups to work with to bring that vision to life. Then you add in Nasdaq’s expertise and knowledge, and our people, and together we’re creating those meaningful programs around the world.

Loney: Tell me a little bit about that component of working with other organizations to advance a lot of these efforts. Because it’s one thing to put the power of Nasdaq behind it, but as you alluded to, there are so many other businesses that are out there that can be able to assist and give and advance these efforts as well.

Griffiths: Very much, and we’re always thinking through that and how we partner with other organizations. That really allows us to address the different aspects of the challenge that we have to deal with.

You know we conducted research 18 months ago, in association with the Aspen Institute and Commonwealth, looking at how to build a framework for inclusive investing. It looked at how to drive stock market participation, how to close the wealth gap for women of color. Specifically, it identified where the areas of opportunity would be to make an impact and affect change.

Fast forward to the Foundation’s New Investor program, which was formed by that research and focuses on two of those areas: the role of investor identity and the role market access can play in improving and driving financial literacy as well as improving economic progress for all. So, the initiative itself tests multiple approaches to creating a strong investor identity for underrepresented communities.

We’ve already talked about the InvestHER Power series, which we partner with digitalundivided to do that, and the THRIVE program, where we partner with Black & Brown Founders and My Money My Future to do that, so those both benefit from these partnerships [with other organizations].

So, there’s a third prong of the approach with the New Investor [program], which is our ongoing partnership with Commonwealth, this time on an initiative called “Transforming Investor Identity”. That’s a national activation that will engage Black and Latina beginning investors and document their appetite for capital markets participation, with the goal of producing new data and new insights of really how best to serve first time investors more sustainably.

Loney: And I understand you’re doing work around entrepreneurial education as well?

Griffiths: We sure are! The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center was established in 2014 with the support of the Nasdaq Foundation. The Center does amazing work, and it brings together a coalition of nonprofits, universities, corporations, and capital allocators to support underrepresented entrepreneurs on two fronts.

It offers free, educational incubator-and-mentorship-focused programming and resources to more than 75,000 entrepreneurs to date. In the last year alone, that programming has reached entrepreneurs in over 111 countries, going back to my comment earlier that this is a global organization. Of those entrepreneurs, 69% of them were women and 70% are entrepreneurs of color.

The Center also drives research that identifies the obstacles and solutions to achieving equitable entrepreneurship. In terms of that research, the Center has a partnership with the Wells Fargo Foundation, Penn State University, and the Fair Play Workplace that looks at the role of pay, ownership, and valuation disparities in the Gender Wealth Gap, which feels particularly timely to mention this month in particular.

We also have the Venture Equity Project. It’s the first of its kind, a two-year coalition across ten leading academic institutions and global nonprofits.

The work [the Center] is doing really supports entrepreneurs in many, many ways and gives us a great foundation to move forward.

Loney: Jailan, thank you very much for giving us a few moments on all of these efforts you’re doing with the Nasdaq Foundation, all the best, and we will stay in touch.

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