Canada has been falling behind with women’s leadership,with considerably less than 30% of corporate boards comprising of women. Organizations like the Women’s Executive Network are running programs specifically designed to help fix that gap, however there’s a long way to go yet.
Or is there? Tina Crouse, Funding and Investment strategist, has a bit of news that is going to surprise you. She’s making a movie to let the whole world know that when it comes to Social Finance, Canada has been leading the way with women leadership.
This week, we are talking with Tina about her upcoming films SKIRTS! and her sense of vocation toward social finance.
What is social investing? This is a great video to explain:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bpe_dAOL2M&feature=youtu.be]
Vocation: having a special urge, inclination, or predisposition to a particular calling or career which meets our spiritual need to make a difference and to give meaning to our life’s purpose. It is a drive to fulfil a social responsibility, a willingness to contribute to society, to our social groups, and generally to the welfare of others.
We’ve interviewed Tina about her upcoming film that is soon to be crowdfunded. There will be some awesome perks once that gets started (including one-on-one coaching with high level social financiers), so we’ll let you know once it starts in March.
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Tina, you have been stoking the fires for SKIRTS! for the past year, raising interest in the project. What about social finance resonates with you so deeply? Why is this an important story for you to tell?
I worked for many years in the non-profit sector and I was dismayed by the lack of progress; we rarely solved anything. People worked hard but they were over-worked, under-paid and achieved little. Charities were jostling at the trough of government funding and were being fed very little; their dependency was causing a cycle of poverty, known as the race to the bottom, while they were striving to feed, clothe, house, educate and care for Canada’s poor, weak, elderly and infirm. I could not stand it that we weren’t succeeding.
As someone who raised money for the charitable sector, I was always looking for better, more effective ways to achieve things for society. At one point, I helped an organization raise money for its programs without government support.
Suddenly, I saw a direct relationship between effort and effect and I witnessed the control that organization had in achieving its goals. It was independent AND it was succeeding with little change to its programs. A few years later, I was introduced to social finance as an entire sector able to do the same thing. It was breathtaking. With my eyes wide open, I could see so many ways to be effective and help society.
What was required was for us to marry business to a social mission: to put caring on the same level as profit. Traditional business says that can’t be done because it holds a singular goal of profit-only in its mind, but that’s laughable because human beings have always been able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
And now we have social finance to prove it.
Women have been at the forefront of social finance for over 30 years. Can you tell us about a few of the women you plan to feature, and a little on the work they’ve done, and for how long they’ve been doing it?
There will be ten women in the film [Tess Hebb, Nancy Neatman, Donna Morton, Bonnie Foley-Wong, Carol Newell, Barb McInnes, Tonya Surman, Nora Sobolov, and Ruth Richardson and Mary McGrath]; ten wonderful, charismatic, committed, creative, effective, brilliant women who achieved the ‘firsts’ in their fields. Each woman held a vision that sparked a change that led to where we are now. They are our history and our present, and through their stories they make it possible for us to go forward.
Can you share with us the story of one of those ladies as a taste of what the film holds?
Tessa Hebb is a professor at Carleton University and Canada’s leading academic in impact investing. Just 20 years ago there were no words for what she does today.
She studied and did post-graduate degrees in a world that has so radically changed that it took tremendous vision, commitment and enthusiasm to stay in the field of social finance, research it, develop it and promote it. She had to have the insight to see its potential so that she would devote her life to it and teach it to others who are now some of our best people in social finance. Tessa has worked to convince people to invest millions and millions of dollars to benefit society. Millions!
During your announcement of the film SKIRTS!, you gave a few women an award for their work. Please share that story here, because I think our reader will relate deeply to it.
That was such an emotional experience. Of the ten women who agreed to be in the film, only four were available to be in Toronto the night of the Women in Leadership’s Award Ceremony at the Social Finance Forum 2014. While watching the women onstage, I realized that they didn’t get recognized often enough, that their fantastic achievements, so instrumental in building a bright and beautiful future for Canadians, was not being highlighted, noted, lauded.
- Image provided by Tina Crouse
