Profiles of Purpose–Cherie Blair’s vision to empower women with technology

Jean Sung: Good day. My name is Jean Sung, and I am the head of Philanthropy Centre for Asia at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. It is my honor to welcome you to another insightful session of our Profiles of Purpose series.

Jean Sung: Today we are incredibly privileged to have with us Cherie Blair, a formidable advocate for women's rights and empowerment. It is a perfect timing to have Cherie with us as her foundation recently launched an impactful report exploring the experiences of women entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income countries in 2023. So Cherie, let's start with the first question that I have.

Jean Sung: I think there's a lot more wealth and power in women's hands today. So can you please comment why we must and how we can lead a movement of women uplifting other women?

Cherie Blair: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Jean, for having me on your program, and I am delighted to be able to participate. And I'm looking forward to a really interesting discussion.

Cherie Blair: You very kindly mentioned that every year my foundation, which has reached 250,000 women across the world, publish a report about lessons we've learned from the women we work with. And this year, our report we published on March 8th, International Women's Day was entitled, Women Technology and Business: Bridging the Gap. And that report showed that nearly half of our respondents, and that was over, uh, about, it was 1,150 odd, had actually were already using a AI tools.

Cherie Blair: Well, you know, that Jean, when I set up the Foundation back in 2008, I had realized that I, as a, a fortunate woman living where I was in the beginning of that time, 21st century technology had really helped me. It helped me, particularly when I was in Downing Street, when my husband was there to enable me to carry on my business as a lawyer. And I felt that technology could do two things. One, it's a learning tool, and secondly, it's a connection tool. And, I suppose thirdly, actually say, having said two, I'll put a third, it's an accelerator tool, because you can reach so many more people. And that's why we set up the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women to provide women with access to learning skills, mentoring and business networks because these are the things that women need to grow their business. And by using technology, we can reach so many more women.

Cherie Blair: I said, already said to date, we've reached 250,000 women, but just, I think it's three years ago now, we launched our HerVenture app. The HerVenture app is a learning journey for women entrepreneurs, which is in Indonesia. It's in Vietnam, it's also in three countries in Africa and in Guyana in the local language. And it's designed for a small business, busy woman, and it's in 10-minute segments that you can do in the time that you have available to do some learning. And it uses a lots of techniques, gamification, questions to teach women about different tracks.

Cherie Blair: So one track is how do you set up a business? There's another track on marketing. During Covid, we did a whole track on how do you pivot your business to be able to sell online. We do a whole track about mobile money, all things like that. And I'm proud to say that we have now reached a hundred thousand women with that app alone, and we have very ambitious programs to convert it into other languages and to take it to women in other geographies.

Cherie Blair: Now, that's an example of the good things you can do with technology, because there's no way that on face-to-face training, we could train a hundred thousand women. And the success rate and the stories that we have from, from the HerVenture app, I mean, are, are really quite extraordinary how women use that. Particularly actually in sometimes in remote areas where they just can't get to bigger cities where they are unable to, you know, get access to libraries or even classes.

Cherie Blair: One example of that, for example, is a girl called Mercy Manzini, and she runs an agricultural social enterprise. 'cause yes, actually to that lender who said, no women do know about agriculture in Johannesburg. Now she did not finish her schooling in South Africa because as a girl, she was taken out of class to look after her younger siblings. And we know this happens not just in Africa, but in many, many countries in Asia as well. But she said she struggled as a black woman in South Africa to be taken seriously in business. And this was terrible, particularly in relation to accessing finance. So she got the, HerVenture app, and she used that micro learning app to learn business planning. And we also have a track about how to get sponsorship, how to present your business, so that you are taken seriously. And this enabled her to actually get a loan. And as a result of that, her business has expanded and she's created, been able to create more, more jobs for people working with her.

Cherie Blair: But let me give you something from our survey that we did this year. What did we discover? We discovered that 60% of the women we worked with had been adversely affected in some way with, by using technology to, for their business. For example, things like, setting on Facebook. And one of the women had a clothing business, and a man used that Facebook page to post sexist and, you know, offensive remarks about her and her clothes. Other women have reported, sometimes stalkers can, you know, you expose yourself in some ways online. So you are then open to those problems. 20% of the women we spoke to said it had actually adversely impacted their business, and 9% said it actually made them withdraw from using the internet to sell their business.

Jean Sung: You mentioned earlier about we can, you know, have greater impact in women businesses if only they have access to financials or financial opportunities. And we've heard a lot of times that women don't even know that they should or could to go open a bank account. How do you see that changing, particularly in some of the environments that you've been working in? What would stir them to actually go to a bank and say, this is what I do, I know agriculture and I need a loan.

Cherie Blair: Well, I think actually, you know, absolute, this is one of the things that many and many of the women we work with are constantly telling us. And that's why, let me tell you a little bit about the work we're doing in Guyana. In Guyana, which you may know in the Caribbean discovered oil, ExxonMobil discovered oil about three years ago, or, well, I think they would be working for a long time. But the oil is now coming onshore and it's gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to technically being one a high income country because it's got a small population and suddenly it's GDP is zoomed up. Um, ExxonMobil being, and the government being conscious of that the Foundation asked us to go into Guyana, which we have been there now for two years, to work with women business owners to ensure that women were getting their fair share of the boom that is absolutely coming to Guyana.

Cherie Blair: And we brought our, HerVenture app there. And we also brought our Road to Growth programs, working with the local private business training provider. We started putting on classes for groups of women. And I was in Guyana in August giving out certificates to 130 women who just passed through one of our programs. The fascinating thing about that, to digress a moment, was when I think of the women, um, seven of those women who graduated, I we got, we had over 90% graduation. Seven of them had given birth during that time, but they continued to, to do the course. One, there was one woman who didn’t give birth and didn’t graduate. Why? Because her baby was born early and she had an emergency treatment, but she didn’t. So the commitment was amazing.

Cherie Blair: Several of the women brought their little babies with them for the, when I gave them certificate. And I, you know, we all love little babies. So that was a, a memorable moment for me to see these mothers who were, were so committed to improving their families. But Road to Growth is our first program. All of the women had then registered to go onto the second program, Road to Finance, and they were very, very keen to do the road to finance. Now, the Road to Finance program we do with local banks. So we designed the program and the training to help women understand what it is banks are looking for when you go for a loan, to help them develop a business plan that hits that criteria. And then you know, obviously also training them in, in in finance skills.

Cherie Blair: And then at the end of the eight week program, we don’t know if you have this in Asia, we have something called the Dragons’ Den it's a pitching,, exercise. And so the banks come to the event and the women pitch their businesses and, you know, we've had a 60% of those women actually got money. So, you know, we felt that was a great success. So when you ask about how do women get access to finance, sometimes it's just about teaching them how speak the right language. And if they can learn what it is that businesses are looking for and how to present themselves with that, then they're on the right track. The other thing I think is that women are unfamiliar with financial products. And the road to finance also allows banks to explain and pitch what there is available. A survey we did a couple of years ago now with the women we work with showed that overwhelmingly, I think it was nearly three quarters of them, God, were self-financing when they expanded their business all from family and friends.

Jean Sung: You've done so many wonderful programs, you know, from the beginning, you know, Road to Growth, Road to Finance, so many of these programs to enable women. What do you see as the next step for the Cherie Blair Foundation to do in order to continuously grow this platform, grow this women of encouraging more women coming into this space, becoming women entrepreneurs? And one day, I hope we can lose the word women, why can't we just be entrepreneurs?

Cherie Blair: Absolutely. At the moment, I don't think we're up there, but I do think we see we, our future, we see in a number of things. We, we have a Ready for Business strategy where we want to reach a million women by 2030. And we want to lead a movement of people who are focusing on uplifting women entrepreneurs precisely because of what you are saying, of, of the way that if we enable them, they provide not only jobs, they provide not only incomes and support for their families, but they also tend to also have a social impact in relation to supporting others, working for the environment, all the things you've already, identified, Jean. I think the, the other program actually, which I haven't spoken about, but which I, I think is a fascinating one, is the ability of technology to enable friendships and relationships to develop across the world. And in particular, to enable a personal relationship between a woman entrepreneur and in our case, with our global mentoring platform, an individual man or woman who wants to have, to give an hour or so a month, maybe two hours a month to help a woman entrepreneur. So we have a European gold accredited mentoring program where we train people to be mentors. And where we then pair them using algorithms and technology, with a woman entrepreneur in, we are in over a hundred countries. We work with local business, developing institutions, whether the private or public sector, who recommend women to the program. We develop a targeted program based on the women's needs and the mentor skills. So we set them certain goals to achieve. We monitor that relationship over a year. And at the end of that year, we find two people have not just become business enablers, but have become friends. Constantly we, every year, you know, we look at the cohorts over 90 something percent of the women have, you know, gained skills. 80% of them have achieved a business target.

Cherie Blair: When you look at the mentors, they too have learned something about themselves and possibly even used skills that they, they used to have, but they haven't used for, for some time. I think the most important thing that we teach the mentors is how to be a listening ear. You know, we always say, you're not there to do, to make the decisions for the woman. You are there to help her find the path, to make her own decisions. And to do that, you really do need to have the mentor. The biggest mentoring skill is actually listening and then helping. So that's, that's, that's a great program. I don’t know if anyone listening to this would like to, you know, know more about it. We are, at the moment we're recruiting for mentors to join our next intake in May. that is either as individuals or we have a great program with, businesses where the businesses sponsor their employees to become mentors. And as a result of that, because we have all this data on the performance of the mentors, we can actually share with the business some information about how their mentors have performed, which in turn is a, is a great staff development tool for, for the member of staff and indeed for the employer to see their strengths and weaknesses.

Cherie Blair: So that's another huge advantage of technology because, you know, a woman in London wouldn't necessarily form a relationship with a, with a woman in Indonesia without happening to go there. I mean, and, but they can, they can become friends. And so many of them keep in touch year after year.

Jean Sung: I want to have a closing here because I think we could continue for hours, but I've only got one minute left. So in closing, I want to say that big thank you to Mrs. Cherie Blair for her invaluable insights and her inspiring stories. It has been, for me, a profound, a learning journey that explores how we can empower futures in women, leading in tech and entrepreneurship together. I also like to add Cherie's dedication to empowering women across the globe, how it resonates deeply with our mission here at J.P.  Morgan Private Bank’s Philanthropy Centre in Asia.

Jean Sung: So thank you everyone for your engaging participation and for joining us in our profiles of purpose series. Together we continue to make strides towards a more inclusive and equitable world. Stay inspired, and I look forward to welcoming you to our future sessions. Thank you.