Voices from the Field: Elizabeth Corrado, Firebird Collective
In this special edition of our Voices from the Field series, we speak with two incredible partners about how the Heading for Change Investment Toolkit and Guide have helped them integrate gender considerations into their investing strategies. They also share insights on why resources like toolkits, guidance, and greater transparency are vital for investors seeking to drive meaningful impact at the intersection of climate and gender.
Elizabeth Corrado is the former Investment Director at Heading for Change and currently serves as an Advisor to Firebird Collective.
How have you been thinking of the climate and gender finance nexus in your work, and what opportunities do you see for investors exploring this nexus?
I am delighted to have been part of the founding Heading for Change investment team and to have helped lay the foundations for the investment strategy, due diligence framework and overall investment approach. I am currently advising Firebird, a woman-founded and impact-led family office with a focus on investing in women’s sport and art, and helping create a mission-aligned multi-asset impact investment portfolio to catalyze and accelerate greater gender equity.
Firebird has invested in emerging women fund managers who integrate a climate lens in their appraisal of investments as well as microfinance funds providing capital to women-led businesses on the frontlines of climate change.
In addition, Firebird is investing in a female fund manager investing in health innovation to close the gender health gap with an interest in health conditions affecting women which are expected to become more prevalent or severe with climate change. We also overlay a gender-based violence lens in investments evaluating the risk of GBV in the workforce and supply chain and where and how it is exacerbated by climate change.
There are significant opportunities for investors to identify overlooked or enhanced value creation opportunities to invest in pioneering climate and/or health-related solutions at the nexus of climate, health and gender, often designed on the basis of lived experience, addressing the impact of climate change in their product or service innovation.
How has the Heading for Change Investment Guide & Toolkit helped integrate gender into your fund’s strategy and thematic focus on advancing women’s health and into your overall investment process (pipeline building, portfolio engagement etc)?
The HfC Investment Guide & Toolkit has been instrumental in shaping our development of a set of investment criteria and specific due diligence questions for investing at the intersection of health and gender as well as in integrating a climate lens into our overall investment appraisal.
Together with the Gender ROI tool developed by Sweef, the South East Asian Women Economic Empowerment Fund, in which we are an LP, we use a set of tools to guide our due diligence framework for investing with a gender lens.
We are seeking to further leverage the HfC Toolkit to shape how we build a portfolio of impact investments with a systems lens which seeks to build on and create synergies and greater impact between funds and investments at a portfolio level.
How do you see your investment strategy advancing its integrated climate and gender or health and gender approach further?
Firebird is working with its wealth managers to embed a gender lens in the public markets investment portfolio starting with a baselining of the investment portfolio for gender and racial equity at the portfolio/fund manager level to ascertain and evidence what % of AUM is managed by women and/or where women contribute to the portfolio investment decisions.
We are keen to explore and highlight the intersectionality of gender and key thematic areas in our public markets portfolio and have already commenced a discussion on the opportunity for greater engagement and stewardship of our public markets investment portfolio at the nexus of health and gender.
How can resources like toolkits, guidance, and greater transparency matter for investors aiming to drive meaningful impact at the intersection of climate and gender?
Toolkits and guidance are critical. Wealth managers and fund managers are keen to advance their understanding of how to embed a gender lens in an investment portfolio and seek guidance on emerging best practice.
In my experience, to advance the understanding and evaluation of the critical intersectionality of gender with key thematics such as climate and health and to advance what good looks like in terms of process and practice, both wealth managers and fund managers would be well served by illustrative multi-asset impact investment portfolios, practical guidance on how to use the tools and encouragement if not insistence to use them.
Co-creating the Heading for Change investment toolkit and investment process and then sharing this open-source framework with the broader investing community is a great milestone to celebrate.
Suzanne was committed to moving others along and collectively unlocking more capital, so having these tools out in the public domain is a key step to ensuring others can build off the learnings and insights to advance their own climate and gender investing strategies- and tailor it to the sector and context in which they operate.