Empowering women to lead

Natalie Ferguson and Kristen Lunman’s first mission was to put investing at everyone’s finger tips.

Their second is to empower women to change business culture from the inside out, equipping them with the tools and network necessary to redesign the world of work on their terms.

The business partners co-founded investment platform Hatch in 2017. They exited when it was acquired in 2021 and their latest venture is Powrsuit, a membership platform for women leaders.

“We call it the Trojan horse approach, “ Ferguson says. “One of the biggest problems women face in effecting change is that they’ll go on a course, come back with the knowledge and inspiration needed, but then slot back into the same old environment that they couldn’t succeed in before.

“With Powrsuit, the idea is for women to focus on themselves and what they want to achieve as a leader, and to create a network. Once we get that en masse in organisations, with male allies, all speaking the same language, subscribing to the same philosophy, backing each other up, we can subtly change the culture from the inside.”

Ferguson says at Hatch they learned very quickly that while people were very excited to take control of their finances and investing, the majority of those people were men.

“There was a massive gender wealth gap and gender financial literary gap,” she says.

That led them to dig into those deeply routed myths and behaviours around money.

“There’s all sorts of really crazy stuff around financial exclusion. Women weren’t even allowed credit cards until the 1980s. So at Hatch we got really good at taking someone from being completely disengaged with their finances to being confident and capable.”

The duo planned to stay in finance and began researching opening a fund that only invested in companies that were led by women.

“We did that for two reasons. One is that women-led companies tend to outperform financially and, secondly, women tend to get more interested in investing when there’s a purpose.”

But they found there were fewer than 200 companies in all the share markets in the word that met the criteria for investment - being publicly listed, large enough to have financial stability, led by women and with a diverse board.

“We realised the problem we needed to solve was the gender leadership gap.”

It was, in some ways, the perfect time to launch. Covid, technology and the push for diversity have planted two seeds for massive transformation.

“We’ve moved from a world where it’s bums on seats to remote hybrid work and we are speeding towards more change with AI and automation, not to mention climate change.

“So the leadership style that we’ve seen so dominant in our social norms won’t get us where we need to go. We actually need diverse leadership teams. Companies are really starting to pay attention, and Governments are mandating it, because all the evidence supports that diverse leadership teams outperform on virtually every business measure.”

Powrsuit offers fortnightly mini-masterclasses with deep-dives into leadership skills and challenges, with post session breakouts. Members are matched with a group of women leaders and peers, enabling them to form a network and navigate challenges together.

It also features online events, interviews with experts, coaching, casual catchups, in-person meetups, mindset tools, and a library of masterclasses and interviews.

More than 350 members have already signed up since launch on International Women’s Day in March, while their podcast and newsletter has a global audience of more than 7000. Foundation partners include Xero and Contact Energy.

Ferguson and Lunman aim to grow Powrsuit into a billion-dollar company.

“We want women to be recognised as an economic superpower. We are 50% of the population. We’re building this fabulous community, an incredibly engaged group, and we’ve a really strong culture around openness, vulnerability and honesty. It feels like something magic is forming.”

Powrsuit will be at this month’s Westpac Women in Business Conference in Queenstown, organised by Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce.