Ep 30 Innovation Through Diversity: How Women Are Reshaping the Investment Landscape with Marla Shapiro

In this episode of Management Muse, hosts Cindi Baldi and Geoffrey Tumlin explore the crucial role of innovation, diversity, and women in entrepreneurship with Marla Shapiro, the visionary founder of HERmesa. Marla shares her inspiring journey from the corporate world to startups, where she launched an angel investment group to support women-owned businesses. Marla highlights how diversity fuels successful innovation in all companies and addresses complex challenges, stressing the need for more women in early-stage investing to break the male-dominated status quo. This episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for managers and entrepreneurs on fostering a culture of innovation, embracing risk, and amplifying diverse voices. Through real-world examples of startups like Byway Travel and Code First Girls, Marla provides vital wisdom on how to solve pressing problems and drive meaningful change in today’s business landscape.

 

In this episode you will learn / Episode Highlights: 

• Discover how diversity fuels successful innovation in startups and established companies.
• Learn why increasing women's participation in early-stage investing is key to finding unconventional founders with unique solutions
• Understand the importance of fostering a culture that embraces risk-taking and tolerates failure to fuel innovation.
• Gain insights on how to identify and solve "hair-on-fire" problems that address urgent customer needs.
• Learn practical strategies for managers to elevate diverse perspectives and create lasting impact within their organizations.

Marla Shapiro is the founder of HERmesa, an angel investment group investing in women led startups in the UK & Europe.  After a career spent in male dominated spaces such as Wall Street, MIT, and tech startups, Marla resolved to change the status quo and give women a seat at the table as investors and founders

Her work with HERmesa has created a thriving community of operators-turned-angels that bridges the gender gap in early stage investing and fosters innovation in the startup ecosystem.

Learn more about HERMesa here - www.hermesa.co.uk

 

Resources: 

Culsure - www.culsure.com

On-Demand Leadership - https://www.ondemandleadership.com/

 

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