Amy Neale, vice-president and start-up engagement lead at Mastercard, is encouraging Jamaican women to take the risk and start businesses, especially in the field of technology.
And they can count on Mastercard, one of the world’s leading global payments and technology companies, to support them.
Through its Start Path Programme, Mastercard has already raised US$1.2 billion in investment for 180 start-up companies from 30 countries in 14 areas of technology, and Neale says those with women at the helm have performed better.
“Women-founded start-ups produced 30 per cent higher annual revenue and have an ultimate success of being more likely to exist than male-only companies,” Neale told The Sunday Gleaner at the Start Path Summit in Miami, Florida, recently.
“One of the things that we have learnt is that men generally will move (but) it’s not always an easy decision for a woman to relocate herself. Women are less likely to leave their families, so our programme is 100 per cent virtual, so all of these start-ups can participate in the programme from wherever they are in the world. That’s just one example of the way that we have tried to design features to make it easier for a woman to say yes,” added Neale.
She said the Start Path Programme it is a grass-roots initiative for Mastercard to make sure that they are seeing more women technologists come through to work with them, and also to push start-up companies
“You can only be what you can see, so from a Mastercard point of view, our CFO is a woman and a significant part of our senior management is female. Mastercard … is committed to encouraging women to do well in their careers.
“So women who participate in the Start Path programme will find that they are walking into an incredibly welcoming environment, and our Start Path team is 50/50 men and women as well,” declared Neale.
She added: “I would say to them that they are only constrained by the limits that they placed upon themselves, and that by working with us through the programme we will give them the access that they need to grow and scale their businesses.
“We are working closely with investors who really care about diversity, as well as connecting them to customers. we would also be looking to expand their investor networks as well.”
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