Want To Support Other Women? Cherie Blair Shares How To Back Women Entrepreneurs
by , Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Michelle King is a leading global gender equality expert, with a focus on advancing women in the changing world of work. To stay up to date follow Michelle @michpking
photo: Cherie Blair, lawyer and founder of Cherie Blair Foundation for Women
“Too often women are told what they can’t do. Actually, we need to understand that we can! We need to find our own power. We do that by believing in ourselves and believing in each other. When we do that amazing things can happen,” says Cherie Blair, lawyer and founder of Cherie Blair Foundation for Women.
The foundation serves a worldwide community of over 6000 mentors and mentees across 100 countries. The aim is to provide women entrepreneurs with access to business skills, technology, networks and financial skills needed to run successful businesses.
When Blair’s husband, Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, she had the opportunity to meet with a wide range of women entrepreneurs. It was through that experience Blair began to see the need for connecting women entrepreneurs on a global scale.
The foundation’s mentoring program also has a knock-on effect as 80% of mentees pass on what they have learned to other women and 50% of mentees go on to become mentors themselves.
In this interview, Blair shares why it is so important for women entrepreneurs to pay it forward and how men also have a critical role to play in advancing women at work.
Michelle King: Can you share why you started the Foundation?
Cherie Blair: Having got to 10 Downing Street and having the opportunity to travel I realized there are a lot of women around the world, particularly in emerging markets, whose position was a lot like the position I was in back in the late 1970’s. I thought there was a lot we could do to accelerate the process of involving women in entrepreneurship and becoming economic actors in their community. That is why I decided to focus my foundation on women’s economic empowerment. To help them set up, grow and expand their own businesses. I firmly believe that when a woman has her own money she can make her own choices.
