In 2018 Breen Sullivan, an in-house tech lawyer, noticed something: her male colleagues were angel investing and serving on advisory and governing boards of startups (and getting promoted!), and her female colleagues weren’t. When she tried to find similar opportunities for herself, there was no obvious place to go. Breen also knew many startups don’t take advantage of advisory boards or fill all their open board seats, which meant fewer opportunities than needed. Since then, she’s launched the Pay It Forward Initiative, which aims to enlist thousands of companies between now and 2025 to pledge to close the gender wealth and funding gap by diversifying boardrooms and cap tables. They aim to get 75,000 women onto for-profit boards by the end of 2025.
