- This event has passed.
Backing Women-led Businesses: In Conversation with Enko Chem
March 14 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
In celebration of Women’s History Month, please join us in conversation with Jacqueline Heard, Ph.D., MBA, CEO and Co-Founder Enko Chem, Inc.
Supporting women entrepreneurs and women-led businesses is not just the right thing to do socially, it is one of the smartest things that governments, corporations and the finance community could do economically. Yet, around the world, women entrepreneurs still face barriers to starting and growing their businesses. In 2022, we published a Citi GPS report, Women Entrepreneurs: Catalyzing Growth, Innovation, and Equality, which found that closing the gender gap in business growth globally could add up to $2.3 trillion to global GDP (or a 3% increase), create up to 433 million jobs, and unleash an untapped pool of talent and innovation to address global challenges. In this curated series of conversations, we highlight some of the women building successful businesses across sectors and in different regions to learn from their experiences. Our experts will explore the challenges women entrepreneurs still face, what is needed to better support them, and the significant economic opportunity that empowered women entrepreneurs present.
Expert Speaker Bio:
Jacqueline Heard, Ph.D., MBA, is the CEO and Co-Founder of Enko Chem, Inc. Her career in agriculture has centered around the support of innovation by identifying and commercializing new technology, as an entrepreneur, a leader of global R&D and as a venture investor. Jacqueline has prioritized listening to farmers and translating their experiences into practical innovations throughout her career. As Monsanto’s global R&D lead, she gathered direct input from farmers to develop products for drought-tolerant crops. As a venture capitalist investing in agtech startups, she observed a common disconnect between the solutions founders pitched and farmers’ actual needs. Jacqueline currently leads Enko in its work to design safe and sustainable solutions to agricultural problems, by applying the latest drug discovery and development approaches from pharma to agriculture.
Citi Host:
Adam Bergman Managing Director, Clean Energy Transition Group & Global Head of AgTech Investment Banking, Citi
For any queries, please contact shantala.porter@citi.com