I Want Her Job

Deb Nelson has a job at RSF Social Finance that is all about helping people align their values with their money, all while helping fund entrepreneurs for social impact businesses. As vice president of client and company engagement, Deb also works on strategic partnerships and client engagement. On top of that, she’s also the lead on a new initiative for the company – the Women’s Capital Collaborative. Pioneered with an impact investor who wanted to do more to support women entrepreneurs, the Collaborative aims to do more to support women entrepreneurs – a group routinely overlooked and underfunded. In fact, Deb points out, women entrepreneurs received only 3% of venture capital funding from 2011 to 2013. Why is this? Unconscious bias, says the Harvard Business Review. Even when a presentation is given identical word-for-word by men and women, males are 60% more likely to get funded. This Collaborative is in place to do something about that. “Our goal is to create an economy of generosity and connectedness,”