The Women in Leasing (WiL) initiative organised by the Leasing Foundation held its first networking meeting in London in June and was hailed as an "inspirational" event.
The WiL initiative is designed to bring women across the industry together to share experiences, discuss challenges and to encourage the development of women in the industry. Its goals were set out when the Leasing Foundation was first formed a year ago.
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Mary McNamara, chief executive of Close Brothers Commercial Division and recently appointed chair of the Leasing Foundation board of governors, introduced the event by highlighting statistics – such as the 0.6% increase in female board members in 10 years and that only 6.1% of FTSE100 executives are women – to demonstrate the importance of the issue of gender diversity.
The meeting was attended by close to 40 women who work in the leasing sector and included a panel discussion between Carmen Ene, vice president of Business Analytics and Optimisation at IBM Global Business Services, Lisa Marks, a partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner, and Carol Roberts managing Director at Bibby Leasing, which looked at the challenges of female leadership in a predominantly masculine environment, and each participant talked about their approaches to ambition, sacrifice and risk.
Joanne Davis, a partner at DWF, said the event was "a great opportunity to network with the ladies in the industry, which is very rare", and Lorraine Burton, sales support manager at Caterpillar Financial Service, described the event as "inspirational".
The Leasing Foundation will consider feedback from attendees to determine how WiL initiative will develop.
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