500 outstanding business leaders growing their companies in the harshest of startup environments to challenge the stereotype of a typical company boss and inspire women globally this includes from a Peruvian trout farm manager to the head of an Indonesian meatball company.
Launched today at foundation500.com, the list is a reference to the famous Fortune 500 list by Fortune Magazine. The list, an initiative of humanitarian agency CARE and the non-profit H&M Foundation, mirrors the Fortune 500 list of U.S. Karl-Johan Persson, CEO of Swedish retailer H&M that founded the H&M Foundation, says If the world is to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality, the time to act is now.
He added that the entrepreneur is the hero of the time, and it is estimated that over the coming years over 1 billion women will enter the workforce – a majority through entrepreneurship. But women rarely make the covers of business magazines. With the Foundation 500 list he wishes to re-define what a business leader looks like.
The H&M Foundation, privately funded by the Persson family that founded retailer H&M, a women's empowerment program started with CARE in 2014 in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It pledges 120 million Swedish krona ($14 million/€12 million) to support over 200,000 women entrepreneurs from emerging markets.
The women on the Foundation 500 list are part of this program, which in its first phase has reached over 100,000 women in Burundi, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jordan, Nepal, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Yemen and Zambia. In Burundi, the average rate of increase in income among women in the program was 202.8 per cent, the lowest being 104 per cent and the highest 401 per cent. Due to the success, a renewed three-year commitment is made.
