MR. RAO: So was that a conscious choice to run your entire enterprise
Ivanka Trump with all women leadership and completely run by women?
Was that for the bottom line?
Was that to make sure that you have more women in the right positions?
Or how do you go about doing this?
MS. TRUMP: Well, I think today, empirically, we know that
having equal representation, gender representation,
having diversity is a positive.
It's financially beneficial to business.
And that's what's pushing corporations not just a social responsibility,
but a fiscal responsibility to their shareholders.
And that's what's pushing businesses to diversify at a faster rate
than if they were doing it for some other motivation.
So that's exciting.
And we're seeing all the studies.
We're seeing all the data to support that very fact.
So I think the key-- and, you know, we've covered
so much ground here.
We've talked about the importance of public policy,
supporting working families, women and men, who work
inside or outside of the home.
We've talked about the role of technology and how that can connect people
to mentoring opportunities, like the great work
being done at Dell.
We're doing that domestically at the government through programs
such as SCORE, which has been very, very successful
in getting private sector, in getting successful men and
women to coach and to mentor other young people who --
or not so young people, who want to become CEOs as well--
so taking programs like SCORE.
We've talked about inadequate access to capital, which happens domestically,
unfortunately, as well.
When you look at our participation or our share of venture capital funding--
is minuscule, 3% last year.
We're trying to fix that by, A, raising awareness about this issue,
but, B, increasing our lending through the Small Business Administration.
In 2017, we increased the amount of funding to women-led firms
by over $500 million year.
To date alone.
So that's exciting.
And then internationally, where the barriers are the same,
but far greater, oftentimes with a cultural or a legal overlay,
that makes it particularly challenging.
So one of the initiatives we launched-- and there are so many great
initiatives across government.
I'm leaving this stage and going to the State Department-run
GIST competition, which maybe some of the entrepreneurs
here today will be participating in.
You will?
Amazing.
It's a pitch competition to support investment
and great entrepreneurs around the globe doing
great innovative things.
But there's so many different programs.
But this summer, we launched something that was very extraordinary.
We were founding members with 14 other countries of a World Bank
initiative called We-Fi.
And it seeks to address a number of the things we've mentioned--
access to capital, access to networks, access to mentorship,
and access to equitable laws by pushing governments
in the developing world to lower barriers
and change the laws that prohibit women
from full participation in their economies.
So We-Fi is very exciting.
And we anticipate being able to leverage
in excess of $1 billion to go to female entrepreneurs
in the developing world.
So we're hopeful that has a profound effect
on the ecosystem of Women's entrepreneurship
generally, but also for the benefit of women in the workforce as well.
Because it was noted here that when you invest in women,
they invest back to their families, back into their communities.
They say $0.90 on the dollar earned by women goes right back
into her family and community and back into things like
education, into health care, into things that will create
a positive generational impact.
So we're very excited about that initiative and all
the other ways we can feel the exciting work that's
being done in the entrepreneurship ecosystem
at home and abroad.