Financial Spring-Clean – Using you investments to make a difference with Katja Ruhnke

Katja Ruhnke co-founded and runs CK Venture Capital, which specifically represents impact startups. She says that this kind of investing won’t just affect your finances, but also your career – while making a positive impact on the world that we live in.

„You learn about entrepreneurial skills, because you work with founders at a very early stage,” she explains. „And that’s what for me is so interesting. You learn so much outside of your box, outside of your comfort zone. It gives you new ideas and innovation.”

She’s big on gender balance too, focusing on female-led startups to help counter the fact that only 16% of business founders in Germany are women. „Men invest in men,” she says. „So we need women to invest in women.“

If you want in, you don’t need to invest huge amounts to become a #BusinessAngel. Her recently published book, Female Money, explains that you can start small and that you can contribute more than just money to the businesses that you invest in: they will value your know-how and experience too. We talk about this – and more – in our latest podcast.

Speaker: Katja Ruhnke, Co-Founder & CEO CK Ventures.

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Katja Ruhnke

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #femalefinance #femalemoney #femaleinvestor #angelinvestment #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #femaleempowerment #impact #purpose #parentalleave #WomeninFinance #invest #InvestmentGap #ClosetheInvestmentGap #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood #financialspringclean

Financial Spring-Clean – Crypto and Blockchain 

If you’ve ever wondered about investing in crypto, listening to Elisa Spiess is a brilliant place to start. As part of our financial spring-clean series, she provides a fun and informative insight into #cryptocurrencies and #blockchain in today’s podcast. 

Elisa’s interest in cryptocurrencies started 8 years ago, and as it grew, she turned it into a business, holding training sessions targeted at women. “Often, I was the only woman in the room,” she says. “ All the people I knew that actually made money with crypto were men. It doesn’t have to be like that. When I started my business, all my friends were like, ‘Now I can actually understand it!’”

Although we can’t give you investment advice, it makes sense for all of us to find out more about #crypto and make up our own minds. “We’re still at the very beginning,” Elisa says. “There have already been humungous gains for a lot of people, but the industry is growing. Every day, every week there is news about the industry, about acceptance from banks, from governments.” 

Speaker: Elisa Spiess, Founder @Femme Capital 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photograph: Elisa Spiess

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #femalefinance #femalemoney #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #impact #purpose #parentalleave #WomeninFinance #invest #InvestmentGap #ClosetheInvestmentGap #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood #financialspringclean

Germans are great at saving money. But put our savings habits into a gender context, and it no longer looks so great. It turns out that women lag far behind men when it comes to actually investing their savings, with only 13% of German women owning any stock at all. Why?

To begin with, women simply earn less than men – Germany has one of the worst pay-gaps between genders in Europe, at 18-20% – so women have less savings to invest in the first place. 

By not investing any savings that they do have, women end up with significantly less to retire on – so Germany’s pay-gap spirals first to an investment gap and then into a retirement gap at the later part of life.  Let’s not forget that women live on average 5-7 years longer than men…

Add to this the fact that women are not only more likely to accept a drop in income to care for children and elderly relatives than their male counterparts, but also that they also do a full hour and a half more of unpaid work every day than men do. You’re looking at an enormous financial imbalance that urgently needs addressing. 

Andrea Fernandez is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked in finance for many years at JPMorgan, Allianz Global Investors, and Liqid. During her parental leave she came up with the idea for Vitamin, an app that helps women take finances in their own hands and start investing. 

In our latest podcast, she calls on all women to start investing – no matter with what amount. She argues that even 100 Euros monthly can grow into a retirement fund, if you start early enough! 

So let’s close those gaps and start putting our money to work 💪💶

Speaker: Andrea Fernandez, Founder of Vitamin

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photograph: Andrea Fernandez 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #FemaleFinance #WomeninFinance #Invest #PayGap #ClosethePayGap #InvestmentGap #RetirementGap #getinspiredpodcast #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #parenthood 

„Diversity is at the core of digital transformation,” says Alexandra Borchardt – and this is a woman who knows what she’s talking about: the managing editor of leading German newspaper the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, she is now a senior media consultant, Honorary Professor for Leadership and Digitalisation at TUM School of Management and Senior Research Associate at the Reuters Institute in Oxford.

„What digital transformation really is, is cultural change,” she tells MyCollective founder and CEO Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier in today’s podcast. “And that #culturalchange is often lacking because of a lack of diversity. Digital transformation is dealing with constant change. So that requires completely new leadership skills. It requires adaptability, listening… Not only by women, but by everyone.“

A mother of two herself, she also has advice for #workingparents trying to balance leadership positions with parenthood: “Stop trying to be perfect!” After all, “leadership… is about improvising and dealing with what you have, and as a parent you do this all day long, because you have certain ideals, then things don’t work out the way you want them to work out, so then you adjust, you experiment.” 

„You’ll never be the perfect mom. So just be yourself. Be a role model. And encourage your kids to be themselves.” 

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Alexandra Borchardt – Journalist, Media Adviser and Professor for Media Transformation

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photograph: Prof. Dr. Alexandra Borchardt 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #digitaltransformation #newmedia #journalism #femaleleadership #diversity #leadershipskills #parentalskills #careers #inspiration #changingthenarrative #GetInspiredPodcast #changemakers #womenleaders #parenthood

More and more companies recognise the importance of #diversity, and not just because investors are increasingly looking at whether they meet ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) Criteria.  But here in Germany, we still have a problem. And so #diversity is an agenda that we have to keep pushing. Corinna Schittenhelm understands this first-hand – she’s a female executive in a traditionally male-dominated field: automotive and industrial engineering. Corinna is a trailblazer for many of us, and as Executive Board Member for Human Resources and Sustainability at engineering giant Schaeffler she is working to normalise #diversity in the workplace. That includes things like ensuring that #workingdads take #parentalleave too.“Today when I have those discussions, not only with women, also with men – actually much more men, I really encourage them also to take time off,” she explains in this podcast. “I think it’s really important for both.” 

As we always say at MyCollective, parenting is a #leadershipskill – and in her position at the top of a big company, Corinna sees this too. „I’m also interested the individual,” she says, „in their family needs, how they feel, what they do, if they have special interests, and this really human-centric view – you keep this when you have children, and you have a family.” This is one of the reasons she advocates for more men to devote time to parenting: “I think this is something we would really need – that men also are courageous to show that they have this human-centric view and that they are also interested in other people and their needs and their character. And not always driven so much by facts, figures, data, you know. I think that would make them much more likeable!“

Speaker: Corinna Schittenhelm, Executive Board Member, Human Resources and Sustainability at Schaeffler 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Corinna Schittenhelm  

Graphic & Production: MyCollective