21 April

Looking to the future with We Can Be

At the end of March we held our unique full day event for our She Can Be initiative. 

She Can Be aims to empower young women to make informed decisions about their careers and our event in March gives young women from networks across The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, OnSide, Place2Be, and Teach First the opportunity to visit different corporate organisations in the city to learn first-hand about their business through several immersive activities organised by the company in the morning. 

Each group got to spend the entire day in the office to really experience what working life in that area is like. In the afternoon our groups alongside their business representatives joined a virtual zoom session so that all our young women could come together and consolidate their learnings from the morning.

The virtual session was chaired by Vanessa Sanyauke CEO of Girls Talk London which connects women with businesses to empower them to develop the skills and confidence to succeed in work. 

Our participants were all set a task in the afternoon by Vanessa which saw them managing a fictional portfolio of investments.  This investment simulation game involved our young women discussing and using their intuition to make the decision on which companies they would choose to invest in as a team. The task then evolved our young women being giving more details on each company, their ESG scores and an imaginary news story, which could alter the performance of the business and in turn their investment. Congratulations to the eventual winners for the task, Linklaters and Riverside School. 

The afternoon event also saw the ever-popular Q&A session with panellists Carol Fergus from Fidelity, Simran Mohani from Deloitte and Oluseun Oduleye from LGT Wealth Management who answered a variety of questions about their careers, working in the city and being a woman in their chosen field. 

Questions were sent in via Slido App with our young women voting up their favourite questions to be answered and these included how to stay motivated in your career, advice on finding a job, how to tackle any issues that might arise and of course the most important question – the panels favourite office snack!

After the Q&A session all our participants filled out their own pledge card. This important part of the day really got the young women to think about the one thing they want to achieve for the future and write it down in the hope they can reflect on this promise to motivate and focus themselves.

The day finished with some exciting news as The Lord Mayor’s Appeal announced that She Can Be has changed its name to be more inclusive and reflective of who we are for the future … so introducing We Can Be. 

We Can Be is kindly co-sponsored by Artemis Funds, LGT Wealth Management and Smith and Williamson.  

A big thank you to our 2022 participating businesses:

Anthemis

Artemis

BDO

CanaryWharf plc

CBRE

Coverys

Fidelity

Freshfields

Janus Henderson

LGT Wealth Management

Liberty Speciality Markets

Linklaters

MAKO Financial

Payden & Rygel

Rabobank

Smith and Williamson

Standard Chartered

TP ICAP

Worshipful Company of Grocers

Worshipful Company of Insurers