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IMPACT 0346: INVESTED IN INVESTING FOR WOMEN

Priscilla Pang is a corporate lawyer working in the private equity space in an international law firm. With a passion for female causes, she has been volunteering through various female empowerment projects over the years since 2016. She shares with us how she founded WomenINVEST, which aims to empower women on their investing journeys towards financial independence.

Hi Priscilla! Could you share more with us about what you do?

I am a corporate lawyer working in the private equity space in an international law firm. I have always been passionate about female causes and have been volunteering through various female empowerment projects over the years since 2016.

I volunteered as a mentor to youths at the Singapore Girls’ Home in 2019, and have been an active volunteer with the Young Women’s Leadership Connection since 2016, participating in projects such as the Women-for-Women Hackathon, where we invited around 100 participants to brainstorm ideas for resolving key issues faced by underprivileged women and children in Singapore.

Was there any particular experience that sparked the founding of WomenINVEST?

As a lawyer, I have also volunteered in Community Legal Clinics on an ad-hoc basis. I feel strongly for the vulnerable who may not know how to protect their rights or be equipped with the right safeguards to handle family affairs when things go south with their partners.

That led me to co-found a platform called WomenINVEST in 2020, to encourage females to empower one another on their investing journeys and achieve financial independence. I am hoping that more women will invest in themselves and take charge of their personal and financial successes.

Like every movement, there must have been some struggles along the way. Could you share some of them and what you and your team did to overcome them?

There are people who are cynical about WomenINVEST who wonder why it can’t be “MenInvest”. However, our team tries to explain that what we do is to encourage more females to pick up investing and be financially independent. We encourage males to invest too! But the statistics do not lie, and currently, there are more women than men who do not feel confident about investing.

On days that are slow, what motivates you to keep going?

It is the vision that eventually all women will strive to be financially independent and savvy. There are definitely challenges along the way, and sometimes we may get demoralised. However, we learn to focus on the impact that we make, no matter how small it might be. When speaking to ladies in our community, we understand more about how we have positively impacted them, and their positive feedback is often very encouraging. As long as we have benefitted at least one person, that is the motivation for us to keep going.

When it comes to the financial realm, what is one thing that you think is most misunderstood?

I think that one thing that is most misunderstood is that you need a lot of money to start investing or to know a lot before you can start. However, today, there are actually many platforms available for one to start investing with as little as $100! Start small and you will eventually build confidence. It is true that it is very important not to invest without researching, but it is equally important not to “over-research” and never get started.

What are your plans for the future? Any new initiatives in mind?

We plan to roll out our own curriculum so that women who are interested in investing can follow our thematic approach to learning about investing. Therefore, we are speaking to more ladies in our community to understand their needs and challenges so we can hopefully come up with a curriculum that caters for their needs.

Apart from that, we are also considering launching more community events so that the women in our community can get to know one another better! We think that the support network is very important as well when learning about investing, and we hope that WomenINVEST can help with this.