Julie Castro Abrams is the founder and CEO of How Women Lead, a network of top executive women, and managing partner of How Women Invest, an early-stage venture-capital firm built for and by women.
In this installment of our Women of Impact series, we sit down with Julie to talk about the power, influence and wealth that women hold but too often don’t know how or where to wield, the role of community and collective support, and her insights into the world of women-led venture investing.
Equities News: Julie, a delight to have you with us. You founded How Women Lead, a powerhouse network for executive women. Tell us a little about the group.
Julie Castro Abrams: We are working to drive equity for women and what is important for the 22,000 senior women leaders in our network: we put women on boards, help them invest in other women founders and support philanthropic causes important to them; we work on policy, education, research, and movement building. We have created a committed culture that starts with a credo where we ask people to commit to being better with each other—it’s very countercultural. People are grateful for that; to have someone who gets you, someone who can open a door so you can get that next corporate board seat. From 2010 to today, in the U.S. we went from 10% to 35% women on public company boards. That’s massive. It’s huge for the market and a big win for everybody. We’re a part of that story.
EN: Who is the network designed for, would you say it’s women of all ages in executive positions?
JCA: We focus on women in later stages of their careers. There’s a certain developmental life stage that starts in your mid 40s and goes through 65 or 70. And in that life stage you need different things. Think about a corporate woman’s career. When you’re in your twenties and thirties, you’re looking for your next role—be it manager, director, and so on. You might be raising a family, you’re climbing that ladder and building your knowledge base and expertise.
When you get to your early to mid 40s—and sometimes it’s the 50s for some people—you stop and think, and you feel this in your bones: Why am I working in this unsupportive environment? I’ve had enough, I know enough, I made money, I’m going to build my own thing. I want to have an impact. Leave a legacy. And make the world a better place for the people coming behind me, for my kids. So people start looking at what else is out there.
A lot of us have this awakening. We feel this need to do things with other women and have an impact.
EN: People always talk about building bridges for the younger generations. Do you feel the same way, about mentoring younger women?
JCA: Developmentally, if you think about it, the younger women—my daughter for example, she’s focused on her career, buying her first house, and starting a family. She’s only now starting to realize the power of network and community. And the women in my organization are mentoring everybody already, in their companies and networks.
So that’s not what we do—we don’t build bridges to the younger generations. We connect the women in this later stage of life and career, because that’s what’s missing in their life. At this stage, you’re at the top, but you’re isolated and alone and you need people who understand you, who get you. Especially if you’re a Black woman—the expectation to help everyone else is magnified. We do 2.5-day retreats for women. When you get a group of Black women—the top executive women—together, you can viscerally feel it, this sense that they can’t tell anyone what they’re going through. Because if you say, I’m really pissed that I got passed up for that corporate board or somebody inside my company blocked me. All your family members and friends would say, Oh please, what are you complaining about? You have everything!
That feels terrible. So why disclose anything about what’s going on with you in your career? Because your job is to help everybody else. Your job is to be the role model. Your job does not include having any vulnerability or real sisterhood.
When you bring women who are top corporate leaders together, it’s unbelievable what happens. There are women in our community who met after a single retreat, and they’ve been meeting a few Sundays a month for seven years now.
EN: And where does it all come from—what is your why, why you started the group?
JCA: I grew up in a middle class—sometimes upper middle class family (my parents had a mortgage in the 70’s, if you know what I mean). My mom stayed at home. She inherited some money and I viscerally remember she was furious she couldn’t access her own money without my father’s signature. I was just 7 years old. Did you know it was just 50 years ago that women finally got the right to open their own checking accounts and credit cards?
EN: You’re talking about the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, passed in October 1974.
JCA: Yes. And when I was in high school, a lot of older men were leaving their wives for their 25-year-old secretaries—this is before they did the 50-50 split. These women were destitute. I mean, they were giving everything to the schools and communities; they had given up everything to raise their families. And I remember thinking, that will never be me. Imagine having given up everything and then having to start over again at 50 years old. It was just awful.
Now women get fifty percent—well, whoever the partner is. If I’m the breadwinner for example, my husband would get 50%. All of this just had such a visceral impact on me. The other part of the story is that I grew up Catholic. Although I don’t go to church, that commitment to being a Good Samaritan, caring for people and giving everybody a chance and treating everyone with respect equally, comes from that.
So it’s really important to understand where my work comes from…it comes from my passion for economic justice, and my passion for unconditional love. I’m a connector and I love helping women.
EN: That comes through loud and clear—you also lead How Women Invest. I love what it says on the site: “We focus on the overlooked asset class that can yield 35% higher returns for investors: women founders.”
JCA: Yes, what we’re doing with How Women Lead, we’re doing in the venture space. How Women Lead works on policy and systems change impacting women’s access to venture capital. We do research and educate women. And then we encourage them to invest in venture and connect them to venture firms. We started How Women Invest, the venture fund focused on investing in women, in 2020. Only 2% of venture funds go to companies founded by women which is terrible for all of us, men and women. Another part of the story is that only 5% of accredited women investors invest in venture funds.
When I presented the opportunity to invest in our venture fund to our network, 85% said yes and invested. I did some research about why this conversion was so high— what’s the investing behavior of women. And I realized there’s a huge opportunity to activate us, the women of our generation who’ve got 30 years of work experience, who’ve got power, influence, and wealth. If we want change, we all need to get in the game, demand accountability, and change the structure of the entire system. That’s what I’m trying to do.
EN: That 2% figure is stunning. And the 5% figure too.
JCA: Those two numbers are egregious, right? The reason—and there’s a lot of documentation for this—is that men are asked promotion questions, as in, “How big can your company or your idea get?” But women are asked prevention questions, like “Oh, did you think about this and that and the other thing?” In other words, all this scary fear-based analysis is exacerbated because the decision makers in venture capital are men. By the way, women can behave the same way because they’ve been trained in that working environment with the guys.
Even at work, in the office, you are hired and promoted for your potential if you’re a man. But if you’re a woman, you’re hired and promoted based on what you’ve done. So that same cultural bias carries over into venture. It’s, how many sales do you have, what have you done? That’s what they want to know before they fund you. Men can be funded just based on an idea on the back of an envelope.
EN: And of that 2%, less than 1% goes to Black women founders. Looking into the stats, it says 2022 saw $2.3 billion go to Black-founded companies; that’s 1% out of a total of $215.9 billion in VC money. 2023 was even worse—just $705 million went to Black startups, the lowest share of the VC market since 2016. That’s abysmal.
JCA: And we’re still waiting for the figures on how many Black women have raised $1M or more in venture funding. Back in 2005, a friend of mine was number eight. She had been invited to be on the cover of a magazine and she was offended. She told me, “I don’t want to be this number, I don’t want that as my identity.”
If we’re allowing color to determine who gets funded, we’re missing out on a lot of innovation. You want to find a blue ocean strategy? Women are going to come up with a lot of blue ocean strategies that men wouldn’t necessarily think about. And then there’s the other issue of women on the other side—the women in the venture firms. There’s a lot of gross tech bro behavior. It’s the lingo people use, the way they talk, the hostile environment they create.
Last night a 27-year-old came to an event focused on investing in women and he started grilling me. I thought to myself, “You’re younger than my own kid, knock it off!” And that’s what women experience all the time. It’s just not productive. We’ve got to create a safer place for women to invest. It’s not just about changing the lingo—we need a sisterhood.
EN: Would you say that is one of your biggest challenges, as a woman in the VC world?
JCA: I think it’s the biggest opportunity. Think of all these women with money. They haven’t been invited to participate in investing in venture capital before. Many are very senior women with tremendous careers—for example a friend who has been a general counsel, she was at the center of selling companies with several VCs and she said to me, “The VCs know I made millions last year and nobody invited me to invest in their fund.” Women leaders just haven’t felt invited.
EN: Is that what The New Table is about? Getting more women investors on board?
JCA: We wanted to understand how women think about investing. The women in my network don’t have any time. They’re risk aware; they’re not risk averse. We asked them, “What’s the right dollar amount for you to start investing?” 75% of them said $25,000. Another 10% or so said $10,000. So, we know enough about the investing behavior of these women to take action. We also know community is absolutely key for women in this life stage I talked about earlier.
So we decided to do a campaign to get 10,000 women involved in venture capital. It’s called The New Table, and it’s an entry point into venture capital for women. You start with a small percentage of your larger community, ask people to invite their friends, and start a movement. You get access to events and resources—we have a Values-Based Investing Tool and interactive calculators for assessing venture investments.
So that’s why we’re saying, this is the new table where you are invited to join us, at this table of power, wealth, and influence. Women need to feel invited, and they need to feel like the [other people at the table] know how to talk to them and they’re not going to waste their time. We’ve got 50 women-run firms in The New Table’s Values Based Investing Tool, and they’re all organized by their categories and their values.
EN: Sounds like The New Table could seed a lot of new women-run venture firms.
JCA: Here’s an interesting data point: in 2010 there were about a dozen women-run venture firms in the United States. By 2020, in just 10 years, there were more than 300.
So there’s finally infrastructure. There are two reasons why The New Table campaign is so important: structure and access. There are great women starting up new venture funds, but they don’t have access to a network of wealthy women and so they go to the traditional institutional investors who don’t understand women fund managers. So these women aren’t getting the money to build their venture, and as a result their venture firms become anemic. Several are going out of business right now. Or, they aren’t doing their second or third funds—the dollars aren’t working out in terms of the management fees.
We have an opportunity right now—the infrastructure is there, and the access is there, if we can just help these women join us, so they can support women-led companies. To me, that’s a win-win for everybody.
EN: What’s the best way for people to get involved with How Women Lead?
JCA: If you are a woman seeking community and impact, and you want to support other women, How Women Lead gives you that opportunity.
We believe every woman should know how to get on a corporate board. I want every woman to know about investing in venture capital. It’s such a power play—and I want to normalize it. To anyone reading this, I would love for you to join The New Table campaign. I would love for you to invest in a woman-run venture firm, and I want you to start normalizing it to all the women around you.
What we need to do is make sure every single woman in my network and networks like my networks, know about initiatives like this. It’s all about the power of knowledge and access.
EN: Julie, it has been a pleasure. As a parting question, do you have a favorite quote that you live or work by?
JCA: “When you let your light shine, you give others permission to do the same.”
That’s part of a longer poem, but it’s this sense of, if you’re not doing it for you, do it for the other people around you. For many of us, the culture has always told us to shrink, to not take up space, to not speak up. So I just want to say to women, step into your power! Let it shine because people are watching you and you’re impacting everyone around you with your actions, so let it shine…and step into power.
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