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Alexsis De Raadt St James: Levelling the entrepreneurial playing field
Alexsis De Raadt St James: Levelling the entrepreneurial playing field When it comes to diversity in entrepreneurship, it’s clear that, as a society, we still have a long way to go. After some promising gains in 2019, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has seen a decline in the growth rate of total capital invested in female-founded and minority-founded startups. California-based venture capitalist Alexsis De Raadt St James has already made impressive strides when it comes to women’s equality in STEM, she’s made it her mission to get the diversity balance in entrepreneurship right.
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s Founder and Chairperson of The Althea Foundation, Alexsis is no stranger to social challenges. The notfor-profit organisation uses a venture model to provide financial and non-financial support to people and initiatives that have been overlooked or underfunded, such as advancing gender equality and funding minorities in STEM. Seven years ago, The Althea Foundation was the first funder of WE Innovate – the Imperial Enterprise Lab’s flagship programme for women entrepreneurs. Then called the Imperial Althea Programme, it was the first women’s entrepreneurship programme of its kind in the UK. D/srupt The magazine for innovators & entrepreneurs
The Althea Foundation has recently committed to sponsoring WE Innovate for the next three years. We asked Alexsis for her views on expanding diversity in STEM and how the WE Innovate initiative advances its mission. What are the challenges facing women entrepreneurs? The challenges have consistently been the same, a lack of funding – this hasn’t improved as we had hoped over the past ten years. I think 2021 is going to remain a difficult year for women because in 2020 funding levels declined overall for women. Female entrepreneurs had slowly been catching up to men
raising investment rounds in 2019, but in 2020 the amounts raised went back two or three per cent. Funding remains a major barrier for women creating companies, especially in STEM. While I feel very strongly about female founders, I feel just as strongly about minority groups or minority ethnicities who want to be entrepreneurs. I just did a masterclass at Oxford University’s, The Foundry, or OXFO, highlighting the importance of all founders being included in the envelope of innovation– we need to keep the focus on the fact that female founders and minority entrepreneurs still find it very difficult to start companies due to a lack of funding.
You’re an investor. How did you get into this? Before I started Merian Ventures, I had worked in male-dominated industries, like energy and banking where there are traditionally fewer women. However, the lack of women was even more striking when I started investing in technology. Women make up over 50 percent of all college graduates in the US and the UK – but in 2019 received less than 10 percent of venture capital funding in the US and UK. That was my motivation – I wanted to make it easier for women, and minorities, with STEM aspirations, to create companies and technologies they believed they could build. Issue 4 / 2021–22
