Insider’s perspective of the challenges facing underrepresented founders in finance and tech | Perspectives with Christina Calje
Perspectives with Christina Calje
Entrepreneur & Investor
Today we sit down with Christina Caljé to talk about representation, role-modelling, and how to be comfortable in your skin in every boardroom, networking event, or business meeting. Christina is an entrepreneur a couple of times over and she is interested in advocating for more leadership roles and greater representation for women and people of colour in entrepreneurship. Christina speaks from over a decade of experience in both finance and tech and can give an insider’s perspective as to the endemic challenges facing underrepresented founders in particular.
“I think working in financial services and working in tech where there is not a lot of representation from a gender perspective, nor from an ethnicity perspective, that just makes it feel harder in the beginning, a little bit of an extra step that you feel you must go through because you don’t necessarily see yourself reflected in that population.”
Inspired to make an even greater impact following the Black Lives Matter Movement in the US, Christina has been using her voice and experience to level the playing field. She is vocal about how the industry can incentivise access to venture capital for women at a governmental level and has spoken up in influential spaces such as the Innovation summit at European Parliament. We discuss a couple of initiatives that exist already to bring change forward.
“The great thing in the Netherlands is that there’s this shift in mindset that there is a problem that needs to be addressed in terms of underfunding female founders. I think that’s really important first to bring a lot of visibility and acknowledgement to this as an issue.”
Aside from addressing the systemic change required for the industry to move forward, we also touch upon how individuals can make a difference. We speak about the importance of role modelling and its potential to disrupt a whitewashed landscape of predominantly male founders, something Christina has grown more conscious of recently.
“If you see others that look like you, it helps you to envision and visualize where your life might lead you to and what the options are for you… It’s a lot about human nature, wanting to feel connected and wanting to feel like you belong”
Christina believes that there are strides being taken within the tech/founder world to become more representative, but that the focus in the Netherlands especially is narrow, predominantly looking to instil more gender diversity. There is a broader spectrum of inclusivity that needs to be considered across the board. As a woman of colour cutting a formidable path in the tech world, Christina provides a valuable insight into the issues that prevail, and how we can work to address them.