We are surrounded by remarkable women on our team and in our community who are leading the way.

March 27, 2023

At ICONIQ, we’re elevated by our inspiring community of employees, clients, business leaders, and visionaries. We’re united by our uncommon care for each other and the world around us. But much of our community’s strength is found in our differences. Of course, this is also a global truth. Only by celebrating the vital contributions of all people to our world’s history can we create a better future for everyone. March is Women’s History Month, a necessary reminder of the enormous contributions of women, and the continued struggle for gender equality. ICONIQ is grateful for the extraordinary women at the firm and in our community who lead us to gain fresh perspectives, draw out powerful insights, and forge new paths toward a bright tomorrow.

We believe that diverse teams are essential to setting and achieving ambitious goals, and we are proud that half of ICONIQ’s global team is women, with dozens in leadership roles. Additionally, ICONIQ partners annually with the Seizing Every Opportunity (SEO) organization to offer summer internship opportunities to students from underrepresented backgrounds.

ICONIQ Women—an energized employee engagement group

We are a global team, with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, Singapore, and London, and one way we support and energize each other is through an array of employee engagement groups. Our ICONIQ Women employee engagement group is dedicated to supporting women in their current and future leadership roles at the firm.

From guided discussions to provocative panels, internal spotlights on women leaders at the firm, and book clubs to discuss works by women authors, we foster community among ICONIQ women and allies. Our peer-to-peer mentorship program, the ICONIQ Women Fellowship, is in its fourth year, and facilitates global connections and discussions between team members across the firm. The program encourages open discussions on critical leadership topics such as negotiation, communication, leadership presence, and fostering collective decision-making.

ICONIQ Women also collaborates with our other employee engagement groups including ICONIQ Parents, DE&I, Social, and Cares—focused on social and environmental impact and community-building. For example, last year ICONIQ Women and DE&I co-hosted an interactive discussion series on unconscious bias, leveraging the Lean In organization’s “50 Ways to Fight Bias” curriculum.

ICONIQ Impact—a global platform for collaborative philanthropy

ICONIQ Impact is proud to support women and women-led nonprofits across the social impact sector. From helping indigenous women protect their land against extractive industries to providing wraparound support that enables single mothers to attain their high school and bachelor’s degrees, ICONIQ Impact’s female-led grantees are empowering women across the world.

This Women’s History Month, we’re proud to spotlight Carolina Amaya, a socio-ecological expert and the executive director of UNES, an organization that takes an ecofeminist approach to environmental conservation. UNES is a grantee of ICONIQ Impact’s Climate Equity Co-Lab—a $50 million philanthropic fund that supports thirteen portfolio organizations working at the intersection of climate change, gender equity, and poverty(1).

Carolina has more than 20 years of experience advising communities in El Salvador on topics such as water, territory, biodiversity, climate change, and risk management. As the leader of UNES, she helps empower local women in the fight to conserve El Salvador’s lands, mangrove forests, and water resources. She has shaped UNES’s ecofeminist approach and helped countless disenfranchised women and their communities organize, take action, and defend themselves from the dangers of climate change. Using funding received through the ICONIQ Impact Climate Equity Co-Lab, UNES has: 

·        Installed 30 vegetable gardens and educated women-led Indigenous families on sustainable farming practices to help advance their nutritional security and place them on a path toward greater food sovereignty.

·         Facilitated a five-day workshop to help women identify the different types of violence to which they may have been exposed. The workshop also provided them with guidance on how to report violence, as well as how to take self- and- collective-care measures in the aftermath of an incident.

·         Established two youth networks to advance young people’s involvement in and advocacy for cultural and environmental rights. One of these groups—the Environmentalist Youth Network—helped organize cleanup efforts to protect a threatened mangrove forest. Activities like these not only reduce environmental contamination but also develop and strengthen a culture of eco-responsibility and active citizenship among young people, preparing them to be the next generation of climate leaders.

ICONIQ Growth—partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs who drive global impact and change

ICONIQ Growth partners with visionaries defining the future of their industries to transform the world. Our investment platform and unique ecosystem help amplify our portfolio companies’ success from early growth stage to IPO and beyond. Since inception, over half of the capital invested by ICONIQ Growth has been deployed by deal teams with women leaders or core members.

We are proud to partner with numerous women founders and CEOs in the ICONIQ Growth portfolio:

Real Assets—the built environment for our digital future

We strive to invest in the spaces where technology disruptions create scalable opportunities. A joint venture of ICONIQ Capital and Iron Point Partners, IPI Partners acquires, develops, leases, and operates the critical digital infrastructure to support the present and promise of the cloud. In May 2022, IPI Partners and its portfolio company STACK Infrastructure held their inaugural Women’s Leadership Summit. The Denver event brought together more than 50 women from STACK Americas, IPI Partners and its affiliates to explore a variety of topics around professional development, leadership, and industry trends. We designed the programming to help empower women of all ages, cultures, backgrounds, geographies, and career paths. Fearless Positivity CEO Amy Blankson—co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute—and bestselling author of The Future of Happiness—delivered the rousing keynote, sharing valuable methods of conscious innovation for positive and agile leadership while encouraging women to use proven tools to balance productivity and wellbeing for flourishing in the digital era.

Looking to build upon the success of last year’s event, IPI and STACK will host its 2nd annual Women’s Leadership Summit in Chicago this May. Programming will focus on providing the tools, inspiration and connections to foster personal and professional success and strengthen our teams overall.

We look forward to bringing together more than 80 women at this year’s event and are proud of the growing number of women leaders on our Real Assets teams, including within our portfolio company Sentral, the operating platform that manages our network of urban residential communities.

[1] ICONIQ Impact serves as a philanthropic advisor to a third party who is sponsoring the Co-Lab.

Team composition data as of 3/1/23. Growth statistics as of 2/7/23. Number of investments and capital deployed reflect all closed transactions of the closed ICONIQ Growth funds since inception.