The energy crisis & billion $ shape wear

Oct 24, 2021

This is The Chief Brief. Every Sunday, I spotlight global, diverse, and innovative female leaders impacting the world around them. I curate and break down stories from across the world that caught my eye and help you connect with the women you should know, if you don’t already! Welcome to my passion project of building a globally aware and connected community of women leaders.

Happy Sunday!

News-Makers to know

In Government & Policy

Energy crisis

President Maia Sandu’s pro-Western administration in Moldova is being tested, and hard. The global energy crisis has resulted a severe gas shortage in Moldova and stalled talks with Russia’s Gazprom. Moldova’s contract with Gazprom expired at the end of September. The government asked for an extension but rejected the Russian energy giant’s new price offer of $790 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas. As the president looks to the EU for support, Moldova's parliament on Friday approved a government-requested state of emergency until Nov. 20 as it tries to ease the shortages amid soaring world energy prices.

IMF’s changing faces

Shirin Hamid is headed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), just as Gita Gopinath is headed out.

Shirin, a Singaporean national will become Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of the Information Technology Department (ITD). She will start her new job on January 4, 2022. Most recently, Shirin was the Director General and CIO of the Information Technology Department at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) since 2016, where she led a team of over 600 IT personnel. She revolutionised the ADB’s IT ecosystem, modernised policies, revamped existing operations, strengthened IT and data governance, and fostered innovation on big data, cybersecurity, and digital platforms.

Gita Gopinath will exit the IMF in January to return to Harvard University’s Economics Department as planned when her public service leave ends. Harvard University had extended Gita’s (the Fund’s Chief Economist and Director of the Research Department) leave of absence on an exceptional basis by one year, which has allowed her to serve as Chief Economist at the IMF for three years.

In Business & Tech

Billion-dollar shapewear

We’ve all at one point put on Sarah Blakely’s Spanx to feel good in an outfit we love. The enormous market she’s created for shape wear since the 1990s has attracted a lot of competition, but also investors that appreciate her value creation. The firm is now officially majority owned by Blackstone and valued at $1.2 billion. That buy-out Sarah promises, is going to help the company to expand into more clothing genres and give us comfy clothes like jeans that we can all look fabulous in.

The appeal for Blackstone was the brand’s direct-to-consumer arm which is about 70% of the business. It reduces Spanx’s reliance on discount retailers and wholesale partners. It’s direct-to-consumer sales also means a close relationship with customers, and a business that’s simply — more profitable. The deal is Blackstone’s latest move to back women-run businesses. It follows investments in Whitney Wolfe Herd’s Bumble and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. When the deal closes, Sarah will continue to maintain a significant shareholding and stay on to run operations as executive chairman.

Boards & promotions: Asia-Pac’s got a problem

Firms in the Asia Pacific region are struggling to be diverse. That’s been made pretty clear by a survey conducted by the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia). Only 39.6% of women surveyed believe that the promotion and advancement of women into senior roles are priorities in their organisation in practice, while 57% of men believe that to be true. That is a pretty big and obvious gap between reality and perception.

The upside of the report? That Australia did better than most in the region when it came to board representation: a) None of the top 200 companies on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) had all-male boards for the first time. b) The share of women in corporate boards for constituents of the ASX200 stood at 34%. Compare that to Singapore at 19.5%, Malaysia at 28.1% , Hong Kong’s 12.7%, or the more miserly 10.7% in Japan or even worse 4.9% in South Korea.

COP26 Countdown

I’ve spent my week gearing up with calls with global corporate leaders planning their visit to Glasgow. For all their drive to innovate solutions to reach their net zero targets they all want one thing - clarity and stability on policy and regulations from politicians and policymakers to enable them to drive funding toward the right technologies for our future. It’s not that big an ask just two weeks out from the much-hyped COP26. But for all the PR around how impactful Glasgow will be in its run-up, the risk that this COP ends up being a damp squib is pretty darn high.

The world’s biggest climate event has managed to irk the people backing it. The Queen may have summarised best what was on everyone’s minds - who is on the guest list? And her observation that there seems to be a lot of talking and not a lot of ‘doing’ is pretty spot on. Also quite out of sorts with COP are its sponsors. They are hopping mad about poor organisation, lack of information and inexperienced civil servants running the show. (I mean, it is hardly surprising since their pool of organisers was predictably from the names No.10 Downing Street ‘knew’, rather than those who’ve actually put large events into action.) I’ve had so many emails to ‘forget my last registration’ or to ‘re-register’ and then ‘re-re-register’ that I frankly don’t know what is up or down in the accreditation process anymore! The lack of accommodation in Glasgow itself isn’t going to help make this any smoother. Neither will the rail and garbage man strikes, or road blocks that are planned.

Then again, all those issues seem tiny compared to the leaked documents of governments lobbying to curtail ambitions at COP and push the IPCC to be less tough on fossil fuels. These documents truly tell the story of political ambitions looking to the here and now, rather than the future. Just a week out, and India’s Narendra Modi just confirmed he’s going to turn up in Glasgow but the no-show by Vladimir Putin doesn’t help. China’s not even confirming if Xi Jinping is coming or not (He’s not left the country in 21 months and is more focussed on his bid to stay in power, so COP26 understandably won’t be high on his agenda). If the world’s biggest polluters don’t turn up - ask yourself - what kind of deal can be reached, and whether it will even have the kind of teeth we need to actually save the world?

We’re all still very much in the dark about who is physically turning up in Glasgow. But in these days of technology and virtual meetings collecting people from far and wide, or finding those to amplify, the folks who are creating real solutions — the trailblazers we must invest in - is quite simple, as pie even. Perhaps it’s time to show and tell policymakers what we as businesses, consumers — their vote bank — want, rather than waiting for them to figure out the plan.

Have you met the ‘Green Crew’?

Mary Powell is the CEO of Sunrun which is a U.S. based provider of residential solar panels and home batteries, headquartered in San Francisco. Mary was previously CEO of Green Mountain Power which was the first power company to become a B Corp.

Iliana Portugués work towards a net zero economy has most recently resulted in the title at Siemens Energy of ‘Futurist.‘ She was previously head of innovation UK and National Grid Ventures.

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Caught My Eye

The Good to know

The female card

Playing the female card seems to have got three authors in Spain in a whole lot of hot water. All three being men may have something to do with it, along with the timing of the reveal. They stepped out from behind a female pseudonym to claim the Planeta prize. This year the prize money was raised to $1 million (more than the Nobel Prize for Literature).

It has got a lot of people hot under the collar that the story of the female professor in Spain moonlighting as the writer of best-selling thrillers Carmen Mola, was a fake one. Carmen turned out to be Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero — male professional screenwriters in their forties and fifties. Carmen’s female fanbase enamoured by her story, were critical in the success of the books. But the authors claim their choice of a female pseudonym wasn’t some nefarious plan to gain female backing to reach the best-selling lists.

“I don’t know whether a female pseudonym sells better than a male one, I haven’t the faintest idea, but it doesn’t look that way to me. We didn’t hide behind a woman, just behind a name.” - Antonio Mercero (author & Aka 1/3rd of Carmen Mola)

“We’ve been lying like dogs for four years and several months. It’s been a long time since [I published my own] last novel, and more than one person had chided me for not writing anything else, for being lazy. And I would think, ‘If only you knew...!’- Jorge Díaz (author & Aka 1/3rd of Carmen Mola)

But the women who supported Carmen Mola aren’t as amused.

“Beyond the use of a female pseudonym is the fact that these individuals have been granting interviews for years. It’s not just the name, it’s the fake profile with which they duped readers and journalists. Scammers.” - Beatriz Gimeno, writer, lawmaker and former director of the Women’s Institute of Spain

Wealth doesn’t change attitudes

Transgender Cosmetics millionaire Nur Sajat, 36, has been on the run for months. Now she’s finally found a home in Australia after being granted asylum. She disappeared after being summoned to appear at a sharia court in her home country of Malaysia on a blasphemy charge (for dressing as a woman during a religious event). The conservative Muslim country’s courts have also filed criminal charges against the beauty entrepreneur for intimidating civil servants. Also, of note - that all media coverage in Malaysia refers to Nur by her birth name Muhammad Sajjad Kamaruz Zaman, and the pronoun he/him.

Last month, she resurfaced in Thailand, where she was briefly detained, charged and fined over an immigration offence, but was subsequently released. After the Australian asylum announcement Nur had this to say:

“If I'm still Muslim, just let me be with my own ways, and you follow your own ways. Don't judge me. We respect each other. Stop calling me a sinner as well... Thank you, I appreciate all of your advice.”

Missing in the Gulf

Qatar may be playing a pivotal role in evacuating sports women from Afghanistan, but its own track record with women female activists is very questionable. Cases of domestic violence and abuse are far ranging with women lives controlled and restricted by men under the country’s stringent guardianship laws. 23 year old Noof al-Maadeed is a Qatari female activist who has been missing for more than a week and its likely she has been confined/imprisoned by the Qatari authorities, according to campaigners in the country. It is unknown if she is being held involuntarily.

Noof’s story is emblematic of Qatari women. She escaped the country seeking and getting asylum in the U.K after accusing her family of years of physical and mental abuse. After two years, she returned to Qatar upon the country’s promise of safety upon return. Campaigners say she was accosted by her family and has since disappeared. Campaigners also claim the government is often complicit in forcibly reuniting women with their abusers.

Afghanistan Watch

The good fight

Fawzia Koofi has gone from being celebrated one of Afghanistan’s most prominent female leaders and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, to moving from hotel room to hotel room in Europe for the past two months. She is now firming up her asylum status, but we don’t know where for security reasons. But being in exile hasn’t stopped this former parliamentarian and presidential candidate from fighting on.

She is calling out the U.S. for its actions, the Taliban for broken promises, acknowledging her escape means she can’t stand with the women protesters in the country, and asking he UN and other countries to not allow aid to be “politicised.” But that any humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, should be made contingent on the participation of women in its distribution, and also contingent on freedom of movement for Afghans in and out of the country.

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