Posted on March 7, 2008

Goldman Sachs Launches $100 Million Initiative to Teach Business to Women in Developing World

The Goldman Sachs Group has announced a five-year, $100 million initiative to provide ten thousand underserved women — predominantly in developing and emerging areas of the world — with a business and management education.

Through partnerships between universities in the United States and Europe and business schools in emerging and developing countries, the 10,000 Women initiative is designed to help disadvantaged women earn business and management certificates. The partnerships will support flexible, short-term programs for women whose financial and practical circumstances prevent them from receiving a traditional business education. A select number of MBA and BA degrees will also be conferred.

In addition to funding tuition for business and management education, 10,000 Women will work with development organizations to better understand the local challenges girls and young women must overcome in order to realize economic opportunity and achieve their full potential. The initiative will also emphasize capacity building: developing curricula, creating local case study models, improving the level of faculty training and expertise, and training faculty.

The initiative, which has been in development for more than a year, was inspired by economic research from Goldman Sachs that showed the powerful effects of greater labor force participation of women on economies and societies. Company employees will also contribute their time and expertise for classroom instruction and mentoring. In coming months, the company plans to announce additional partnerships that will provide more business and management education for disadvantaged women in the United States.

"Those of us who champion open markets must also do our part to create more opportunity to ensure economic growth is more broadly shared," said Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein. "[Our new initiative] 10,000 Women focuses on a critical, yet often overlooked area where we believe Goldman Sachs can use its resources and convening power to help build the foundation to expand the ranks of businesswomen, managers, and entrepreneurs around the world."

To view a complete list of the initiative's initial academic partners, visit the Goldman Sachs Web site.