From the 8th until the 12th of March, StartHub’s very first Diversity Week took place! This week we focused on starting the conversation about diversity and inclusivity in entrepreneurship.
The fact is, the world of entrepreneurship is dominated by white men. Unfortunately, not everyone gets equal opportunities to make it in the startup scene. For example, there are more Dutch CEOs called Peter in the Netherlands than female CEOs and all the statistics show that funding is not distributed equally. By organising this week, we want stimulate to take action, start the conversation and show StartHub is there for everyone!
Monday, 8th of March
We kicked off the week on Monday, International Women’s Day, with an event about female entrepreneurship. Wendy de Jong, CEO of OostNL and Pim de Bokx, business incubator manager had a conversation together with our host Dieuwertje de Wagenaar who works at Circular Fashion Lab and Wageningen University and Research. They had an interesting conversation about the severity of the problem, why this is a problem and possible solutions to get more female entrepreneurs. Want to watch the event again? You can find the recording here!
Wednesday, 10th of March
On Wednesday, we had an interesting workshop with our community, on cultural differences and how to deal with those in the best way while working together. It was interesting to see how different cultures influence different behaviours!
Thursday, 11th of march
On Thursday, ASIF Ventures organised the event ‘‘Wo(Men) Alliship - how men can further gender equity’’. Different guests where interviewed, including Prins Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau.
Friday, 12th of March
To wrap up the week, we had a live Q&A session ‘‘Starting up in the Netherlands’’ via our Instagram. We interviewed three founders of our community that all have something in common: they moved from a foreign country to the Netherlands and started their own company! Nikolaos from Greece, Juliana from Mexico and Aria from Iran talked to us about what it is like to start up in the Netherlands. We asked if they experienced difficulties or benefits by speaking another language or having another cultural background. Interested in the conversations? You can find the video on our Instagram account (@starthubwageningen)!
To conclude, it was a great week with interesting guests and conversations. Ofcourse, diversity and inclusion is a topic that should be discussed regularly, not one week once a year. So, this is not where the conversation ends! Can’t get enough of this topic? On our social media we posted some book and movie recommendations.
Want to know more about what we do about inclusivity and diversity? Get in touch with us!