The Purse Podcast

Marypat Smucker is a Co-Founder and Principal at Parallelle Finance, a gender lens investment research firm founded in 2019. Prior to founding Parallelle, Marypat was a consultant in investment communications and editorial services for global asset management firms. She began her consultancy following a role as Managing Editor of Institutional Investment Communications at T. Rowe Price. Before that Marypat worked in transaction services for KPMG. 

She started her career in finance working as an analyst at Emerging Markets Partnership, a firm which managed the first emerging markets infrastructure private equity funds. Her focus there was on Asia. 

With an undergraduate degree in Chinese, during her early career she spent several stints living and working in China. She holds an MA in Economics from American University and an MS in Finance from George Washington University. 

She is a CFA charter holder. Through Parallelle Finance, Marypat has published numerous analyses on gender lens and ESG investing.

We cover the following in our conversation:

• Gender lens investing.
• The gender lens scorecard: what is it, why we need one and how investors might use this tool, including VCs. 
• What funds and corporates need to do to close the gender equality and equity gap.

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