News

International Women’s Day 2024

Oakley Capital

08.03.24

2 min read

IWD celebrates the social, cultural economic and political achievements of women. This year, we’re focusing on how to inspire inclusion. Making everyone feel included helps us to recruit and retain the best talent. It’s also the right thing to do. Here, female leaders from across the Oakley family tell us about their careers, who has inspired them and how we can better support female inclusion in the workplace.

Quote Dominique Friederich

Women's networks are a great facilitator to support women in business. In fact, through my network I got my first senior position in a private equity backed business 10 years ago and I think we still need to strengthen this network between female fund and portfolio talent to bring more women into C-level positions in private equity backed businesses. Organisations like Level 20, which promote female talent in private equity, clearly have an opportunity here.

Dominique Friederich

CEO — Windstar Medical

Quote Madalina Preda

Some of the most important steps businesses can take to support female leaders is to openly commit to growing the skills, the experience and the visibility of women employees at all levels of the company but especially in top management. This can look in different ways form ensuring flexible work schedules to supporting women who more often take up the care-giving roles in the family, and also ensuring that women are represented in decision-making bodies and in leadership positions.

Madalina Preda

Head of Sustainability — North Sails

Quote Octavia Radulescu

If I had to choose only one female role model, that would be Sarmiza Bilcescu. She is my great great aunt and she is very well known for being the first woman in Europe to graduate from law school and the first woman in the world to have a PhD in law. As you can imagine, things were not easy for her after she finally got admitted into law school. Even the doorman tried to stop her from attending her law classes. So whenever things are difficult for me or I find some barriers, I think about her. And if she didn't stop and she didn't give up in 1890, why should I give up now in 2024?

Octavia Radulescu

General Counsel — vLex

Quote Tracy Maraj

The best career advice I’ve ever received is to be resilient, because life invariably does not go the way you want or the way you planned. And when things go wrong, be really transparent about what went wrong. You should be able to own it really quickly. Focus your energy and attention on the solution and getting it right, and make sure that you take the learnings away for the future.

Tracy Maraj

Chief People Officer — Ocean Technology Group

Quote Aga Siemiginowska

Mentoring, coaching, allyship are really big initiatives that will make women feel like they are not in this alone and that you have support around you as you progress in your career. Many of us need to know that we have allies who have our backs, who have been through the process before, who can share their experiences. At Oakley, we’re members of Level 20, which helps provide mentorship opportunities for our female employees. But we also recognise that there is a gap for other groups within the organisation such as our operations team and support staff, so we’ve started piloting internal mentoring schemes, partnering those individuals with internal and external mentors within the PE space to help progress their careers.

Aga Siemiginowska

Head of Sustainability — Oakley Capital

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