Imène Maharzi is a French based professional, who started working in the French Private Equity space 19 years ago. She is the founder of OwnYourCash.
First as an Auditor with Arthur Andersen (Due diligence for PE firms), then as an investment professional with Butler Capital Partners (Special Situations PE fund), she had the opportunity to explore several sectors, geographies, investment sizes and targets.
In 2013, she created Butterfly Partners, a company which invests time and money in start-ups/SMEs which demonstrate a social or environmental positive impact (Impact Investing). In 2014-2015, she took over a majority stake in a school transportation company dedicated to exceptional children (autism, Down syndrom, etc). As the CEO, she transformed a 15-year family business into a social business, resolute to trigger a positive social impact on both employees and beneficiaries, through a strong user-centric quality-driven approach.
As years went by, it became obvious to her that men-women equality in political / judiciary rights is a mere illusion without a true economic equality. And after 20 years of entrepreneur mentoring, it was also obvious this equality does not exist in the Private Equity space: access to capital for female founders is sub-par (tbh, dysfunctional!), resulting in a massive waste of both economic and social value.
In 2018, she created OwnYourCash, an educational platform, online and IRL, to massively train women (and men !) to become Business Angels. By opening a conversation on money, biases, and impact investing, OwnYourCash will contribute to a smoother access to capital for projects co-founded by women.
OYC mission: foster women economic independence, condition to true men-women equality
OYC ambition: train 2’000 women by 2020, and impulse a significant shift in the French BA market (5’000 active BA’s, 10% women)
www.ownyourcash.fr
