Power Shift 2013 Materials (Women and Entrepreneurship)
Our case study on the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) was taught at the first annual Power Shift Forum by Mary Johnstone-Louis and Professor David Upton at Oxford. The IWCA is an alliance of women who own businesses at every point in the global supply chain for coffee, as well as touching female employees of the coffee industry: it stretches from small growers and their workers in rural areas to big roasters and exporters, all the way to women who own trendy coffeehouses in the big cities of North America. The organization has been working for a decade to help women grow their businesses within this industry and, along the journey, they have confronted all the challenges that face women worldwide as they negotiate the world of enterprise. So they make a great case study for people interested in women’s entrepreneurship from nearly any perspective.
Download the Case Study: International Women’s Coffee Alliance
Power Shift 2014 Materials (Women and Finance)
Chinese banks may have gender-neutral formal criteria for lending, but still have very few loans to women. This situation is illustrated and analyzed in my case, “Finance After Hours: A Case Study in Women’s Access to Capital.” The case, co-authored with Dr. Jiafei Jin of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, is based on research conducted recently in China. The case will be taught for the first time at Power Shift next week.
Download: Finance after Hours
Power Shift 2015 Materials (Women and Markets)
This year’s case study focused on the collaboration between the Maasai Women Development Organization (MWEDO), Global Goods Partners, and Walmart and their endeavor to try and forge a new market connection between Maasai women and American consumers.
Power Shift 2016 Materials (Women and Leadership)
Normally, we write a case study especially for Power Shift, one that poses a problem relevant to the year’s theme. Then, we have professors teach the case, in classroom setting. In the past, we have had cases on the International Women’s Coffee Alliance, the intrigue of “Finance After Hours” in China, and the collaboration between the Maasai Women Development Organization, Global Goods Partners, and Walmart to try and forge a new market connection between Maasai women and American consumers.
Power Shift 2016 fell rather too close to the November 2015 meeting in the UK to be able to develop a case study. So, rather than teaching a case for the Power Shift group to discuss, we decided to invite the award-winning Emerging Leaders to bring us through the exercises they use to develop leaders in African communities. It’s been said the exercise changes your view of yourself as a leader, shifts your own self-awareness—and is also a lot fun. Two trained facilitators, Purity Njue and Lydie Hakizimana, flying in from Kenya and Rwanda, respectively, led the exercises.