Conference Presentation, Interview, Fireside Chat
A Conversation with Cherie Blair: Empowering Women, Driving Growth
- Cherie Blair's background includes birth in Bury (1954), upbringing in Liverpool, and being the first in her family to attend university (LSE Law, called to the bar 1976, Queen's Counsel 1995).
- She was a fellow law student with Tony Blair in the 1970s; they married in 1980 and have four children, the youngest being 14.
- She was the 76th woman to become a Queen's Counsel, a senior status attained by only 10% of barristers.
- In 1983, she was selected to stand for a "hopeless" parliamentary seat in the UK while Blair was temporarily the "candidate's husband" before securing his own seat.
- She argued a high-profile case against the UK government regarding parental leave while eight months pregnant in 2000.
- Blair established the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in 2008 to support women entrepreneurs in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.
- The Foundation operates three core programs: business training, the Global Mentoring Platform (partnering with Google), and a mobile phone initiative.
- The Foundation has reached over 100,000 women across 50 countries through its mentoring and enterprise development programs.
- A specific project in Lebanon, funded by JPMorgan, trained 40 women, with 12 receiving incubation, resulting in the creation of 60 new jobs.
- A Lebanese beekeeper participant increased her turnover by 13 times after receiving business coaching on labeling and financial management.
- Mentoring matches include cross-cultural pairings, such as a Kenyan woman running a motorcycle dispatch service growing to 10 motorcycles with help from a mentor in Prague.
- The Foundation's next five-year strategic priority is to solve the "mid-range capital gap," as women can access micro-loans or massive venture capital but struggle to secure $10,000–$100,000.
- Financial barriers for women in developing nations include exorbitant interest rates (e.g., 27% in Tanzania), lack of collateral due to land ownership laws, and banker bias.
- World Bank data cited indicates women repay 90% of development loans, compared to 30-40% for men, suggesting women are lower-risk borrowers.
- The Foundation partners with the US State Department and Bank of America, where 80 mentors (including Bank of America employees) assess their career development partly on their mentoring success.
- Blair argues that "leaning in" requires a two-way shift in workplace culture to support both men and women in balancing home and career responsibilities.
- She notes that in the Middle East, while women outperform men academically, they comprise only 20% of the workforce due to social assumptions that men will secure employment regardless of effort.
- Blair advocates for structural political changes to improve female representation, contrasting the UK's 20% parliamentary female representation with Rwanda's 64%.
- She emphasizes the importance of role models, citing Rose Halbron (the first female Queen's Counsel from Liverpool) as an inspiration for her own career trajectory.
- Blair's autobiography, Speaking for Myself (2008), was written with the specific intent of being an engaging read rather than a purely serious or "worthy" text.
- She states that her success involved making specific choices regarding childcare, supported by a nanny and her mother, rather than a single secret to "having it all."