Deborah Gilshan | Founder, The 100% Club and Advisor, Investment Stewardship & ESG

Photograph of Deborah Gilshan

Deborah is the Founder of The 100% Club, a networking alliance dedicated to gender equality and advisory business on investment stewardship, ESG integration and diversity.

She is a passionate advocate of diversity, equity and inclusion, including  through leveraging the power of investor capital to drive systemic change and as the founder of a gender based network. Deborah is a 30% Club Ambassador, having been instrumental in building the 30% Club UK Investor Group and now serves on the 30% Club Race Equity Group. Since 2021, she has been collaborating with the Black British Business Awards in hosting regular forums focusing on global investor strategies on race equity.

Deborah is a regular commentator and writer on diversity and investment stewardship. Her work and opinions have featured in the Financial Times, Sky News and other mainstream financial media. She  is the lead author of The Ethics of Diversity for the UK Institute of Business Ethics (2020) and contributed to Create a Gender-Balanced Workplace, the 2019 book by Ann Francke, OBE. In 2020 and 2021, Deborah served on the judging panel for Citywire’s Gender Diversity Awards. She has been recognised for her work on diversity and championing the female talent pipeline, including in the 2019 We Are The City Rising Star Champion Award. In November 2022, Deborah released research on the positive impact of The 100% Club since she founded it in October 2011.

Deborah’s Linkedin profile is here and more information about her work and The 100% Club is here.

What one action would you like to see organisations, or the government take to drive gender equity?

I would like less time spent on justifying why gender equity is important and more time spent on addressing the barriers to achieving it.