--- description: Female business leaders gathered at TIME’s 2025 Women Leadership Forum to talk about how women can invest in themselves title: What Women Need to Know About Wealth Accumulation image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt862028da08a8fe08/6998c46bd32e931e5dcd6c43/2201956973.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Feb 25, 2025 # Women's Wealth Accumulation Is All About Taking Risks and Starting Early by [Rebecca Schneid](/author/rebecca-schneid/) ## Rebecca Schneid Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Reporter  Jennifer Openshaw, CEO, Girls With Impact, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO, Xero, Malak Santini, Managing Director, JPMorgan Private Bank and Jessica Sibley, CEO, TIME, speak onstage during the "Women, Wealth And The Path To Financial Empowerment" discussion for the TIME Women Of The Year Leadership Forum on Feb. 25, 2025. Jennifer Openshaw, CEO, Girls With Impact, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO, Xero, Malak Santini, Managing Director, JPMorgan Private Bank and Jessica Sibley, CEO, TIME, speak onstage during the "Women, Wealth And The Path To Financial Empowerment" discussion for the TIME Women Of The Year Leadership Forum on Feb. 25, 2025.Getty Images for TIME On Tuesday, Jennifer Openshaw, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, and Malak Santini—three women who lead large businesses—gathered at [TIME’s 2025 Women Leadership Forum](https://time.com/collection/women-of-the-year/ "undefined") in Los Angeles to discuss the gender wealth gap and how women can invest in themselves financially, professionally, and personally. During the conversation, moderated by TIME CEO Jessica Sibley, Cassidy, the CEO of Xero, noted that women are statistically more financially risk-averse than men, and said she advocates for women to take more risks and invest more in order to prioritize wealth accumulation. She points to the dichotomy between women and men in her own home: her daughter, she says, is a “saver,” while her son is an “investor.” “There’s a problem with that. He’s accumulating wealth and opportunity,” Cassidy, who, with Xero, provides accounting software to small businesses, said. “I want her to be an investor… That’s about building a portfolio, starting early.” Santini, Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase—a sponsor of TIME’s [Women of the Year Leadership Forum](https://time.com/7225484/womens-climate-leadership/ "undefined")— emphasized the latter part of Cassidy’s point: in order to have the opportunity to create wealth, women must begin to develop their future financial plans and portfolios as early as possible. The future “creeps up on us quite quickly,” Santini says, so women need to get ahead of it in order for their financial wellbeing to remain strong. “At the base of what's most important is education. It's early education. It's understanding finance, the building blocks,” Santini said. “Planning for the future, thinking about what debt means and how that feels to you emotionally, understanding what debt is right, thinking about retirement, thinking about investing, thinking about where your passions are.” Jennifer Openshaw, CEO of the nonprofit Girls with Impact, spoke to how her personal experiences with wealth affects her work. She watched her mother work two full-time waitressing jobs as Openshaw put herself through school, and that impacted her deeply. Recognizing how women are “woefully unprepared” to enter into the business world, she now provides business education and preparation to young women to help them accumulate wealth through Girls With Impact. She also spoke to the differences in how women and men are promoted in the workplace, saying that men get promoted on “promise” while women get promoted on “performance.” Openshaw provided a few ideas about how to get more women to the top of large companies, one of which included women speaking up for themselves. “Know what your worth is…This is the time to not shrink from your work, but to lean into it. Raising your hand and letting your voice be heard…is incredibly important,” she said, emphasizing that advocating can come from yourself or from advocates on your behalf. “I think having a sponsor in the workplace is really important, so that somebody is looking out for you even when you’re not in the room.” _The Women of the Year Leadership Forum was presented by Amazon, Booking.com, Chase, Deloitte_, _the American Heart Association, and Toyota._ What Women Need to Know About Wealth Accumulation ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/7225492/women-wealth-leadership-forum/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/7225492/women-wealth-leadership-forum/"},"headline":"What Women Need to Know About Wealth Accumulation","datePublished":"2025-02-25T21:25:48.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:44:19.422Z","description":"Female business leaders gathered at TIME’s 2025 Women Leadership Forum to talk about how women can invest in themselves","url":"https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/7225492/women-wealth-leadership-forum/","keywords":["Women of the Year","sponsorshipblock"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt862028da08a8fe08/6998c46bd32e931e5dcd6c43/2201956973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rebecca Schneid","jobTitle":"Reporter","url":"https://time.com/author/rebecca-schneid/"}],"creator":"Rebecca Schneid","articleSection":"Business","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt862028da08a8fe08/6998c46bd32e931e5dcd6c43/2201956973.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/women-of-the-year/","name":"Women of the Year"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/women-of-the-year/7225492/women-wealth-leadership-forum/","name":"What Women Need to Know About Wealth Accumulation"}}]}] ```