Founders are taught to allocate resources. CEOs make capital decisions every day. Investors build careers around identifying where opportunity exists before everyone else sees it.
Yet when it comes to personal wealth, many women leaders approach capital differently.
At The New Guard Summit, Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code and Moms First, joined Sandy Choute, US Private Bank Head of Diverse Wealth Strategies at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, for a conversation that challenged attendees to rethink one of the most overlooked leadership skills: capital allocation.
Sandy opened with a staggering statistic. Over the next two decades, an estimated $34 trillion in investable assets will move into the hands of women. But rather than focusing on the size of the opportunity, she pushed the audience to consider a more important question.
"The question isn't just how much money is moving," Sandy said. "It's what are we doing about it?"
For a room filled with founders, executives, and investors, the conversation quickly moved beyond wealth accumulation. Instead, it became a masterclass on ownership, optionality, and the role capital plays in shaping the future.
One of Sandy's central observations was that women have become extraordinary wealth creators. They are building companies, leading organizations, and driving economic growth at every level. Yet many still spend far more time thinking about how to earn money than how to deploy it.
That distinction resonated deeply with Reshma. Despite building one of the most successful nonprofit organizations of the past decade, she admitted that money remained a source of discomfort for much of her career.
"I didn't like to look at my bank account. I didn't like to open my bills. I didn't like to think about money," she shared.
Building Girls Who Code forced her to change that relationship. Raising capital, managing budgets, and making long-term investment decisions required her to engage with money not as a source of anxiety, but as a strategic tool.
Most leaders spend years learning how to create value. Fewer spend time learning how to direct it. The founders who scale successfully understand where every dollar goes. The best investors know that capital reflects priorities. The strongest CEOs recognize that resource allocation ultimately determines strategy.
The same principle applies outside the boardroom. As Sandy noted, the coming wealth transfer only matters if women actively participate in directing where that capital flows. Otherwise, the numbers may change while the outcomes remain largely the same.
When asked about one of the most important financial decisions she made as a leader, Reshma pointed to a habit she developed while building Girls Who Code.
Every year, she quietly set aside 10 to 15% of the organization's fundraising rather than deploying every available dollar immediately. Over time, those reserves grew into roughly $50 million.
At the time, it may have looked conservative, when in reality, it was strategic. When corporate priorities shifted and funding for diversity initiatives came under pressure, Girls Who Code had something many organizations lacked: options. While others were forced to cut programs and react to changing market conditions, the organization retained the flexibility to continue investing in its mission.
The lesson extends well beyond nonprofit leadership. Many founders are conditioned to optimize for growth. Many executives are rewarded for efficiency. But the leaders who navigate uncertainty most effectively often focus on something else entirely: optionality.
Capital reserves create flexibility. Flexibility creates better decisions.
In an increasingly volatile environment, that may be one of the most important competitive advantages a leader can build.
At one point, Reshma challenged the endless stream of advice women receive about self-improvement.
"We are smart enough. We are good enough. We are capable enough," she said. "We run circles around the boys on everything."
Her argument wasn't that women should stop learning. It was that leadership development often focuses on the wrong skills. Women are encouraged to negotiate better, communicate better, build stronger networks, and develop new technical expertise. Yet very few are taught how to think about capital.
How much risk should you take? What opportunities deserve investment? What does long-term value creation actually look like? How do you distinguish between preserving wealth and putting it to work? These are not financial questions alone. They are leadership questions.
Sandy sees this firsthand in her work with founders and executives navigating liquidity events, business exits, and generational wealth transfers. Too often, women remain disconnected from the financial decisions shaping their future, even as they lead increasingly complex organizations. The leaders who thrive in the next decade will need to be as comfortable allocating capital as they are allocating talent, time, and attention.
Perhaps the most provocative moment of the conversation came when the discussion turned to investing.
For years, women have pointed to the same statistic: less than 2% of venture capital funding goes to women-led companies. The number has become a fixture of conversations about inequality in entrepreneurship.
Reshma challenged the audience to think beyond the statistic itself. If women want different outcomes, they have to participate in creating them. She intentionally invests in Black and Brown women founders because they consistently see talented entrepreneurs overlooked by traditional networks. The decision is rooted in a belief that opportunity is often distributed unevenly, not talent.
Of course, not every investment succeeds, but that's precisely the point.
"Failure is the best thing," Reshma said. "The more I fail, the more I'm able to make change." The most consequential opportunities rarely arrive with certainty attached. Leaders who wait for consensus often arrive too late. Leaders who shape industries, movements, and markets learn to place informed bets before everyone else agrees That requires conviction. It requires risk tolerance. And, increasingly, it requires capital.
As the conversation drew to a close, Sandy returned to the idea that framed the discussion from the beginning. Women have spent decades learning how to earn and the next chapter is about learning how to direct. Capital is more than an asset. It is a leadership tool. It determines which founders get funded, which ideas scale, which organizations survive disruption, and ultimately, which futures become possible.
