Jean Winter: Dare to be Brave

Women are creating innovative companies at unprecedented rates and they are at the forefront of many market trends. They have the education and skills to build prosperous companies, but struggle for the capital and funding.  In the past year, the amount of funding to women-led startups declined, as the overall amount of venture dollars poured into startups inched higher. The startups that have drawn a larger share of VC dollars are those with a team of all male founders. A Harvard business Review found that 90% of VC decision makers are men, who, in turn, invest 86% of their capital in all-male teams. The burning question is this: What must happen for this to change? And also, more importantly why are women getting a smaller piece of the VC pie? What are their biggest challenges?  To speak about these pertinent issues, we have on today’s episode Jean Winter. Jean is the founder of Jean's Private Kitchen, Geneva’s first underground dining concept which successfully expanded to France, Hamburg, Singapore and now to Dubai.  She started the private dining concept from her home catering to mostly clients from UN/WHO/WTO/Footballers/VIPs in the Geneva region, relying purely on word of mouth with no advertising and gradually grew her clientele base to more than 700 private clients in Geneva alone. As a celebrity chef, she now hosts VVIPS, government officials and royalties, purely based on word of mouth.  Jean is also a food consultant to the Singapore Embassy & Consulate UAE and other international organisations. She played an integral part at the Singapore Pavilion, Expo Dubai, recreating the Singapore hawker experience. The negative impact of the pandemic on female-owned businesses drove Jean to invest in people over stocks and shares. As an angel investor and VC, Jean has supported many women-led businesses affected by the economic downturn. Jean is also the CEO of Touch Consultancy, UAE’s 1st Disability Inclusion Consultancy, an inclusive platform that represents people of determination. Based on three distinct pillars of representation, growth, and community outreach, the company promotes stories of people of determination in a way that respectfully educates society about disability. Despite her fame as a renowned, celebrity chef, Jean is strongly grounded on her core values of honesty, kindness, humanity, charity, loyalty and good manners. And this is the reason why without a website or paid marketing/advertising, Jean draws 1000s of followers and major clients. Jean Winter can be reached on:Instagram: @jeansprivatekitchen and @jeanwinterconsultancy This podcast is jointly presented by:World Women Tourism https://www.worldwomentourism.com/The Flapper Life : http://theflapperlife.com