Lena Perepelova, Founder FunFinance & Women Investors Club

Empowering Women with Financial Skills

Lena Perepelova of the Women Investors Club is a passionate advocate of educating children and adolescents about finance, economics and business in a down to earth and fun way.

Lena currently manages two entrepreneurial initiatives: FunFinance Academy, a virtual business school for kids and Women Investors Club, a supportive community helping to empower women by providing them with financial skills.

We talked to Lena Perepelova about why she set up her business, why women are less likely to invest than men and why it was important for her to set up community dedicated to educating women.

Key Interview Extract

[8:50] MumAbroad: Research confirms that women are less likely to invest than men, and less likely to describe themselves as financially knowledgeable. Why is that do you think that is?

From what I understand, it is because of the confidence gap. I didn’t even know that term existed at first. But apparently as women we are not so likely to say we are good at things, and obviously with finance we are much more vocal in expressing our doubts in our financial knowledge. So it’s not so much that our knowledge is inferior, women’s knowledge is very similar to men’s, but we feel not so confident. 

10:00 Why did you think it was important to set up a women only environment?

I was actually asked to set this up. A lot of the mothers of children I was teaching FunFinance to said ‘I wish I learned this when I was a child, but I would like to learn it today and if you can explain it to children, you can explain it to me’. A lot of women think that financial knowledge is complex or overwhelming so they trusted I would be able to explain it easily. After a few lectures and webinars and classes, I really enjoyed it myself, it was much easier than teaching kids, and everyone really appreciated it too. I noticed that having a women-only community encourages women to sign up. Because somehow if I would just call this an ‘investment club’, it would be dominated by men. But since I call it a ‘women investors club’, women are more inclined to join.