Meet Anne Clarke Wolff, the Wall Street founder supporting the next generation of female entrepreneurs.
Anne Clarke Wolff knows a thing or two about challenging the status quo.
The founder and CEO of Wall Street’s first female-owned investment bank and advisory firm is using her expertise to help other female founders shatter their own glass ceilings.
Independence Point Advisors – founded by Anne in 2021 following her more than 30-year career holding global leadership positions at top firms – is a far cry from the old boys’ club of Wall Street: 17 partners are women, seven are people of color, several are veterans of the armed forces and several are LGBTQ+. “I wanted the minority to be the majority,” she says. “We’ve done even better than that.”
Naturally, her focus on diversity attracts women entrepreneurs looking to glean expertise from Anne and her team – and as a female founder herself, she is perfectly positioned to guide them. “It’s a super exciting and personally fulfilling part of what we do,” says Anne, who meets with approximately three female founders in a given week.
One of the obstacles Anne sees many female founders facing is the gap for raising capital – while many private equity firms are only interested in established companies in the high millions, early stage venture capital funds supporting female founders are often very small. Even though many of the founders Anne meets are looking to raise a smaller amount of capital than her firm can help them with, she is working to create a model that supports female founders in earlier stages and sets them up for success. She cleverly describes this as a “ferry boat system” to help women on their journey. “We help you get to the first island, and maybe we don’t provide a lot of services, but maybe we’ll provide introductions to 10 investors who we know will be the kind of partners you need at that early stage,” she says. From there, the firm can pick them back up later in their journey when they are ready for a significant private capital raise or have scaled enough for a sale to a strategic buyer.
[Wall Street] is a place where the men have a very natural ecosystem. Female founders want a more supportive ecosystem. They want to share learnings with each other, they want to convene.
Another challenge that Anne observes in other female founders and relates to is imposter syndrome – or the phenomenon in which an individual doubts their skills, talents and accomplishments. “We’ve got to fight that boogey monster out of our head,” she says. “I don’t think it is uniquely female, but I think that women would volunteer very quickly that we all face that.” This damaging self-talk can be compounded by the pressure of running a business, often leaving many founders with a sense of loneliness. “When you have founded something, so much of your own personal brand, your desire and compulsion to make this successful is very much about who you are. You don’t feel alone, but lonely. You have this amazing team but you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders in a very different way than your partners or your teammates or your employees do,” says Anne.
At the root of many of these problems is the lack of spaces for female founders to connect and learn from one another. “[Wall Street] is a place where the men have a very natural ecosystem,” she says. “Female founders want a more supportive ecosystem. They want to share learnings with each other, they want to convene.” While male entrepreneurs can trade tips and network with ease at the golf course or cigar lounge, it can be more much more challenging for their female counterparts to facilitate this kind of critical community engagement. Anne wants to create a more natural ecosystem for female founders to exist in, so they can leverage the power of community that male founders have benefited from for decades. “I would love one of my legacies to be that Independence Point Advisors plays a role in creating that same power for this generation of female founders.” »
Learn more about Anne's work here
