question 4

Fearless Girl

By Stephen Tisdalle, Chief Marketing Officer, State Street Global Advisors

!mage 1.6 Fearless Girl was part of an integrated marketing campaign
Photo: Sculpture by Kristen Visbaf; commissioned by State Street Global Advisors.

To say that the tremendous success of the Fearless
Girl campaign was unexpected to us at State Street
Global Advisors would be an understatement. After
all it’s not often that a B2B financial services brand
is involved in a big viral marketing campaign. In fact,
we originally applied for a permit to keep the Fearless
Girl statue installed in New York for just seven days.
While we knew this had the potential to be an impact­
ful campaign, we didn’t fully anticipate the scale of
the viral spread or that, more than a year after launch,
her impact and influence would still be expanding.

The story of Fearless Girl begins with a simple truth:
research shows that companies with women in leader­
ship outperform those without.i Yet, women continue
to be under-represented in senior leadership roles. In
2017, one in four Russell 3000 Index companies did
not have a single woman on their board.ii

Taking a bold stand for change

As the world’s third largest asset manager, respon­
sible for investing approximately $2.5 trillion’ii on
behalf of our clients across the globe, State Street
Global Advisors pays close attention to these statis­
tics. For us, encouraging companies in our investment
portfolio to adopt good governance practices –
including increasing board diversity – is a means to
drive long-term value of clients’ investments.

After launching a gender diversity index and
exchange-traded fund (ETF) in 2016, offering the
ability to invest in companies with a strong track
record of promoting women to senior leadership
positions, in 2017 our leaders decided to take
the bold step of calling on portfolio companies to
increase the number of women on their boards. As