Dharma, Women, and Finance
Dharma, Women, and Finance (Webinar 3): Women & Investing Basics on November 14th, 2021
Women invest differently and have different finance needs than men. Between the wage gap and the investment gap, over a career of 40 years, women may accumulate a Wealth Gap of approximately $2 million versus their male peers! This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that women tend to live longer, so the wealth they have needs to last longer.
Participants in this webinar will begin identifying the next action steps in their investing and financial journey. We will focus on the fundamentals of investing, key terms, and what is important to you and for you, so that you can start developing the framework for your portfolio.
Please note: this seminar will not offer financial advice or specific asset recommendations.
Teja Rau
Our speaker, Teja Rau, has a background in law and social work. She has worked with women going through life transitions, including high asset divorces and estate planning, that required difficult financial considerations, education, budgeting, and planning. She lives with her children in Barcelona, Spain.
Dharma, Women, and Finance (Webinar 2) on September 19th, 2021
“Stop saving for your future,
Start investing in it.”
How do women relate to money - do they only save for their future? Instead, how can women use their voices to impact the future by choosing what initiatives to invest in? Do our Dharmic values hold us back - 'don't be materialistic, don't be attached to money, etc.? Hear from experts on the true cost of financial silence and not investing in the world's future.
Meet the Speakers
Seema Hingorani
Seema R. Hingorani is a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. As part of the senior leadership team, Seema is focused on strategic client relationships, investment talent development and diversity initiatives across the platform. She is also Senior Sponsor of Investment Management’s Diversity Council and a member of Morgan Stanley’s Diversity and Inclusion Senior Leaders Advisory Council. Seema joined Morgan Stanley in 2019 and has 26 years of investment experience.
Seema is also the Founder and Chair of Girls Who Invest, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry.
Seema has worked with several organizations focused on issues concerning women and girls and is a prolific speaker on the topic of a more robust inclusion of women in the corporate sector.
Tuyet-Quan Thai
Tuyet-Quan Thai has more than 30 years of experience leading large audits of government entities including the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Her work cuts across many sectors, from disaster delivery and immigration services, to financial systems and financial reporting. Her recent work has focused on the accuracy and reliability of governmental data. Ms. Thai has held board and volunteer positions in organizations seeking to improve education and social services in underserved communities in the United States and in Viet Nam. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner.
Kaajal Singh
Kaajal Singh is a business builder and problem solver. For over 15 years, she has been focused on health care, particularly in building advisory solutions that are focused on improving efficiency, creating value, growth and innovation. She has worked with health care payers, providers and life sciences organizations across the United States and around the globe. She leads teams delivering solutions on health care finance, health care delivery, social determinants and health equity, health technology, data and analytics. She thrives by leading teams that deliver high quality, evidence based and meaningful solutions for the industry partners that she supports.
She has expertise and experience in driving design, implementation and evaluation of value based care payment and delivery models, quality measure development and drivers of health for health payers and providers. She is an expert leader in health care strategy and operations engagements with clients, including, but not limited to primary care, specialty care, payment innovation, behavioral health and technology focused clients.
Soha Shah
Soha D. Shah is the Vice President of Operations at Jayna, Inc., a precision manufacturing and assembly company in Troy, Ohio. For the past twenty-three years, she has been responsible for operations, human resources, customer service, marketing and business development.
Service, in the local and larger community, has always been a part of Soha’s personal mission. In her hometown of Piqua, Ohio, she is Director for the annual Piqua Regional Science Olympiad Tournament, Vice President of the Piqua Education Foundation Board of Directors, an active member of the Indian Community Organization of Miami-Shelby Counties. Soha also works with various family members in running The Shah Family Foundation.
Additionally, Soha maintains an active role in the Jain community, having been on the executive committee of the Jain Center of Cincinnati-Dayton, and serving as the youngest president of the Center in 2001. In 2003, Soha was the co-convener for the 12th biennial JAINA Convention in Cincinnati, OH. In 2013, she served on the JAINA Convention Board for the Detroit Convention. Soha remains involved as a member of the JAINA LRP (Long Range Planning) Committee and a JAINA Director from her home center, the Jain Center of Cincinnati and Dayton.
Sivagami “Shiva” Subbaraman
Sivagami “Shiva” Subbaraman serves as Emeritus: Executive Director, LGBTQ and Women’s Centers, Georgetown and previously held positions in Human Relations and LGBTQ Equity at the University of Maryland. During her career she has studied a broad range of diversity issues including gender, race, faith/religion, sexual orientation, class, and disability and has developed specialized expertise in intergroup dialogue methods, including conflict resolution and mediation.
Dharma, Women, and Finance (Webinar 1) on August 22nd, 2021
“Stop saving for your future,
Start investing in it.”
How do women relate to money - do they only save for their future? Instead, how can women use their voices to impact the future by choosing what initiatives to invest in? Do our Dharmic values hold us back - 'don't be materialistic, don't be attached to money, etc.? Hear from experts on the true cost of financial silence and not investing in the world's future.
Meet the Speakers
Dr. Vasudha Narayanan
Dr. Vasudha Narayanan is a Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion (2001-2002). She was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University. Her fields of interest are the Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia, and America; visual and expressive cultures in the study of the Hindu traditions; and gender issues. She is currently working on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia.
Dr. Narayanan and the University of Florida have created the nation’s first Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra) to encourage the research, teaching and public understanding of Hindu culture and traditions. Read the University of Florida News article about CHiTra.
Dr. Bhakti Mamtora
Dr. Bhakti Mamtora is assistant professor of Religious Studies and South Asian Studies at The College of Wooster. Dr. Mamtora examines religious subjectivity and community formation in nineteenth-century Gujarat through an analysis of text and praxis in the Swaminarayan Sampraday. Her research interests include: South Asian Religions, Hindu Traditions, Vernacularization, and Book History and Print Culture in Colonial India.
Dr. Mamtora published an article titled “At Home Camping on Shifting Sands”: Lessons in Humility from Between Worlds in the November issue of Fieldwork in Religion. The article, which Mamtora describes as an “autoethnography,” uses personal narrative to argue that intellectual humility is essential to fieldwork in religion. “Humility in the academy entails an open-mindedness to theorize about the field from within the field,” Mamtora writes in the article’s abstract. “By practicing intellectual humility, one can begin to bridge the boundaries of home and field, self and other, and become attentive to new directions in academic research.”
Dr. Venu Mehta
Dr. Venu Mehta is a scholar of Jainism. Her present research focuses on the devotional practices, literature, and iconography of the Jaina Goddess Padmāvatī, with special attention to vernacular and regional forms of devotion and goddesses in Jainism. Her areas of scholarship in Jain Studies include Jain religious diaspora and sectarian negotiations in the USA, Jainism and ecology, Jain bhakti literature and practices in Gujarat, Jaina theory of Anekāntavāda, and Jaina notion of forgiveness.
She completed her second M.A. in Religious Studies with a particular focus on Jainism at Florida International University. Her M.A. thesis, titled “An Ethnographic Study of Sectarian Negotiations among Diaspora Jains in the USA,” is an ethnographic and anthropological study of the Jain communities in the diasporic context. She explored Jain temples and communities and identified sectarian negotiations, the invention of a new form of Jainism, and the creation of a common Jain identity as the practices of the Jains in the USA. Her research emphasizes the Jain immigrants’ process of creating a common ‘Jain’ identity through sectarian negotiations.
Dr. Clair Brown
Dr. Clair Brown is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley. Brown is a past Director of the Institute of Industrial Relations (IRLE) at UC Berkeley. Brown has published research on many aspects of how economies function, including high-tech industries, development engineering, the standard of living, wage determination, poverty, and unemployment.
Dr. Brown has developed a holistic economic approach, where the economy delivers a high quality of life in a sustainable world. Buddhist economics integrates sustainability, equity, and compassion. Complementing the paradigm-breaking work of Amartya Sen, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill McKibben, Brown integrates capability, shared prosperity, and sustainability in a Buddhist economic system that provides a comfortable, meaningful life for all people while protecting the environment. By replacing the endless cycle of desire with more positive collective activities, our lives can become richer as well as happier. Buddhist Economics represents an enlightened approach to our modern world infused with ancient wisdom, with benefits both personal and global, for generations to come.