Her power, her ideas: Rebecca Fries
As part of our Her Power, Her Ideas series, the Africa-Europe Innovation Platform highlights the leadership and contributions of women who are shaping innovation ecosystems across Africa, Europe and beyond. More women are stepping into leadership roles in innovation, yet they often remain underrepresented in public narratives.
This week we spotlight Rebecca Fries, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Value for Women, based in New York City. Her organisation creates better economic opportunities for women in emerging markets by shifting private-sector practices, products, and capital flows.
The organisation works with partners to create more and better jobs for women and to improve their access to capital, as well as to products and services that meet their needs. This work takes place across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and across a variety of sectors.
What has being a woman in innovation meant for your journey?
This journey has given me clarity of purpose. I built Value for Women to challenge finance and business systems that were not designed with women in mind, especially women entrepreneurs, leaders, customers, and employees in emerging markets. Like many women founders, I have seen the blind spots firsthand. Rather than being discouraged, I chose to use that perspective as a source of innovation. This is how our team learned to develop approaches that are practical, commercially relevant, and rooted in the lived realities of our partners.
I also saw enormous untapped potential: the private sector can expand opportunities and impact for women while strengthening its own performance and sustainability. By integrating lessons from diverse fields into a unified, practical approach, we help investors and financial institutions reach their full market potential while expanding women’s opportunities through the way how products and services are designed, how jobs are created, how capital is deployed, and how impact is delivered.
The challenges, though, are real and persistent. Progress is far too slow. We are still 123 years away from global gender parity. So part of our work is making the case, again and again, that excluding women has measurable costs for poverty reduction, education, decent work, and climate resilience.
Inclusive innovation in finance and investment is not a “nice to have”. It is what makes solutions effective, scalable, and durable.
What message would you like to pass on to the next generation of women leaders?
One message I would pass on to the next generation of women leaders is not to limit your vision to individual success, but to think about systems and the collective.
Early in my international development career, working in Guatemala, I met a remarkable woman named Doña Teresa. She was determined, capable, and deeply committed to building a better future for herself and her family. What held her back was not talent or ambition, but the way markets, finance, and institutions were structured. That experience shaped a conviction I carry to this day: empowering individual women matters deeply, but it is not enough. We must also transform the systems around them so they can lead and thrive.
My message is this: ask how you can rewrite the rules and redesign incentives and practices that enable opportunities for everyone. Innovation is about changing what no longer works. And your perspective and lived experience are the most powerful assets in doing exactly that.
Through initiatives like this series, AEIP continues to highlight the voices and leadership of women advancing inclusive innovation across Africa and Europe. Become part of the AEIP or follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook to stay engaged with the growing Africa-Europe innovation community.