ASTRID PREGEL

President

Feminomics, Canada

Astrid Pregel is a retired senior executive with Canada’s Foreign Service and a leading global expert in women’s economic empowerment, Astrid worked closely with Canadian and global industry during her diplomatic career as her foreign postings took her to Africa, Asia, South American, the USA and several international financial institutions. While specializing in international trade, finance, export marketing, and International Development Assistance, her personal interest in women’s leadership and empowerment led her to develop a rich understanding of the potential women have to grow the economy and change the world. 

 

Astrid is the founder of Feminomics, a boutique consulting firm working at the intersection of gender, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the economy. Launched in 2007 and activated as necessary throughout Astrid’s diplomatic career and beyond, Feminomics is focused on the economic empowerment of women. Astrid has worked with governments, international institutions and non-profits around the world working on issues of women’s leadership, creating gender sensitive economic policy and programming, and conducting gender based analysis and gender budgeting initiatives. Her clients include the Global Affairs Canada, Department of National Defence, Status of Women Canada, Canadian International Development Agency, Metropolis, World Bank, United Nations, City of Atlanta, WEConnect International and SheEO.

 

In addition to her policy and programming work, she has coached, mentored and advised countless numbers of women on career advancement, leadership, entrepreneurship, personal empowerment, social activism, impactful communications, taking control of difficult situations, and raising government and corporate sponsorship funding. She has held director positions on the boards of numbers of non-profits focused on women’s empowerment, micro-finance, early childhood development and community trails. She is an Advisory Director of Global Mining Sustainability. 

 

Astrid is the founder and Godmother of the supplier diversity movement for women-owned business enterprises in Canada. Astrid helped create, fund and lead WEConnect International in Canada, the partner of the world leader in bringing women owned firms into the global supply chains of the Fortune 1000, the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. Astrid is the first Canadian to be inducted into the Women Business Enterprise Hall of Fame in the USA.  

 

Astrid believes that women are the world’s single most important resource and catalyst for positive change and poverty eradication. Her global wanderings have shown her that where women have been educated and empowered, economic growth and stability follow. Where women have been denied these basic rights, the result is too frequently economic stagnation and civil unrest.