About the Female Futures Fund Initiative
About the Female Futures Fund Initiative

Back for a third year, we are grateful to our sponsors Diageo for enabling us to make this possible yet again.

The objective of the bursary remains the same. It is designed to accelerate women into senior roles ensuring that we retain and promote our best female talent by enabling them to realise their full potential. We believe that this will continue to help close the gender gap at the leadership level in our industry as it will empower women to become the leaders of the near future.

Gender representation in the marketing and advertising industry shapes the perception of gender in society and that's why we are committed to fair and equal representation. To understand how this bursary might be of real benefit to you or your high potential female colleagues, read about the 2021 Female Futures Fund programme.

Once again, the 2022 Female Futures Fund will give 25 women in our industry the opportunity to take part in the programme which is now open for applications.

We are delighted by the progress that has been made towards a strong gender balance in many areas of the commercial creativity industry, and 40% of IAPI member agencies are now run by females ( IAPI 2021 Census), says Charley Stoney, CEO, IAPI.However, we are still pushing for absolute equality in all roles, and in the area of Creative Leadership, we fall very short with less than 10% of our agencies having a female in the lead creative role. My firm belief is that this programme will be of huge value to any female in our sector, and particularly so for creatively-led women, who rarely get the opportunity to think of themselves in this light.”

The Female Futures Fund will once again be masterminded by Danica Murphy, founder and director of PRISM. Danica is an internationally recognised expert in the areas of executive coaching, high-performance team development, training & design, and facilitation. She has co-authored books and training resources on Myers Briggs Type Indicator MBTI© and contributes to a variety of training and business publications. She has designed and delivered award-winning Women in Leadership programmes across the United States, Caribbean and Central America. She is also a member of the Institute of Directors of Ireland, the Irish Institute for Training & Development, the Association for Coaching and is a frequent guest speaker or contributor on the Irish Management Institute (IMI) programme.

2022 Application Process
2022 Application Process

25 high potential women will be able to avail of the Female Futures Fund. The bursary will fund a group leadership coaching programme that encompasses a kick-off meeting, followed by two workshop sessions facilitated by Danica with support from both IAPI and Diageo female leaders.

Criteria & Eligibility

  • Women who have +5 years’ experience in the industry
  • Either on the cusp of leadership already OR, who has the potential to be a leader of the future
  • Key Characteristic - Women who don’t know how good they are and who have huge potential to be even better.
  • Each IAPI member agency can nominate up to 3 candidates for Female Futures Fund. This means that media groups with more than one agency can nominate 3 per agency as per 2021
  • Each Application Form must be completed by both the Candidate and the Nominator in the agency and be accompanied by a 90sec video.

Journey Map and Programme Timing for the 2022 Female Futures Fund recipients

1. 29th April  @ 5 pm - Closing Date for Entries

2. 1st – 13th May – Online review of applications by Diageo & IAPI Review Panel to include additional questions asked of applicants where necessary.

This online process will involve each application being read and scored against the set criteria by 5 members of the Review Panel. (All the members of the Review Panel will be announced in April and will consist of 20 industry leaders, senior marketers, the Programme facilitator and the CEO of IAPI.)

3. Week commencing 23rd May 2022 - Shortlist Interviews

With 25 places to award, it is paramount that each one is awarded to the person who will benefit the most from the programme.

While we cannot interview all applicants, we will be asking all applicants who score highly during the online review process to take part in a 10-minute interview. Again, this will be with 5 members of the Review Panel and these interviews will determine the final 25.

4. Week commencing 30th May - Announcement of the 25 recipients of the 2022 Female Futures Fund

Female Futures 2022 Recipients announced
Female Futures 2022 Recipients announced

Following an intense interview process, we finally have the recipients of the 2022 Female Futures programme. This superb group of women made it difficult for the panel of judges to narrow down to the final few. As a result of the high standard, the decision was made to widen the final number of recipients this year from 25 to 28.

You can read the full list of incredible women who are a part of this years programme.


Re-watch our Launch Event
Re-watch our Launch Event