Let us introduce you to Samira Shihab, one of AVPN’s first Gender Equality Ambassadors. Based in Jakarta, Samira serves as Principal and Head of Value Creation at AC Ventures and is Founder of Tinkerlust and Stellar Women. A seasoned entrepreneur and executive, she returned to Indonesia in 2014 after spending over 25 years abroad, convinced of Southeast Asia’s tech and digital potential. Today, she combines her venture capital expertise with community building to dismantle the barriers that hold women back from leadership.
From Tech Entrepreneur to Value Creator at AC Ventures
Samira’s journey began in tech entrepreneurship, where she launched a SaaS platform for the hospitality sector. She later honed her business acumen at a private equity consulting firm before leading one of Indonesia’s top pre-loved fashion e-commerce start-ups, where she proved that purpose and profit can go hand in hand.
Today, as Head of Value Creation at AC Ventures, Samira leads a team that provides portfolio companies with hands-on support across growth strategy, corporate governance, business development, government relations, organisational design and capital advisory. By embedding herself in the executive teams of start-ups, she ensures they build sustainable structures capable of weathering the challenges of rapid expansion.
Gender-Lens Investing: Turning Insight into Impact
Across Asia, women make up half the workforce, yet only one in five senior leaders is a woman. Globally, women receive just 2% of venture capital funding, despite evidence that women-led start-ups deliver higher returns on investment. For Samira, this discrepancy reflects not women’s capability but systemic barriers such as bias in funding decisions, lack of access to networks and capital stuck in traditional models.
“Investing in women isn’t charity, it’s strategy,” she says.
Samira draws on these facts to make the business case for gender-lens investing, noting that closing the gender gap could unlock USD12 trillion in global GDP growth by 2025. She also highlights that women reinvest 90% of their income into families and communities, reinforcing that equitable funding flows yield broader social returns.
Stellar Women: Building Visibility, Capital and Community
In response to these challenges, Samira founded Stellar Women, an organisation dedicated to supporting female leaders and entrepreneurs across Indonesia. Stellar Women’s mission is threefold:
- Visibility: Elevate women’s achievements through storytelling, curated events and digital platforms so that rising female talents become visible role models.
- Capital Access: Close the funding gap by connecting women-led ventures with investors who understand the value of gender-lens portfolios.
- Community: Foster peer networks and mentorship circles that provide women with practical tools such as pitch training, governance workshops and investor introductions to lead boldly.
Since its inception, Stellar Women has hosted pitch forums where women founders present their business cases to impact investors. The organisation also runs workshops on financial modelling and governance, equipping participants with the skills they need to negotiate term sheets and scale operations. In Samira’s view, these programmes are not about “fixing women” but about “rewiring the system, not just funding around the edges”.
Navigating Barriers to Leadership
Samira frequently emphasises that existing systems were never built with women in mind. Cultural bias and unpaid care burdens remain pervasive and women often lack senior sponsors rather than just mentors. As a result, talent is lost at every stage of the pipeline.
Stellar Women’s events tackle these issues head-on. Panel discussions address the stigma around unpaid care by sharing practical strategies for balancing family responsibilities and career growth. Networking mixers deliberately pair emerging female leaders with senior executives who can open doors to board-level opportunities. Samira’s motto is simple: leadership is not about title but transformation, ensuring women do not lead alone.
Advancing Gender Equality with AVPN
As AVPN’s Gender Equality Ambassador, Samira extends her impact beyond Indonesia to the broader Asia-Pacific region.
Through her AVPN ambassadorship, she also mentors fellow investors to become champions of equity. Samira believes that a systemic shift requires collaboration:
“We must challenge systems that were never built with women in mind. When we invest in women, we invest in stronger, more resilient economies.”
What You Can Do
- Fund women-led impact initiatives
- Commit to allocating a deliberate share of your capital to women-led ventures. Even small shifts in portfolio composition can signal to the market that gender equity is non-negotiable.
- Share stories, not just stats
- Elevate case studies of successful women entrepreneurs. Humanise data to inspire others and demonstrate real-world outcomes.
- Build inclusive leadership pipelines
- Create sponsorship programmes that match women with senior advisers. Offer flexible pathways that acknowledge unpaid care work, ensuring women do not have to choose between family and leadership.
By championing visibility, capital and community, each of us can help reshape the future of leadership. For Samira Shihab, gender equity is not a side project; it is the strategic imperative that will define Asia’s next wave of growth.
