Tory Burch says access to capital is the biggest gate women face when building businesses—an issue she addressed through the Tory Burch Foundation, which now counts more than 500 fellows and aims to add $1 billion to the economy by 2030.
When Tory Burch talks about starting a company, she doesn’t begin with fashion or glamour. She begins with money—how hard it can be to get, and how quickly the lack of it can shut the door.
Burch, now a billionaire whose eponymous brand has generated about $1.8 billion in revenue and grown to more than 370 stores worldwide, knows that success doesn’t automatically travel to everyone. She points to a stark imbalance: women-led companies get only about 2% of venture capital funding.
That conviction helped shape the Tory Burch Foundation, launched in 2009 to advance women’s economic power through fellowships that combine coaching and funding. The program has grown to over 500 fellows, and over 91% remain in business after five years.
Last year, the foundation set a goal that frames the work in economic terms rather than charity alone: adding $1 billion to the economy through women entrepreneurs by 2030. Since then, fellows have generated $470 million in revenue.
Burch also ties the need for investment to what she describes as a quiet break in the workforce—one driven by caregiving expectations. She says a record number of women are leaving work because of caregiving, and that progress has still left many women facing barriers when they try to climb.
Her own path to entrepreneurship began long before she ran a foundation. In 2004. she launched her first store specializing in women’s apparel in Manhattan with her ex-husband. the retailer and investor Christopher Burch. They funded the launch by pooling $2 million of their own money, and Christopher later helped her raise another $10 million.
But the foundation’s genesis, as Burch tells it, runs through a personal turning point. During college. she participated in Semester at Sea. a program that took her around the world. where she saw developing countries with severe poverty. Later. when she entered the workforce. she says she knew she wanted to start a foundation—though she didn’t know how it would happen.
Then, she got pregnant with her third son. Burch said she realized she couldn’t have three babies under the age of 4 and continue the career she was building. so she left to become a stay-at-home mom while fully thinking about returning to work. During that period. she started imagining a foundation centered on women and children—and her reasoning was practical as much as personal.
“If I could build a successful company,” she said, “the company could finance the foundation, and business and purpose could go hand in hand.” She adds that she instinctively felt doing good was good for business and would help the bottom line.
Burch’s description of the challenges she faced as a founder centers on gender—both what people assumed and how she was expected to act. Raised with three brothers and a mother who taught her that financial independence was critical. she says she didn’t initially view gender as a problem. “It never occurred to me,” she said, “that gender would be an issue, or that I would be treated differently.”.
She says she did see it anyway: people dismissed her efforts as a vanity project. She also describes how ambition itself was treated as distasteful in 2004 when talking about women, and how she was often the only woman in boardrooms.
There was another layer, she says—how caregiving fit into corporate life. She describes the complexity of taking care of her family and the business. and building a culture and company that celebrates when women are mothers. making it acceptable to take a child to a doctor appointment or go to a lacrosse game.
For Burch, the most actionable lever is still capital.
When she started her own company. she said she reached out to 120 friends and family members and asked them to “Invest what you can lose. ” adding that she was terrified of taking people’s money. In her view, many women lack access to that kind of support—and many investors lack interest in backing women. She points to venture capital data again, saying investment in women is at less than 2%.
Burch argues that solving the capital gap isn’t only a fairness issue, but an economic one. She says if women succeed, “everyone succeeds,” and that data shows women reinvest into their communities. She calls women “the most underinvested economic force in the world.”
Even with progress since 2004, she says the workforce data has remained alarming. She describes a record number of women leaving work because of caregiving, and links the root cause to societal expectations—saying women shouldn’t be expected to be the only caregivers.
When women have a baby, Burch says many expect they will be left behind, and that they are. She describes conversations with friends across industries who feel that once they have a baby, they are discounted for promotions.
Changing that, in her telling, means changing society’s expectations around women’s roles and family. She argues for conversations that reduce the burden of expecting women to be the only caregivers for their kids and parents. She also connects those societal shifts to practical supports—networks. access to capital. education. and community—while describing how she sees women both leaving the workforce and building businesses. She calls entrepreneurs among women “the fastest growing group of entrepreneurs.”.
Burch ties those outcomes to a specific milestone: when a woman reaches a million in revenue with her business, “there’s a sustainable business.”
Her advice for getting there is direct. “Believe in yourself and never let anyone put you in a box,” she says. She adds that entrepreneurs should trust their instincts, and that financial literacy is critical.
She also brings board-level experience into the personal advice. She recalls Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google, being on their board, and repeating the phrase “cash is king.” Burch says she used to respond that “if cash is king, culture is queen.”
That idea leads into how she defines a company culture worth building. She says the foundation of her approach is celebrating great work while making the workplace “a great place to work.” She wants people to feel safe, and for the organization to “shine the light on them.”
Burch’s cultural blueprint is personal and sweeping: she says she was raised treating a cab driver the same as the Queen of England. In her view, that upbringing shows up in her company culture as respect, humor, and honesty—an insistence that dignity shouldn’t depend on title.
Behind the foundation’s $1 billion-by-2030 target sits a set of numbers and decisions that point to one question: whether women’s economic power can be accelerated quickly enough to keep up with the pressures she describes—especially the ones that push women out of jobs and into uncertainty.
For now, the foundation’s fellows have already generated $470 million in revenue since the goal was announced. With more than 500 women in the program and over 91% still in business after five years. Burch is betting that capital paired with coaching can turn ambition into outcomes—and that the economy will feel the difference by 2030.
Tory Burch Tory Burch Foundation women entrepreneurs venture capital gender gap small business funding coaching and funding fellows $1 billion by 2030 $470 million revenue