Attending the W50 Summit at Harvard Business School last spring was an eye-opening experience for Gisel Kordestani, who until then hadn't fully realized that despite the enormous strides women at HBS have made in the past half century, there were still some inequalities while she was there as a student. Much has been accomplished, she acknowledges, but the fact that there's more work to be done inspired Kordestani and her husband, Omid, to establish the Gisel (MBA 2003) and Omid Kordestani Research Fund. It supports scholarship and activities at HBS directed toward women and leadership.

"Harvard is a global platform—HBS cases are read by so many individuals around the world. We thought, how do we help the leading business school in the world focus on this?" says Kordestani, cofounder and COO of the new venture Crowdpac, and a former senior executive at Google. "The intention of the fund is to look at women in leadership—in business and in civic life. Among other things, we want to help increase the number of cases featuring women protagonists. Currently, women hold 18–20 percent of senior management positions; the HBS case collection should reflect at least that number and I'd like to see it even higher."

The fund also will enable HBS to deepen its research exploring issues of gender in the workplace. One important issue, says Kordestani, is equal pay. "If more women are graduating from undergraduate institutions and graduate and PhD programs, then why is it that they're not being paid equal to men?"

In addition to furthering equality in all aspects of business and society, Gisel and her husband are strong supporters of education at their alma maters. "HBS transformed my life, and I felt like I wanted to give back," she says. "What I got from HBS—besides an incredible education, really close friends, and an amazing network— was confidence, which gave me the ability to take bigger risks."

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