Who Are You Investing In?

This week marks the 50th anniversary of an incredibly powerful piece of legislation being signed into law, but it's likely flown under your radar.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on October 28, 1974.

When it was passed, the ECOA prohibited creditors and lenders from discrimination against applicants on the basis of marital status or sex.

Soon after, Congress amended the law to further prohibit lending discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, the receipt of public assistance income, or exercising one’s rights under certain consumer protection laws.

The ECOA was passed at a time when discrimination against women applying for credit was common.

Before it, my grandmother wouldn't have been able to get a loan or a credit card without my grandfather's consent, despite being a grown woman who had run a business alongside my grandfather and meticulously organized the family's finances for decades.

My mom was a sophomore in college when the ECOA was passed. She was in the second class of women to complete all four years at Notre Dame and went on to work for AT&T for nearly 30 years. Imagine being a business major at a time when lenders didn't see you as someone to be trusted with money, someone worth investing in.

Today, I own my own business and my sister is a shareholder in her engineering firm. We - and our families and communities - have both benefitted in big ways from having access to credit and capital that wasn't available to women (without a spouse or male family member co-signing) just 8 years before I was born.

Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of being in community with hundreds of women entrepreneurs, and I think often about the incredible impact they've created - for their clients, employees, contractors, communities and families.

I also think about all the advocates, social justice leaders, nonprofits, and committed citizens who made progress like the ECOA and other critical civil rights legislation possible. Their investments - of time, energy, influence, their votes and more - in making things better for those of us who would come after them made today's impact possible.

The ECOA shows us that who we invest in matters.

Because the investments we make today and every day in creating access and opportunity - especially for people who have been underrecognized, underestimated, and previously kept out of the "rooms where it happens" - create a widespread and compounding positive impact for families, communities, and our society for years to come.

So as we celebrate 50 years of impact and progress thanks to the ECOA this week, I invite you to reflect on this:

Who are you investing in? And what do those investments look like?

Join the conversation on LinkedIn to inspire and collaborate with other leaders.

(ECOA Information Sources: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Ballotpedia)