The past two years have shed light on and exacerbated long standing challenges for women—at home and at work— particularly for women of color and working moms. Women have risen to the challenges of the pandemic, managing enormous responsibilities at home and in jobs that often became unrecognizable.

At JPMorgan Chase, recognizing women’s resilience and responding to their most pressing professional and financial needs is more important than ever. Women on the Move (WOTM) is the firm’s global initiative designed to help women both inside and outside the firm. The program’s four core objectives are essential to supporting women’s regrowth in the wake of the pandemic: expand women-run businesses, improve women’s financial health, empower women’s career growth, and support women in our communities.

At the peak of the pandemic, an unprecedented number of women left the workforce globally for various reasons, many of them to care for their families and home school their children, underscoring the urgency for large companies like JPMorgan Chase to take the lead in our support and commitment to retaining and empowering women to grow their careers.

The firm saw positive progress for women across multiple levels in 2021, including the largest number of women promoted to Managing Director in the last five years, and a record number of women promoted to Executive Director. Additionally, 50 percent of the 2021 intern class was women and 51 percent of the full-time analyst and associate offers in all functions firmwide went to women.

Women on the Move and Fast Forward Group partnered to offer a professional and personal development program to help fuel employee career growth. The program empowers employees to build their careers by providing training that is practical, actionable and relevant, with virtual learning and discussions that are available to employees globally. More than 7,000 employees participated in the program globally in 2021.

Our work to expand women-owned businesses is focused on small businesses at all stages. In 2019, JPMorgan Chase made a three-year commitment to lend $10 billion to women entrepreneurs by 2021. At the time, of course, no one anticipated a global pandemic that would hit small business owners the hardest. Nevertheless, the firm reached and surpassed this goal, extending more than $12.7 billion in credit by the end of 2021 to fuel over 436,000 women-owned businesses. This does not include the support provided to women-owned businesses during the pandemic through the Paycheck Protection Program.