Our In Conversation With series features candid discussions with inspiring families, individuals, and leaders: exploring their journeys, values, and perspectives on wealth, success, purpose, and legacy.
In this edition, we speak with Nicky Black, CEO of The Beam Network, a global private community and financial education platform for women of significant wealth, dedicated to empowering one another to lead with confidence, invest with purpose, and shape a better world.
At the heart of our conversation is a powerful reflection, and one we also see across our own Female Principal community: a clear and meaningful shift in how female principalship is being lived and led as more women are stepping into decision-making authority across capital, enterprise, and institutional direction. Yet, despite this progress, a gap remains. Many women still lack the confidence, networks, and support needed to engage fully with their wealth.
Closing this gap is not simply about financial knowledge, but also about creating the right environments and trusted, peer-led spaces where women can share experiences openly, learn without judgement, and build clarity and conviction.
Q: You’ve built an impressive career spanning economic empowerment, supporting businesses through sustainability transitions, and working at the intersection of human rights and business. Could you share a brief overview of your journey and how it has shaped the work you’re doing today?
My career has always centred on one question: how do we create systems that work for more people and the planet? Over 25 years across mining and financial services, including at De Beers and advising clients such as Chanel, I’ve worked with CEOs, boards and international organisations to embed sustainability and impact at the heart of strategy.
Running through all of it has been a focus on women’s economic empowerment. I kept encountering the same pattern: women doing extraordinary things, but without the networks, tools or confidence their male counterparts took for granted. When I came across what Michelle, Ana and Bertha had built at The Beam, it felt like the natural home for everything I care about, and I joined in 2025.
“I kept encountering the same pattern: women doing extraordinary things, but without the networks, tools or confidence their male counterparts took for granted.”
Q: For those less familiar, how would you describe The Beam Network’s mission and the specific gap it is filling for women navigating wealth?
The Beam is a global private community and financial education platform, designed by and for women wealth holders. We envision a world where women have the knowledge and confidence to engage fully with their wealth and finances and are empowered to invest in line with their values.
That mission rests on three pillars. The first is education: courses, classes and wealth management insights that make finance genuinely accessible, rather than intimidating. The second is engagement: a safe, trusted space where women can learn, reflect and share experiences openly, something that is simply too rare for women at this level. The third is empowerment: supporting our members to build the knowledge, confidence and competence they need to actively manage their assets and direct their capital in line with what is most important to them.
Our members are women with at least $10 million in net investable assets, based across 15 countries. They are inheritors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and executives, accomplished in every dimension of their lives, and yet consistently tell us they want more confidence around their wealth. Over the last five years, we have developed an approach we know helps bridge that gap.
Q: The Beam Network is built around peer community. Why does that model matter, and what have your founders and members shown you about how women engage with wealth when given the right environment?
Most financial education for women exists as a standalone offering, a course, a programme, something you complete and move on from. What our founders understood is that the learning is only part of it. When education is embedded within a genuine peer community, the experience is transformed entirely. In practice, that means bringing members together through a rolling curriculum of expert-led online courses spanning everything from public and private markets to cryptocurrency, coached cohorts exploring the emotional and psycho-social dimensions of wealth, raising children in UHNW families, aligning values across generations, and in-person gatherings including our annual Beam Retreat.
What we hear most often from members captures it perfectly: “I came for the education, but I stay for the community.” Because what they find here is something harder to find elsewhere, a private space to connect with other women navigating the same terrain, carrying similar responsibilities, asking the same questions they assumed no one else was asking. The shared context makes the learning stick in a way that a course or curriculum simply cannot replicate.
“What we hear most often from members captures it perfectly: “I came for the education, but I stay for the community.” Because what they find here is something harder to find elsewhere.”
And the evidence is in how long members stay. This is not a community people pass through, it is one they invest in, return to, and build real relationships within. Our founders created something that meets women where they actually are, and grows with them over time. That, for me, is the real model.
Q: The great wealth transfer is often discussed in financial terms. From your perspective, what does this moment represent for women more broadly?
A once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine what wealth is for. Women currently represent a smaller share of the ultra-high-net-worth population1 – estimated to be 30-40% in the US and EU, but that share is rising fast, driven by wealth transfers, longer life expectancies, and women outpacing men in education and high-paying careers. Many women will experience two significant transfer events: from parents, and later from spouses.
When women engage actively with capital, they do so with greater attention to values, impact and legacy. But that potential is only realised when women feel genuinely confident and informed, when they have the knowledge and the community to make decisions that are truly their own.
Q: In the context of the great wealth transfer, where are women most in need of support, and what role should wealth managers play in meeting those needs?
A report just last year noted that an estimated $105 trillion is expected to transfer across generations by 2045 – with the majority being inherited by women 2 – with 80% of women who inherit wealth surveyed reporting significant challenges navigating the process, largely due to lack of preparation and communication.
And the most consistent thing we hear from our own members, accomplished, highly educated women, is that they want to be better prepared, to be able to ask the right questions and have more confidence around investing. What we ask of wealth managers is straightforward: listen first, drop the jargon, be transparent about fees, and treat each woman as an individual with her own goals and values. The firms that do this will earn extraordinary loyalty from the generation of women now coming into wealth.
Q: Finally, for women at the beginning of this journey, stepping into wealth, responsibility, or leadership, what advice or mindset shift would you most want to share?
Each of our members is on her own journey, but I most frequently hear two realisations that unlock their confidence and help them activate their capital. The first I’ll call – ‘It’s not me!’: the discomfort you feel is not a sign that you don’t belong, it’s a sign you’re navigating a space not originally designed for you. That is a very different thing. Investing and financial decision-making are not as inaccessible as they’ve been made to appear.
The second is – ‘Jump right in!’. Confidence comes not from knowing everything before you begin, but from taking incremental steps alongside the right people. Find your community. Ask the questions you’ve been hesitating to ask, because you almost certainly know more than you think you do. In the end, it’s your capital. When used with intention, it is one of the most powerful tools you have to shape the world you want to live in. Ana, Bertha and Michelle built The Beam precisely to make this possible.
“In the end, it’s your capital. When used with intention, it is one of the most powerful tools you have to shape the world you want to live in.”
To find out more about The Beam Network and its work supporting women wealth holders, visit thebeamnetwork.com.
If you would like to learn more about how Bedrock supports female principals in stepping into their wealth journey, we’d love to continue the conversation. Please feel free to reach out to us at info@bedrockgroup.com.
References
1 – McKinsey New Face of Wealth: The Rise of the Female Investor (May 2025)
2 – UBS, ‘Own Your Worth’ Report (May 2025)
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