Diversity VC has published a report marking its tenth year in venture capital, saying firms that use its certification standard have made stronger gains in team diversity than the wider market.

Titled The Infrastructure of Change: What 10 Years Taught Us About Driving Impact in Venture Capital, the report reviews the non-profit’s work over the past decade and sets out recommendations for the sector. More than 100 venture capital firms representing USD $44 billion in assets under management are now certified through the Diversity VC Standard, it says.

According to the report, certified firms increased gender representation across teams by more than 10 percentage points after certification. It also found higher ethnic representation across teams, including a doubling of Black representation at senior levels.

These findings come alongside broader shifts in the UK venture market. Women on UK venture capital investment teams rose from 18% in 2017 to 31% in 2025, while the share of UK firms with no women on investment teams fell from 48% to 21%.

Structured processes

Diversity VC said the strongest evidence of change came from firms that adopted structured processes rather than relying on informal commitments. It argues that diversity work in venture capital has moved from the margins towards the mainstream of how some funds are organised and assessed.

The review also points to the role of investors and public bodies in driving those changes. It cites activity by institutional backers, including the British Business Bank and UK Private Capital, as evidence that inclusion is becoming part of fund selection, research and market practice.

Programme impact

One section focuses on Future VC, a programme designed to widen routes into the sector. According to Diversity VC, 97% of Future VC alumni are now in full-time venture capital or wider investment ecosystem roles.

The organisation has also expanded its own output during the period covered by the report. Since launch, it has run 447 workshops and published 19 reports and six toolkits, alongside programmes including Future VC, the Career Development Program, the Diversity VC Standard and the Diversity Data Alliance.

Long cycle

Meghan Stevenson Krausz, Chief Executive Officer, Diversity VC, said, “Over the past decade, there has been measurable progress in how venture capital understands and approaches diversity. Representation has improved, awareness has grown, and expectations have shifted. And yet, when viewed through the most visible metrics, progress can still appear slow and uneven. It would be easy to read this as a lack of change. But that interpretation misses what is actually happening beneath the surface.

Part of this disconnect comes from the nature of venture capital itself as a long-cycle asset class. The outcomes we most often measure – who gets funded, who holds power – are, by definition, lagging indicators that reflect decisions made years earlier. They tell us where the system has been, not where it is going.

Over the past decade, Diversity VC and Extend Ventures focused on something different: not just measuring outcomes, but changing the conditions that produce them. Many diversity efforts begin with culture, with a shared belief that things should be fairer, more inclusive and more representative. But without structure, culture remains fragile.

Funds that adopt structured frameworks like The Standard are moving faster than their peers. Limited partners and development finance institutions are beginning to embed diversity into capital allocation decisions. Policymakers are shifting from aspiration to transparency. And for the first time, there are credible pathways into venture capital for people who would previously never have seen the industry as accessible. These are signals that the system is beginning to shift. If the first decade of this work was about making the invisible visible, the next will be about making change unavoidable.”

Next steps

The report argues that venture capital should apply diversification principles to the people making investment decisions, not just to sectors, stages and geographies in portfolios. It says narrow networks and shared backgrounds can shape pattern recognition in early-stage investing and cause firms to miss investment opportunities.

The same argument extends to limited partners, which decide which funds to back and which managers build track records. Progress will remain uneven unless diversity and inclusion are treated as a core part of how those investors assess funds, the report argues.

Diversity VC also calls for more formal policies within firms. It says diversity should be built into hiring, investment decision-making, portfolio support and performance tracking, rather than treated as a separate initiative.

The report sets out a series of measures it says are already established elsewhere in financial services. These include equalised parental leave, continued pension contributions and carried interest vesting during leave, flexible working arrangements, broader hiring pipelines beyond investment banking, and development programmes for mid-level talent from underrepresented backgrounds.

Its central argument is that venture capital has become better at gathering diversity data, but weaker at acting on it. The next phase, it says, should focus on using those figures to shape how firms are built and how careers progress within them.

More than three-quarters of respondents in a recent survey said Diversity VC had contributed significantly or moderately to making the venture ecosystem more inclusive, according to the report.

Migration has been treated as a technical exercise for years now. It’s seen as a task that must be worked through line by line, customer by customer, alongside the regular day job. That approach, however, is now starting to break. Rather than just the technology changing, it’s also the scale, pace, and commercial impact of getting it wrong.

Most partners understand the PSTN switch-off at a technical level, but the operational weight that accompanies it if often underestimated. Partner businesses are typically well-tuned, with sales and marketing generating demand, while delivery and support are built to meet that demand. There isn’t a bench of unused resource waiting to absorb a large-scale migration project.

So, when migration hits, something must give. Partners must either slow down new business, stretching support and risking the customer experience, or try to do both and put pressure across the entire operation.

That’s where the real challenge lies. It’s capacity, rather than capability. Forcing migration into a business that wasn’t designed for such a change becomes a needless distraction at the wrong time.

Managing migration as a series of individual tasks sounds optimal, but it quickly becomes complex. Most estates are multi-vendor, services sit outside of a partner’s control, and involves different technologies, contract and compliance requirements. It’s a messy reality.

The more successful partners start with understanding, rather than execution. They analyse the full customer base, segment effectively, and identify different migration plans that helps call out exceptions early. Might not be glamorous, but it’s integral to the process. When done right, everything that follows becomes easier. When done wrong, issues compound quickly.

Existing customer bases is one of the biggest migration risks that’s often overlooked. Many partners see legacy as stable, profitable and low touch. Margin is being generated without creating significant operational overhead, but when handled badly, migration can erode that. Handled well, margin is both protected and strengthened.

The goal isn’t just moving customers. It’s maintaining commercial value, keeping customers supported and compliant, and moving them onto technology that keeps them relevant long-term. At the end of the process, customers need to feel as if they’ve progressed, not been disrupted.

PSTN timelines are an obvious trigger, and price increases are accelerating urgency. But the bigger shift is happening in how partners think about technology choices. Increasingly, the question is where it will take customers over time.

In a subscription world, partners and end users only move as fast as the vendor they align to. That puts focus on things like R&D investment, security capability, AI development, and long-term viability. Simultaneously, partners are reassessing their installed base, asking whether their current technology is keeping up. Is it introducing risk, and do they want to keep building on it? Often, the answer is no.

That’s what’s driving broader, more strategic migration decisions, not just compliance-led ones.

There’s also a natural concern from partners about losing control of the customer relationship during migration. That doesn’t need to happen, because when done properly, the partner remains the face of the relationship. The migration capability sits behind them, adding capacity rather than replacing ownership.

That balance is critical. Maintaining trust, protecting the customer experience and enabling partner growth are all additional objectives besides completing the project.

If there’s one piece of advice, it’s simple. Spend more time at the start; analyse and understand the customer base in detail. Be clear on the end state and define how different segments will move. The work done upfront pays back many times over.

Never assume you must do it alone. Even bringing in external perspective at the planning stage can change the outcome significantly.

Migration is often framed as a problem to solve, rather than a decision about how a partner wants to grow. Handled reactively, it creates pressure across the business. Handled strategically, it protects the base, strengthens customer relationships, and creates space to keep winning new business.

That’s the difference.

If you’re working through what migration looks like across your base, it’s worth starting with a simple conversation. Compare approaches, sense check the plan and understand where the pressure points are likely to sit. That upfront clarity can make a meaningful difference to the outcome.

To talk to Gamma Communications visit: Gammagroup.co/migrate

Analysis by Sophie Rhone found that women are concentrated in the lowest-paid roles across many UK employers. The review covered gender pay gap submissions from 37 organisations.

The findings suggest pay gaps are driven less by men and women being paid differently for the same work, and more by who progresses into senior, better-paid roles. In several cases, employers with largely female workforces still recorded wide gaps because women were concentrated in the lower pay quartiles.

Northumberland Church of England Academy Trust was among the starkest examples in the dataset. It reported a median gender pay gap of 52.9%, with women concentrated in lower-paid roles and higher-paid posts more likely to be held by men.

A similar pattern appeared in education and charitable organisations. At Cascade Multi Academy Trust, women accounted for more than 90% of the lowest-paid roles, while at Age UK they made up more than 80% of the lowest pay quartile.

At the top

Male-dominated industries also showed imbalance, but at the other end of the pay scale. At Wessex Eagle, HSL Compliance and Andrew Scott, more than 90% of employees in the highest-paid quartile were men.

The analysis also highlighted differences in bonus payments. City of Bath College reported a 100% bonus gap, meaning men received all bonus value during the reporting period.

Some employers diverged from the broader trend. Country Court Care Homes was among a small number of organisations reporting a reverse pay gap, with women earning more on average than men.

These cases were limited. Across most of the organisations examined, men still came out ahead on average pay measures.

Progression issue

Rhone said the figures pointed to a wider workplace problem around advancement.

“The gender pay gap isn’t just about pay. It’s about who gets access to the highest-paid roles.”

What this data shows is that women are more likely to be concentrated in lower-paid positions, while men are more likely to progress into roles where salaries, bonuses and progression opportunities sit,” said Sophie Rhone, founder of Cupid PR.

She said the pattern persisted even where women formed most of the workforce.

“Even in organisations where women make up the majority of the workforce, that imbalance does not disappear. It simply shifts higher up the ladder. If businesses want to close the gap, they need to look at progression, not just pay,” Rhone said.

Gender pay gap reporting is mandatory for UK employers with 250 or more staff. The median pay gap compares midpoint earnings and is generally seen as less distorted by very high or very low salaries than the mean.

The figures add to a longstanding debate over whether representation alone changes pay outcomes. In the organisations examined, having more women in the workforce did not necessarily produce a narrower gap. In some cases, women remained heavily concentrated in lower-paid jobs.

That pattern was especially visible in sectors often regarded as female-heavy, including education, care and charities, where the data showed a large share of women in the bottom earnings quartile.

By contrast, construction, compliance and other male-dominated sectors showed men occupying most of the highest-paid roles. The distribution across quartiles suggests that progression and access to senior posts remain central to the overall gap.

At City of Bath College, the bonus figures offered a separate measure of disparity, with men receiving all bonus value during the reporting period.