Bedrock Group In Conversation with The Beam Network, and Highlights from Our Female Principals Evening

On our Female Principals and Modern Leadership panel: Nicky Black (The Beam), Vivien Wong (Little Moons), Sarah Thorpe Scott, Shivani Pathak (Next Gen Wealth), and Louisa Brassey (Greenwood Place).

More women than ever are taking decision-making authority over their capital and their enterprises, and doing so deliberately rather than by default. Yet many women wealth holders still tell us they want more confidence, stronger networks, and trusted spaces in which to engage fully with their wealth. This rise in female principalship sat at the heart of a recent panel we co-hosted with Bedrock Group, and an in-depth interview between Bedrock and our CEO, Nicky Black.

In May, we co-hosted a panel discussion in London on Female Principals and Modern Leadership. Guided by Bedrock's Coach-in-Residence, Sarah Thorpe Scott, the discussion drew on the experiences of women who have each come to leadership with wealth by a different route: Louisa Brassey of Greenwood Place, Vivien Wong of Little Moons, Shivani Pathak of Next Gen Wealth, and our own CEO, Nicky Black. What made the evening valuable was its candour, with each woman speaking openly about family dynamics, her leadership journey, and what it takes to step into a wealth holder identity.

Alongside the evening, Bedrock sat down with Nicky for their In Conversation With series, a wide-ranging discussion on women, wealth, and what it means to lead. A few reflections stayed with us:

• On the great wealth transfer, Nicky framed the moment less as a financial event than as a chance to reconsider what wealth is for. Women currently make up an estimated 30 to 40 per cent of the ultra-high-net-worth population in the US and EU, a share rising quickly as wealth passes between generations and across longer lifetimes (McKinsey, The New Face of Wealth, 2025). An estimated $105 trillion is expected to move between generations by 2045, much of it inherited by women, and yet around four in five women who inherit report real difficulty navigating the process, often for want of preparation and open conversation (UBS, Own Your Worth, 2025).

• On confidence, Nicky shared the two realisations she sees unlock it most often. The first she calls “It's not me": the discomfort many women feel is less a sign that they do not belong, and more a sign that they are navigating a space not originally built with them in mind. The second is “Jump right in": confidence rarely arrives before the first step, and tends instead to be built gradually, alongside the right people.

• On community. Financial education takes hold differently, in our view, when it sits within a genuine peer group, among women carrying similar responsibilities and asking the same questions they had assumed no one else was asking. It is why members tell us that they “came for the education but stay for the community."

Our sincere thanks to Bedrock Group for bringing a shared vision to life, with such thoughtful speakers and an engaged audience, and for listening, noticing, and drawing out our perspective on what it means for women to step into authority and wealth stewardship.

You can read Bedrock's full interview with Nicky here.