Philanthropy
In 2009, Burch founded the Tory Burch Foundation, which supports the economic empowerment of women in the U.S. through small business loans, mentoring, and entrepreneurial education.[47] The foundation offers a fellows program providing women entrepreneurs with business-education grants, mentoring, and networking opportunities.[48][49]
In 2014, the foundation launched Elizabeth Street Capital, an initiative with Bank of America, to provide women entrepreneurs with access to low-cost loans and mentoring support.[50][51][52] The initiative, originally named for the location of the first Tory Burch boutique, is now known as the Tory Burch Foundation Capital Program.[53] By the end of 2023, it had disbursed $100 million in affordable loans[54] to more than 5,500 women entrepreneurs.[55]
In April 2014, the Obama administration named Burch an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, a group of successful American businesspeople committed to developing the next generation of entrepreneurs in the U.S. and around the world.[56][57]
In March 2017, to coincide with International Women's Day and Women's History Month, the Tory Burch Foundation launched Embrace Ambition, a global campaign to address the double standard that exists around ambition, which is often seen as a positive trait in men and a negative one in women.[58][59] In April 2018, Burch and her foundation hosted the first Embrace Ambition Summit, an all-day event supporting women's ambition and examining stereotypes about women and ambition in the workplace, at Lincoln Center in New York and also viewable on the Tory Burch Foundation website.[60][61][62][63]
In 2021, Burch announced the creation of an endowed scholarship fund at Parsons School of Design with a gift that will be matched to establish a $1,000,000 financial-aid fund.[64]
