Oh what a party and oh what a turnout! Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us. The pictures say it all.
More here. Happy 10 Years wegg!
All photos courtesy: Lisa Miller Photography
Oh what a party and oh what a turnout! Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us. The pictures say it all.
More here. Happy 10 Years wegg!
All photos courtesy: Lisa Miller Photography
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| ©Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global® All rights reserved. |
More about Success On Her Terms (SoHT)
Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global unveils its newest and most exciting program yet! "Success On Her Terms," a dynamic four-part series presented by Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global® in collaboration with Merrill’s Baldwin Marcovici Group and moderated by Alex Didac.
More about Shelly Sun Berkowitz
Shelly now serves as CEO of her advisory firm, Founder 2 Founder, where she is helping other founders scale, sell, and secure their business legacies. Through her family office, Next Phase Capital (NPC), Shelly offers patient, values-aligned capital to franchise businesses.
To register
Again, to learn more and to register (free of charge) for the first session that Shelly is kicking off, visit: https://womenentrepreneursgrowglobal.org/programs/success-on-her-terms/
I [Laurel Delaney] hope to see you there!
During October DCEO is celebrating National Women's Business Month throughout October by recognizing the significant contributions of women-owned businesses across the state.
“I’m proud to celebrate the wealth of women-owned businesses across our state – and the thousands of talented women who’ve helped establish Illinois’ vibrant business community as the best in the nation,” said Gov. JB Pritzker.
Read on to learn of additional resources that are available to women-owned IL businesses.
How has he done it?
Before jumping into reading the entire article, I'll give you a spoiler alert: Raider’s advice to aspiring [women] entrepreneurs is to, “Create a product that is unique, different, and better in some way, and make it easy to explain.”
Alicia Sheares’ research on Black tech entrepreneurship in Atlanta and Silicon Valley identifies additional barriers faced by Black women in the field due to negative assumptions about their abilities, signals that they do not belong, sexual advances, and distractions relating to their appearance and attractiveness.
These challenges for Black women are distinct from those reported by Black men and by white women.
For her presentation to the Clayman Institute, Sheares dug into her research on Black women.
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| ©2025 Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global. All rights reserved. |
Enjoy exceptional food, signature cocktails, lively conversation, and a soundtrack curated entirely by women artists—plus gift bags filled with products made by women. And to top it all off, the evening will be emceed by the sensational Whitney Reynolds!
To learn more and to buy your tickets, visit: https://womenentrepreneursgrowglobal.org/about/10yr-anniversary/
One influential voice pushing against the “anti-woke” tide is Cherie Blair, a leading British barrister and, most famously, wife of former UK Prime Minister (1997-2007) Tony Blair.
As a feminist, the 71-year-old international trade and human rights specialist is focused on what she sees as business’s systemic bias against women. “Business was built by men, for men, on the assumption that a lot of other things were being done by somebody else; (i.e.) women,” she says.
Blair compares female economic exclusion to an airplane flying with one engine; companies will eventually get to their destination, she says, but they would get there much quicker with two.
She concedes that philanthropic approaches can only go so far: Companies need to think harder about how women’s lived experience can be designed into their digital products and services. Her goal is to empower one million women entrepreneurs by 2030.
Learn more about Cherie Blair, her program and how she encourages women to back themselves.
Female entrepreneurs are on equal footing with their male counterparts in creating businesses with a societal impact. But there is still a colossal gap in startup funding between women and men who prioritize social issues alongside corporate profit. That is in danger of growing even larger as DEI policies are increasingly removed.
For many women entrepreneurs, the old saying rings true: When one door closes, another opens. Tariffs, changing corporate priorities, and economic uncertainty may shut down opportunities, but resilience and adaptability often lead to new paths forward.
Geri spoke with two CEOs—Karla Trotman of Electro Soft and Dee C. Marshall of Diverse & Engaged—who shared how their companies evolved in response to challenges. She also spoke with Carolyn Rodz, CEO and cofounder of Hello Alice, whose platform serves thousands of small businesses nationwide. Her observations, based on working directly with women entrepreneurs, add another layer to understanding how business owners can turn challenges into opportunities for growth.
As Geri concludes, "For women entrepreneurs, setbacks are not just obstacles. They are the turning points that fuel reinvention and drive future growth."
Read the entire article here.
This dashboard dives into US investment trends for women startup founders over the last 16 years with data on deal counts and capital raised by state, industry and stage, and featuring select female-founded startups and firms. The data is sourced from the PitchBook Platform and will be updated monthly.
A preliminary proposal from the Trump administration called for a halt to federal funding for women's business centers nationwide.
The budget uncertainty in Washington, the federal funding situation for both Women Business Centers and SCORE, is concerning.
We salute the Association of Women's Business Centers for their five-city Media Spotlight Tour to showcase the impact of women-owned businesses and the Women's Business Centers (WBCs) that support them.
There's a reason women are defined as resilient and courageous. If you strip them of funding, there are no alternatives but to become fearless, resilient and courageous to grow a business. We exist. Show us support will you?
Enjoy exceptional food, signature cocktails, lively conversation, and a soundtrack curated entirely by women artists—plus gift bags filled with products made by women. And to top it all off, the evening will be emceed by the sensational Whitney Reynolds!
To learn more and to attend, visit: https://womenentrepreneursgrowglobal.org/about/10yr-anniversary/
Kim's firm has built a comprehensive ecosystem through its proprietary platform to empower underrepresented founders to become leading premium wage job creators within their communities. She supports inclusive businesses including those led by women, people of color, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, military veterans, diverse teams and businesses located in low to moderate-income areas.
Founders First provides revenue-based funding, term loans and advisory services to service-based small businesses located outside of major capital markets.
To learn more, visit: Founders First Capital Partners.
Side note: Really like this article Kim wrote.
Marsha Ralls says, "remember that the next level is always within our grasp. Together, the trailblazers and upcoming women leaders will rise beyond us, knowing that new heights are indeed possible. They need only to reach for them, together."
After a decade building a community of empowered women entrepreneurs and business leaders, Marsha realized that life’s most profound lessons come masked as confirmations of what you already know inside but have not yet been able to put into words. Below, she finds those words.
From 2024 to 2025, mahjong events on digital event platform Evite spiked 46 percent year-over-year. “What started as a niche hobby has really become a full-on trend,” says Olivia Pollock, senior director of brand marketing and party data analyst at Evite. “It’s really started to pick up steam in a networking setting.”
Find out why here.
Since 2018, the CWE has awarded over $2.3 million in grants to women entrepreneurs, Irby said. Grant-funded opportunities include the Veteran Woman Entrepreneur grant, the StartHER and Texas Rural Woman Entrepreneur grants, which are available to women-owned startups or small businesses.
As one woman business owner says, "In the world in which we live right now, being a woman can be hard and finding community with women makes it worth it."
Enough said.
Cuban sees AI as the most powerful opportunity to reshape business, creativity, and innovation. Simply understanding how to use AI, he said, can open the door to countless ventures from launching your own startup to consulting for others.
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| ©2025 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved. |
The Los Angeles-based company Ouai didn’t become a household name in its own right until around 2019 when the team made a gamble on a novel means of distribution. Ouai sampled one million units of its leave-in conditioner in FabFitFun subscription boxes. It was the company’s biggest sampling program ever.
Find out what happened. It's better than you think.
McLoghlin knows just how hard entrepreneurship can be. She launched her Los Angeles-based company in 2009 after declaring personal bankruptcy during the Great Recession and spent the next decade fighting to turn it into a success, which she did.
Now her goal is to make more successful women entrepreneurs. Read about her story, Tory Burch's, Tiffany Dufu's, and Nancy Twine's here.
Here are more than 100 grants, loans, and programs to benefit your small business.
Many of the young entrepreneurs below fall into that camp and have continued on their path of success in the years that followed, thanks to great ideas, unwavering determination, and support and guidance from the right mentors.
Archika Dogra, Grace Leger and Caitie Sfingi are among them.
The stories of these young business owners are a reminder that entrepreneurship isn’t about waiting for the perfect moment. It’s about starting where you are, learning as you go, and staying open to feedback, mentors, and change.
According to the Brookings Institution, between 2017 and 2020, the number of Black women-owned small businesses increased by nearly 20%, far exceeding the growth of women-owned businesses and Black-owned businesses overall.
In this interview, Jean Chatzky is joined by Tiffany Dufu, President of the Tory Burch Foundation and author of Drop the Ball: Achieving More By Doing Less. Tiffany shares the best ways to support Black women-owned businesses right now.
Audrey wanted to reinvent the button-up shirt for women using unbelievable menswear fabrics.
Visit Frank & Eileen. The name? Audrey's grandparents, Frank and Eileen. "They were married in Ireland in 1947, and they lived a beautiful, romantic, old-fashioned life — I don't know if they would describe it that way, but they lived in a little stone cottage, never owned a car, just had a really charming life," says Audrey.
Audrey goes on to say, "The world would be a completely different place if at least 50% of the entrepreneurs and business owners out there were women. We'd live in a very different place."
Women in leadership, and ownership roles have revolutionized certain aspects of business. According to a report from Women’s Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (Canada), the majority of women-run businesses were more proactive in addressing employees’ skills gaps, as 15.6 per cent of all businesses had no plans to do so compared to only 11.7 per cent of majority women-owned businesses.
For a look at the state of women in business (2024) in USA, visit here and their impact (2025), visit here.
It is important to lean on the other women in business, such as the members of the Women Presidents Organization or Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global®.
Stay true to your values and keep growing.
Who are the lucky business owners? Jana Farmer, owner of Ms. Jana’s Candy located at 1649 Montgomery Road, Unit #10, in Aurora, Illinois, and Dominique Leach, owner of Lexington Betty Smokehouse restaurant, located at 756 E. 111th St., in the historic Pullman community.
The Illinois Made Program celebrates small businesses and includes them in the state’s Traveler’s Guide and other tourism information. The program helps drive more customers to the highlighted businesses.
Learn more about Jana's and Dominique's businesses here.
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| ©2025 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved. |
I look forward to reading his book, "Return on Courage – A Playbook for Courageous Change."
It’s a tough time to be a founder no matter what your background. High interest rates, the post-pandemic crash in consumer brand valuations and a gloomy economic outlook have made fundraising difficult.
Women and minority entrepreneurs have an extra layer of challenge, as they’re already underrepresented — female-led start-ups received just shy of 20 percent of overall investment in 2024, according to Pitchbook. They’re now seeing many of the initiatives designed to give them a seat at the table rolled back amid legal threats by the Trump administration and conservative activists.
The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Here's why.
It’s true that diligence is key for any founder, but women and those from underrepresented groups have to push even harder on all fronts with the playing field stacked against them, experts say. To come out a winner, you have to be unstoppable with your efforts.
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| ©2025 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved. |
Be inspired. As Walt Disney said, "If you can dream, you can do it."
This is why fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff created The Female Founder Collective, a powerful, high-impact network and education platform designed to help women build wealth, scale their businesses, and offer access to content, learning and capital.
Women need community to support one another.
Today, the FFC has grown into a thriving community of 25,000 founders, spanning industries from beauty to healthcare to tech. Most of their early supporters, including prominent founders Aurora James, Zanna Roberts Rassi, Michelle Cordeiro Grant and others, are still part of the network today.
Learn more about the movement here, which is needed more than ever now in such a volatile market.
In September, 2024 Walton became the world’s wealthiest woman once again, overtaking French L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, who had surpassed her for the previous two and a half years. The Walmart heiress is best known for spearheading the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her family’s hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. She has given away an estimated $1.7 billion, including a recent gift of $249 million to help fund the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, also in Bentonville.
In all, the 15 “centibillionaires” are worth $2.4 trillion, nearly $400 billion more than a year ago—and more than the planet’s 1,500 “poorest” billionaires combined. Put another way, this group of just 0.5% of the world’s 3,028 billionaires holds an incredible 15% of all billionaire wealth.
Here's more focusing on the world's richest women 2025.
One was Mary Crumley-Effinger, Managing Partner at Texas Roadhouse. She shares how she navigates being in a male-dominated field.
"For me, like we said before, it's a male-dominated field, so making sure you find those allies and the people to look up to whether they're in your business or a business like yours. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same restaurant business. Someone that you can ask to support you in your endeavors," Crumley-Effinger said.
Read the entire article here to learn what other female business owners had to say.
Here are several businesswomen from diverse sectors, including footwear, fashion, beauty, women’s health, food, auto repair and more sharing their stories and what motivated them to embark on their entrepreneurial journeys.
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| ©2025 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved |
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro makes a great statement:
"Strong leaders stand with their allies and they stand on their principles – and I believe we must continue to advocate for the values of freedom and liberty, not cower to dangerous dictators like Vladimir Putin."
And as Zelenskyy says, "It's very important to save our country, our values, our freedom and democracy."
I ask all women to #standwithUkraine and their valiant people.
“I’m one of those people who prefer to work 24 hours a day and when you have your own business that’s exactly what you do,” [Terri] Cooper said. “This is not my first business. I owned a cheerleading camp for 20 years and I was a teacher and a coach and a counsellor before this, so I knew what I was in for, and I make the sacrifices really happily.”
Terri, one of the entrepreneurs featured in the article, runs Village Boutique in Detroit.
The report by KPMG is a decade old (2015). See, if in your opinion, anything has changed since then. The table of contents is:
Discover good answers to the following questions:
Read the report: Women Entrepreneurs: Passion, Purpose and Perseverance
The research contributes to a deeper understanding of how digital transformation influences the landscape of female entrepreneurship, emphasizing the role of digital ecosystems in promoting inclusive entrepreneurship.