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.
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