In recognition of her contributions to the fashion industry, Mattel has announced its latest Barbie honoree as Vera Wang. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Wang first became one of the youngest editors at Vogue and then became the design director for accessories at Ralph Lauren before finally becoming an entrepreneur when she opened her own boutique in 1990. How wonderful that Barbie can reflect trailblazing entrepreneurs in women’s fashion! Read more about the story in WWD.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski recently interviewed Institute Faculty Director, Deborah Streeter and program grad/Institute Special Advisor Jeannette Kaplun on her “Mika Straight Up” podcast. During the episode, the three discussed the background of the 12-week certificate program as well as specific challenges that face women entrepreneurs.
With the world slowly returning to normal after the pandemic and more businesses asking their employees to resume domestic and international travel, we thought this piece might be useful to share. Small Business Trends highlights a list of 18 safety tips that women should keep in mind when hitting the road.
We made a post about this back in January 2022, but here is an update – we find a lot of regional and local grant opportunities being offered to small business owners as funding from the American Rescue Plan Act continues to trickle down to state and local levels.
We keep this spreadsheet updated daily with new opportunities that we find.
The article “The Shocking Ways Data Bias Makes Women ‘Irrelevant,’ and What We Can Do to Stop It” in Entrepreneur shares some starling information about how data specific to women is often not analyzed or even captured — from business to technology to medicine and other practical aspects of life. The article explains why this has become the standard and then shares advice on how we can work to reverse this reality in our personal and professional lives.
There is an ongoing stigma that once a woman becomes a mother, she will stop caring about her professional responsibilities and be a less valuable employee. Interestingly, the same rules don’t apply to men – in fact, while women see their earnings drop by 4% for each child they have, men’s incomes increase by 6% per child that they have. So what can be done? This piece in GoBankingRates discusses the issue in greater detail and shares recommendations on how to avoid this penalty.
Fabulous piece in Forbes highlighting some of the backstory to the Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell. We are halfway to our current enrollment goal of 100,000 students and the stories about our amazing entrepreneurs just keep getting better! The piece also includes thoughts from one of the graduates of our program, Raquel Solomon (pictured on right).
The article entitled “Reinvention after 50 – How to start a business in midlife, from four women who did it” from Canada’s Globe and Mail includes insights from women who decided to launch businesses later in life. Suggestions include asking for help. making use of resources and grants, committing to a beginner’s mindset to be coachable and turning back to help others as you move forward on your path.
This piece from Southern Poverty Law Center highlights over 30 women (including inspirational quotes from each) – including Rita Moreno, Megan Rapinoe, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker and more.
Unconventional times can create impactful change. Syrian women have begun to be elected as camp leaders in their Lebanese refugee communities. While these women would have been expected to stay at home in their native Syria, the turmoil caused by war has begun to shift some of these traditional norms. One of the female leaders who heads up camp of hundreds of refugees, Hind Al-Haad, stated,”Circumstances can either form obstacles or push [women] forward.” Learn more about these amazing women in this BBC piece.