Even if you are a small business, you can still be thinking about ways in which you can reduce your environmental impact. This article posted in Entrepreneur shares 8 items to consider when determining practical ways to reduce your company’s impact on the planet. From energy efficiency in the office to flex scheduling to rethinking the office supplies you purchase, every change we make helps to make a difference.
This article in Forbes discusses the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on small businesses and how AI can yield potential benefits. Specific areas where AI can be applied include analysis, customer care, marketing, operational efficiency, and recommendation algorithms. The article emphasizes the need for careful consideration before integrating AI, taking into account company size, resources, and operational goals. It also highlights steps for small businesses to follow, including defining goals, assessing tasks suitable for AI, conducting cost-benefit analysis, and tracking progress. Take a look at the piece and consider how AI can help you work smarter and not harder!
Srishti Mendhekar and Priyansha Mishra are the founders of On Her Way, a platform that connects women travelers to a local woman who can help them awareness about safe spaces and general information about the area. “Women have needs and issues, which can be broadly categorized into safety and hygiene, and no one is solving that. The current travel ecosystem is made by men for men. We want to change that,” says Srishti. Read more by accessing an article about how they founded their startup in YourStory.com.
Led by ocean advocate and skipper Emily Penn and founded in 2014, the nonprofit organization eXXpedition strives to shift the way people feel, think and act by building a global network of multidisciplinary women who can contribute to world-class scientific studies, explore solutions, and use their unique skill sets to tackle the problem from all angles. eXXpedition has been on a mission to “make the unseen, seen”—the unseen being women in sailing and science, the plastics and toxins polluting our oceans, and the diverse solutions to the problem. Read more about their work in this Upworthy article.
In October 2020, Raven Hernandez decided to launch an eco-friendly rideshare service in Nashville that uses only electric vehicles (EVs). Earth Rides has grown quickly. In 2021, the company moved more than 180,000 passengers, offsetting 230 million grams of carbon. Hernandez’s company has since expanded from Nashville to Austin, Texas, too, and now has some 100 employees. Read more about her story in this article in Marie Claire.
Dr. Jennifer Doudna, who is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley as well as a 2020 Nobel prize winner for her pioneering work in CRISPR gene editing, has recently launched a program entitled “Women in Enterprising Science” (WIES). The goal of the program is to enhance gender equity in bio-entrepreneurship. The program seeks to achieve this by offering scientific entrepreneurs the opportunity to receive up to $1 million of funding to create and grow new ventures around promising genomic and emerging biotechnologies. To learn more about this initiative, read this article in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
Are you a nonprofit leader who is looking for original ways to interact and engage with your supporters and funders? Check out Liz Ngonzi’s (among other things, Liz is a facilitator in the Women’s Entrepreneurship program) new article for The NonProfit Times entitled “Digital Storytelling: Five Best Practices to Activate Supporters on LinkedIn”.
In the piece, Liz discusses:
1. Promoting Your Organization’s Brand (LinkedIn Company Page and Employee LinkedIn Profiles)
2. Building Your Brand by Showcasing Your Impact and Obtaining Insights from Supporters: Posts, Stories and Polls
3. Promoting Events: LinkedIn Events
4. Hosting Events: LinkedIn Live
5. Researching and Engaging Prospects: LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This June 18, 2021 piece from Science Alert shares the grim reality that in 2020, only 12.8 percent of U.S. inventors receiving patents were women. Why does that matter for women’s health? Because inventors are often inspired to find solutions to problems that hit close to home. With so few women inventors, the opportunity for women’s health concerns to be addressed is lessened. In fact, the piece highlights, “scientific discoveries by female scientists as measured by published research papers are 12 percent more likely to benefit women than discoveries by men.” The article ends by sharing, “biases in who gets to conduct research and commercialize inventions is more than a matter of who gets to play. It’s also a matter of who benefits from the march of progress.” Let’s all work to encourage the women inventors that we know!
Women represent 32% of the eCommerce sellers online. While that is a much higher percentage that the number of women that are found in C-suite jobs, it still places women in the minority. This article in Entrepreneur encourages women in eCommerce to seek each other out for mentoring and support. The article states, “By building your community around other women, you can unlock the hidden power of wealth through shared strategies, tools and hidden secrets.”
This Newsweek piece that was released for International Women’s Day highlights seven women who have defied the odds within STEM fields (only around 30 percent of STEM researchers globally are women). The article features some well known women and some women that you might not have heard of yet.