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.
Studies over time have found that when women step into executive roles at a company (CEO, CFO, director, etc), the company will experience an increase in profitability – in one study that increase was 15%. On NPR’s Planet Money podcast The Indicator, this reality is explored with Professor Corinne Post, a professor of management at the Villanova School of Business. One of the interesting findings in Professor Post’s research was that “after women were appointed to top executive positions, two things happened. A management team’s tendency to take risks dropped by between 13 to 14%, and then their willingness to become more innovative – their openness to new ideas – that increased by about 10%.” To hear more about the research and a discussion on the topic, listen to “The Indicator” podcast.
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.