Seven-hundred people ”” the majority women ”” attended the 13th annual Women”™s Business Development Council Business Breakfast recently at the Stamford Plaza Hotel & Conference Center in Stamford.
Master of ceremonies Gilda Bonanno, a Fortune 500 motivational speaker and principal at Stamford-based Gilda Bonanno LLC, struck the event”™s dominant themes early.
Bonanno praised the WBDC and cited its record of creating or helping to grow 4,000 businesses since Fran Pastore, its CEO, founded it in 1997. Bonanno also said, “Entrepreneurship is the new women”™s movement,” a line repeated often during the breakfast that garnered applause with each utterance.
Women”™s business advancement was on display via Jennifer Mastriano, who won the Deb Ziegler Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence as chief financial officer for MGM Carting and Recycling Corp. in New Haven.
But women”™s entrepreneurial advancements bore the counterpoint of metrics regarding funding for female-owned businesses.
Until 1988, women could not get a business loan without a male co-signer. Pastore said the Women”™s Business Ownership Act in 1988 changed that, but that much remains to be done. She said the WBDC has four forward-looking goals: access to capital, access to markets, job creation and growth, and data.
Among event topics was the 2014 Women”™s Small Business Ownership Act, which both Connecticut senators ”” Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy ”” have co-sponsored. The bill has been referred to the Senate”™s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
The WBDC works to put entrepreneurs in touch with capital: $2 million so far this year.
Regardless of the ups and downs of the business cycle, Pastore said the development council remains focused on its mission of helping to build women”™s economic equity through small-business ownership. WBDC classes work at every stage of business development, she said, with half designed for established businesses looking to grow and half for those looking to launch.
The quest for financing, it was revealed by several speakers, is played on an uneven field.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro said in a video greeting from Washington, D.C., that only 7 percent of venture capital funding goes to female entrepreneurs. She said that while women own 8.6 million businesses in the U.S., they receive only $1 of every $23 lent to businesses.
DeLauro also appealed for equal pay for women, saying they earned 78 cents compared with $1 a man earns for comparable work.
“It”™s long past time all this be made available to working women,” DeLauro said. She, too, praised WBDC efforts, saying, “The WBDC provides a critical blend of training and services. It helps businesses grow, thrive, innovate and hire.”
Besides DeLauro”™s taped address, speakers included Henry B. Haitz III, president and group publisher, Hearst Connecticut Media Group; Seth Goodall, New England regional administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration; WBDC client Torise Baker; and, offering the viewpoint of a WBDC volunteer, Ivy Hernandez.
A power-player panel fielded questions from newswoman Paula Zahn. They were Carla Harris, vice chairwoman for global wealth management and senior client adviser for Morgan Stanley; Amy Millman, co-founder and president, Springboard Enterprises, which facilitates women entrepreneurs”™ access to equity markets; and Rose Wang, founder/CEO of Binary Group, corporate vision and strategy consultants, and one of 15 women on the National Women”™s Business Council.
Business language skills circled into the panel discussion several times. Harris said it was important for an entrepreneur seeking backing to convey well why the lender should do business with them and why now. “You need to speak the language of marketing,” she said, and ticked off subsets that needed attention, including cash flow, balance sheets, access to capital and management. “Among the things the WBDC teaches is how to find the right kind of people and the right number of people.
“You cannot do it alone,” Harris said. “You will need relationships in order to be successful.”
