{"id":194,"date":"2014-11-21T18:06:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T23:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/?p=194"},"modified":"2018-09-28T09:01:35","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:01:35","slug":"women-entrepreneurship-day-at-un-excites-crowd-of-300","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/2014\/11\/21\/women-entrepreneurship-day-at-un-excites-crowd-of-300\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Entrepreneurship Day at UN excites crowd of 300"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was\u00a0lucky to be at a fabulous event on Nov. 19, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.womenseday.org\/\">Women&#8217;s Entrepreneurship Day<\/a>, held at the United Nations as part of <a href=\"https:\/\/genglobal.org\/gew\">Global Entrepreneurship Week<\/a>. The Feliciano Center has a special mission to nurture and encourage\u00a0women entrepreneurs&#8211;it&#8217;s one reason we recently held Women Entrepreneurship Week&#8211;so we always love being at events that celebrate women business owners.<\/p>\n<p>The all-day Women&#8217;s Entrepreneurship Day conference&#8211;followed by a cocktail party&#8211;included a who&#8217;s who of national and international women entrepreneurs as speakers. The agenda also covered the\u00a0gamut of entrepreneurship topics, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>how celebrity entrepreneurs can advance social good;<\/li>\n<li>importance of education for future entrepreneurs;<\/li>\n<li>the role of government in empowering women entrepreneurs;<\/li>\n<li>how entrepreneurs are innovating in health, beauty,\u00a0fashion and\u00a0the arts;<\/li>\n<li>sustainability, health and gender equality;<\/li>\n<li>women entrepreneurs developing technology for good;<\/li>\n<li>financing for women entrepreneurs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Really, it is difficult to think of a relevant topic that was not covered.<\/p>\n<p>There was a ton of Twitter activity at the conference&#8211;check it out with #WomenWOW. The conference was also noteworthy because every speaker had a Twitter account (and the event organizers were so kind to include\u00a0Twitter handles underneath each speaker&#8217;s name in the event program).<\/p>\n<p>There were so many great quotes from these speakers, it would be impossible to capture them all. But five\u00a0stand out. First, Peggy Wallace, managing partner and portfolio manager at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goldenseeds.com\/\">Golden Seeds<\/a>, was on\u00a0&#8220;The Importance of Strategically Investing in Women&#8221; panel, which included a discussion about how women have a harder time getting funding for tech\u00a0ventures (and, OK, any venture). Wallace&#8217;s killer quote was: &#8220;Women aren&#8217;t starting Instagram, they are curing diseases.&#8221;\u00a0That\u00a0captured it so well&#8211;how women know what is really important, and they\u00a0look for solutions to the thorny problems that are most urgent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This has been an infinitely lonely path,&#8221; was a powerful quote from Lynn Tilton, founder and CEO of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patriarchpartners.com\/\">Patriarch Partners<\/a>, the largest woman-owned company in the U.S., as she discussed the dearth of women entrepreneurs, and positive ways to add more women to the entrepreneurship ranks.<\/p>\n<p>The third quote got to the importance of women helping other women.\u00a0&#8220;Each women out there that&#8217;s successful needs to bring up more women,&#8221; said Shannon Schuyler, president of PwC Charitable Foundation and U.S. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pwc.com\/us\/en\/about-us\/corporate-responsibility\/\">Corporate Responsibility<\/a> Leader at PwC, which was a sponsor of the conference. It&#8217;s all about reaching a hand back, while moving a step forward.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0fourth quote captures how every entrepreneur fails, at least once, on the way to success. &#8220;Overnight success is a myth,&#8221; said Tamara Mellon, former co-founder of Jimmy Choo and now creative director\/founder of her self-named company. Success is hard work, it&#8217;s not an overnight gimme.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0final\u00a0awesome quote came from <a href=\"http:\/\/animalfair.com\/about\/\">Wendy Diamond<\/a>, who organized the whole shebang. The gist of the story is that Diamond\u00a0noticed there are all sorts of &#8220;days&#8221; like Bubble Bath Day (and to underscore how absurd some of them are,\u00a0National Absurdity Day, which is Nov. 20), but there was no international Women&#8217;s Entrepreneurship Day. And instead of saying, &#8220;what a shame,&#8221; Diamond got to work and started creating one. Diamond has a fun, self-deprecating style and while she was telling the crowd about creating Women Entrepreneurship Day, she called herself a bit crazy and said she doesn&#8217;t take herself too seriously. &#8220;If I was serious, I would have had a business plan and never done this,&#8221; said Diamond. That quote\u00a0encapsulated all that is great about entrepreneurs: that willingness to dive in and do it, instead of trying to figure it all out first on paper.<\/p>\n<p>Diamond did it. And 144 countries decided they wanted to be part of Women&#8217;s Entrepreneurship Day. And 40 or so speakers committed to coming to the U.N. for the daylong conference, and 300 or so attendees showed up\u00a0to hear them.<\/p>\n<p>A serious impact started by one woman. That&#8217;s not crazy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was\u00a0lucky to be at a fabulous event on Nov. 19, Women&#8217;s Entrepreneurship Day, held at the United Nations as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. The Feliciano Center has a special mission to nurture and encourage\u00a0women entrepreneurs&#8211;it&#8217;s one reason we recently held Women Entrepreneurship Week&#8211;so we always love being at events that celebrate women business [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,75,99,124,125,133,140,150,164,172],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-global-entrepreneurship-week","tag-golden-seeds","tag-lynn-tilton","tag-patriarch-partners","tag-peggy-wallace","tag-pwc","tag-shannon-schuyler","tag-tamara-mellon","tag-wendy-diamond","tag-womens-entrepreneurship-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207597,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/207597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}