{"id":212839,"date":"2020-09-30T14:17:51","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T18:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/?p=212839"},"modified":"2020-10-01T13:55:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T17:55:00","slug":"weekly-networking-for-women-entrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/2020\/09\/30\/weekly-networking-for-women-entrepreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Networking for Women Entrepreneurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Showing the resourcefulness and ingenuity embedded in its name, the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship &amp; Innovation is turning a challenge into a win by reinventing its 7th annual Women\u2019s Entrepreneurship Week as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/womens-entrepreneurship-week\/?mc_cid=caaba46be3&amp;mc_eid=f8ac78297b\">Weekly Women Entrepreneurship<\/a> series this fall.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of one week capped by a large in-person conference, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/womens-entrepreneurship-week\/?mc_cid=caaba46be3&amp;mc_eid=f8ac78297b\">Weekly Women Entrepreneurship<\/a> is running virtually through November 13, featuring more than 80 talks and interviews with female founders and entrepreneurs through Montclair State and the Feliciano Center\u2019s\u00a0 global network of colleges, universities, businesses and nonprofit organizations.<\/p>\n<p>New this year: Any college, university, business or nonprofit is welcome to participate, by organizing an event featuring a female founder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity,&#8221; says Mimi Feliciano, CEO and founder of FEM Real Estate and a board member of the Feliciano Center, who welcomes the eight-week extension because \u201cour partner schools could participate and have an opportunity to get involved, and it allowed us more virtual connectivity. There are lots of opportunities to join us and participate, and hopefully learn something and grow with us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Carley Graham Garcia, executive director of the Feliciano Center, launched the first week by posting two recorded interviews: one with Denise Woodard, the founder of <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/partakefoods.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Partake Foods<\/a>, which creates \u201cdelicious, nutritious and allergy friendly\u201d cakes and cookies for kids; the second with Kris Ohleth, founder and operator of <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gardenstatekitchen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Garden State Kitchen<\/a>, which provides other food entrepreneurs with professional kitchen space and connects them to resources and education. Garcia wrapped up the week live-chatting with Katie Jesionowski and Silvia Gianni, co-founders and \u201centhusiasts\u201d of <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mysuperfoodscompany.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">MySuperFoods<\/a>, maker of healthy snacks for children.<\/p>\n<p>The women shared stories from their entrepreneurial journeys as well as \u201cnuggets of wisdom\u201d on everything from quitting your day job, giving back to the community, learning from failure, financing, packaging, marketing, networking, distribution, e-commerce \u2013 and, yes, dealing with a global pandemic.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Video: Interview with Denise Woodard, Founder: Partake Foods\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AIep0ArnEcA?feature=oembed\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen style=\"width: 500px; height: 281px; border: 0px solid #000;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship &amp; Innovation Executive Director Carley Graham Gardia interviews Denise Woodard, founder, Partake Foods.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Woodard advised others not to worry about attracting a lot of capital or hosting a big, splashy press event to launch. \u201cJust get started and start small. Your consumers will tell you what they want.\u201d She says that \u201cas a woman, as a woman of color, as a first time entrepreneur, I knew it was going to be very hard to raise venture capital. I wanted to prove the product first.\u201d Ultimately, Partake attracted Jay-Z\u2019s Marcy Venture Partners \u2013 when the time was right.<\/p>\n<p>While Woodard left Coca-Cola to focus on Partake, Ohleth has been running Garden State Kitchen as a \u201cside hustle.\u201d Not quitting her day job has offered stability, but \u201cover the past five years, there haven\u2019t been many vacations or many days sleeping past 5 a.m.\u201d Despite the long hours, Ohleth cherishes the \u201ccreative outlet\u201d and the discovery of a supportive network she didn\u2019t previously realize she had.<\/p>\n<p>Jesionowski noted that MySuperFoods had inked an institutional distribution deal with schools last winter. Then COVID struck.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll of that disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Gianni reported that 2020 was shaping up as MySuperFoods\u2019 best year, due to difficult and smart choices around cost-cutting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis has been an emotional year,\u201d said Jesionowski, who advised: \u201cIf something is not working, let it not work and then go find something else that you can put your effort behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is no one way to do this. Your journey is your journey,\u201d added Gianni.<\/p>\n<p>In 2019, more than 240 universities and colleges in 32 countries and 49 states, plus Washington, D.C., organized at least one event featuring a woman entrepreneur on their respective campuses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis year, we have the opportunity to grow even more. I\u2019m excited about the new weekly format,\u201d Garcia said after wrapping up the first week. \u201cIt was inspiring to connect our global community for the first time with content sharing across our platforms in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think this could be our best year yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Register to receive the full Weekly Women Entrepreneurship 2020 lineup for the remainder of the series here:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/womens-entrepreneurship-week\/\">https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/entrepreneur\/womens-entrepreneurship-week\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>#WEW2020<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Story by Staff Writer <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=barrmannm\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Barr Mann<\/a><\/p>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\/\/ Output tags as a list for Google Analytics custom dimension\nwindow.MSU_TagList = [];\n<\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Women\u2019s Entrepreneurship Week expands to multiple events through the fall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":212849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212839"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212865,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212839\/revisions\/212865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/newscenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}