Women are starting businesses twice as often as men, according to statistics commonly cited by the U.S. Small Business Administration and other groups.
That means last Tuesday’s Women’s Summit at Bryant College in Smithfield was a perfect place to reach prospective female entrepreneurs, said Laura M. DiSano, Fleet Bank’s senior vice president of business and entrepreneurial services group in Rhode Island. Fleet, which was a sponsor of the business school’s second annual summit, hosted and staffed at least two panel discussions aimed at helping women navigate the world of business financing.
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“Fleet is pretty committed to diversity,” DiSano said, explaining why the bank conducts this type of session at forums designed to reach women and minority entrepreneurs. The bank, which recently announced plans to merge with BankBoston, regularly sponsors events designed “to specifically promote women entrepreneurs,” DiSano explained.
Banking executives are obviously still interested in dealing with male business owners as well, but consider it necessary to reach out to women and minority owned businesses. “I think in general they’re (bank executives) interested in well-run business,” she said.
Women and minority businesses “have tremendous buying power,” added DiSano, who was one of the speakers at a seminar on financing and managing small businesses. And by the year 2000 it is expected that “about 40 percent of business will be driven by women.
“Your emerging entrepreneurs today are women and minorities men have been doing it for a long time,” DiSano said.
The session DiSano participated in was designed to cover programs that will help entrepreneurs pull together a business plan and gather other information needed before securing loans and financing. They also reviewed the basics of marketing and getting credit.
The Women’s Summit is designed to provide female students and business women from around the region with successful role models, as well as to help them explore the realities of being an entrepreneur. The first conference was held in September 1997, but organizers and school officials decided to change the date to coincide with Women’s History Month, which is observed in March.
One of Fleet’s finance forums, titled “Life Cycles of Women and Their Financial Needs,” covered personal finance issues such as retirement and estate planning. The second finance forum was on financing and managing a small business.
Other programs, some of which were run by Bryant staff, were also aimed at helping women plan business strategy.
Bryant staff for instance ran a session on using the Internet to be more efficient. Among the most well-attended sessions was one on leadership fundamentals, with some 416 people signed up to attend that program.
Kati Machtley is one of the summit organizers. Machtley is a nurse and is married to Ronald Machtley, president of the college.
About 425 people were expected to attend the event, but the organizers wound up expanding the program’s capacity because they received an overwhelming request for the $5 tickets. More than 650 people registered for the conference, according to Bryant spokeswoman Janet Proulx.
