The first official day of the WBENC conference provided more business opportunities for the participants of Export for Success than they had imagined. Definitely a learning curve, the conference is so much more than just a conference. The women who attend WBENC are there to do business, but also know building connections with corporations and other women business enterprises is as equally important as signing the contract.
Our first keynote speaker was Annie Duke, one of the leading personalities in professional poker today. What does poker and running a business have in common you ask? Annie showed us the correlation between making important business decisions and making the winning bet. But she wasn't the only jaw-dropping speaker we heard from. Janice Bryant Howroyd, Chairman and CEO of Act-1 Group, a global leader in human capital solutions, shared why she embraces supplier diversity and WBENC. Ms. Howroyd has built a $1.4 billion dollar business, and continues to attend WBENC each year, with her team, to network and develop valuable business relationships. Another speaker who stood out to all of us was Patricia Rodriguez-Christain, CRC Group Inc. A powerhouse not only on the women's front, she also supports the Hispanic Business Enterprises', the majority who are also women-owned businesses. The one common theme from all of the speakers that resonated today was no matter what business you own, what sector you work in, all businesses today are "global" by the nature of the world we live in.
One comment that was expressed by our own women business owners was they never would have made the contacts with corporations (like AT&T) and other powerful women business owners if they hadn't attended the WBENC conference.
While we thought the day couldn't get much better, we met with the Indian delegation from Bangladore. These charming ladies belong to a group called EMERG (similar to CWB) and all are either certified wbe's or in the process of becoming certified with WEConnect India. Raji Rajalakshmi, President of eMERG and several of the women traveling with her, will be coming to Atlantic Canada in September as part of an inbound trade mission. They are looking for opportunities to build strategic partnerships with women business owners in our region. A huge shout out to Julie Fournier, ACOA, for bringing us all together and allowing us the opportunity to build our connections to this important trading partner. The Centre has invited the members of EMERG to network with us via Skype!
- Tanya Priske
Lead Project Manager
wbinortheastern@eastlink.ca
Centre for Women in Business
www.msvu.ca/cwb
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