October is National Women’s Small Business Month, a time to recognize and celebrate the remarkable contributions of women entrepreneurs and the businesses they lead. As of 2023, there are 14 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., making up 39.1% of all businesses. Notably, 92% of these are small enterprises with fewer than 20 employees.
Eight years ago, I had the privilege of designing and building a training program for women entrepreneurs called WE Master Leadership, which continues to thrive today. Utilizing Next Street’s human-centered design approach, my team developed a curriculum that empowers women to harness their natural talents while acquiring new soft skills to enhance their leadership effectiveness. A core element of our program is the idea of leveraging one’s identity as a valuable asset, which is a theme we have been exploring through our recent interviews with business owners for Black Business Month and Hispanic Heritage Month.
In celebration of Women’s Small Business Month, we wanted to explore this theme further by revisiting my recent conversations with four extraordinary female entrepreneurs. Through our conversations, they share how their identities have shaped their entrepreneurial journeys.
Below are highlights from these insightful discussions that touch on this theme.
Laura Donald
Founder & CEO
Axis Talent Partners
How do you think about intersectionality and how it factors into how you want to take your business forward?
Laura: Like many founders, I have over-identified and over-internalized my connection with Axis. I began this consulting practice when I was pregnant with my first child, so 13 years ago I began a journey of rethinking how I could work. So, as I was becoming a Mom, I was becoming a founder.
So, for me, my identity as a woman of Color was already fully intertwined with why I wanted to do this work and what I was going to center in this work. But my overwhelming identity was as a caretaker and mother and traditionally feminine-leaning leader, relying heavily on collaboration, communication, intuition, relationships, nurturing…all of which are traditionally female-leaning, but which are also essential, foundational pieces of leadership.
Carine and Farah Saint Jean
Co-Owners
Spectacular Affairs
In what ways did your identity inspire you to start a business?
Carine: We were brought up in a religious home. Our father was a minister, and that really instilled in us some very strong values. We knew who we were, and we served our community. It gave us this sense of excellence that we needed to be the best, because we were the leaders in our community. And it really drove us to become the event planners and designers that we are. Farah has a background in music and management, and I’ve been a professional singer and educator, and all these things came from seeing our parents do plays and productions in the church. So, that was part of our identity was as Black women in the community, and it all played into who we became as event planners.
Farah: The ideas of family and love were important in becoming wedding planners. Weddings were very important in the church – getting married was the “right” thing to do. So being part of that on a different level was where we took our skill set. Being female, believing in love, and eventually doing my own wedding, were really the catalysts to going into wedding planning.
Adriana Cortes
Owner
Delicious at the Dunbar
Adriana: Another thing is that there aren’t many female restaurant owners out there. That is something that I really have been proud of because it’s a tough industry, but I’m very, very lucky that, as a family, we’re able to support each other. My father is able to back me up by saying “no, she’s the boss.” Many times employees and vendors will assume my father is the boss because he’s the man. And he will tell them “no, you have to address that to her. She’s the one that’s running the show now.” That’s something I’m glad that I have, because people think I’m so kind and quiet at times. But I believe I don’t need to be loud. I don’t need to be bossy to show that this is the way that things have to get run, so I’m glad that I have that from my family. Not everyone is used to a female telling them what to do, especially when you come from Latino culture which is sometimes (it has to be said) a little bit ‘machista.’ And we have to get rid of that a little bit, but it’s hard for some, particularly some of older men, to really get that.