Company continues focus on helping women entrepreneurs by
expanding partnership with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and
launching speaker series
Wells Fargo today announced it is doubling our support for
women-owned businesses through its Connect to More℠ program after
providing over 500 mentorship opportunities to women last year.
This year, Wells Fargo will expand its partnership with the Nasdaq
Entrepreneurial Center to provide over 1,000 complimentary
mentorship opportunities through its signature 12-week Milestone
Circles mentorship program and roughly 13,000 hours of technical
assistance.
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Wells Fargo announces it is doubling its
support of women-owned businesses. (Photo: Wells Fargo)
“We hear from so many women entrepreneurs that owning and
operating a business is isolating and can be hard for those who
don’t have access to the right resources,” said Derek Ellington,
head of Small Business at Wells Fargo. “On top of that, 48% of
women entrepreneurs report that a lack of available advisors and
mentors limits their professional growth.1 By providing women
business owners access to trusted experts who can help them solve
business challenges, plan for the future, network, and grow, we are
giving them the tools and opportunities to build a strong
foundation and thrive.”
Connect to More program impact and next phase
Connect to More was a program launched last summer to support
the success and sustainability of women-owned businesses through
access to expertise and specialized resources. As part of the
program, Wells Fargo partnered with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial
Center to offer complimentary support through its signature
Milestone Circles. Within the first year, over 500 women
participated in the Circles and graduated – working through
challenges, celebrating milestones, attending workshops, and
connecting with small business experts and mentors to enhance their
businesses:
- “Through my 12 weeks in the Circles program, I was able to
document a lot of processes and standard operating procedures that
enabled me to onboard four new team members and step out of being
directly involved in every single client deliverable. This has
allowed me to scale my business from $9,000 in revenue to $20,000+
in revenue monthly and to a team of 11 amazing humans.” – Rachel
Pereya, owner of Mastermind Business Services.
- “The Milestone Circles program really blew me away with its
approach to bridging ‘vision’ with ‘goals’. The team created an
environment for success with exercises that challenged me to really
dig deep into our vision, which opened up so many opportunities. I
was able to clearly consider our desired funding journey and
received expert feedback from mentors. As a result, our company has
identified funding partners that support our vision and mission.
The future of FeaturesFirst Auto is a lot brighter with more
clarity and funding!” – Lisa Bailey, owner of FeaturesFirst
Auto
- “Thanks to the Milestone Circles, we implemented a new branding
strategy and relaunched our brand. We also took the tools we
learned and had a more assertive approach to our social media
accounts. Our YouTube account increased from 1,500 views to more
than 66,000 views in 2 months.” – Selmin Karatas, owner of Kazani
Hair
“The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center has been inspired by the
learnings and outcomes of the incredible women we’ve been fortunate
to support in this inaugural year of this program,” said Nicola
Corzine, founding executive director of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial
Center. “We are tremendously excited to be connecting with 1,000+
additional women business owners in the next 12 months thanks to
the generous contributions of the Wells Fargo Foundation.”
This year, Connect to More will continue to offer Milestone
Circles with the goal of helping over 1,000 women-owned businesses
and adding more mentorship and individual technical assistance
opportunities for participants, including milestone planning
workshops, bi-weekly peer support groups, access to industry
experts and mentors, and ongoing alumni networking opportunities.
Each Circle is open to all women-identifying business owners in the
U.S. Those interested in applying must complete an application, and
upon acceptance, will be placed in a Circle.
Speaker series for women entrepreneurs
Wells Fargo is also reaching women entrepreneurs through a
quarterly speaker series that covers a range of topics and
challenges with small business experts and women founders. The next
virtual panel discussion will take place on Wednesday, June 22 and
will help women learn how to grow and cultivate a strong network
that will support confidence building, key decision-making, and new
business opportunities. More details are below:
When:
This virtual session will take place via Zoom on Wednesday, June
22, 2022, (12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time / 2:00 p.m. – 3:00
p.m. Central Time / 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time).
Speakers:
Derek Ellington, Wells Fargo head of Small Business Ann Marie
Lynch, Wells Fargo head of Small Business Deposits and president of
the Women’s Connection ERN Kamy Taylor, Program Manager, Nasdaq
Entrepreneurial Center Terriekka Cardenas, Founder, Perceptive
Engineering and Construction Services Theresa Bozhor, Founder,
Momentum Tutoring
Registration:
Please click here to register. Please register no later than
Wednesday, June 22, 2022.
Wells Fargo’s overarching support of women business
owners
These latest initiatives build upon a Wells Fargo legacy of
supporting diverse and women-owned small businesses. In 1995, the
company first announced a $1 billion, four-year long lending goal
to support small businesses owned by women. This goal was met in
just one year and served as a catalyst for several additional
diverse lending commitments to women, Hispanic/Latinx,
Black/African Americans and Asian owned small businesses.
Wells Fargo also recently shared resources designed to help
increase the growth of women-owned small businesses, including a
$1.5 million grant to How Women Lead aimed at disrupting the
unequal venture capital (VC) system for women founders and shared
new data and an interactive tool-kit on closing the economic gaps
facing women entrepreneurs.
Additionally, in 2020, Wells Fargo created a roughly $420
million national small business recovery effort called the Open for
Business Fund. It donated $250 million for capital to Community
Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), more than $55 million
to nonprofits providing technical assistance, and more than $100
million for long-term resiliency programs. As of December 2021,
$420 million in grant funding to nonprofits has been deployed,
which is estimated to serve more than 152,000 small businesses and
preserve or create more than 255,000 jobs. Roughly 85% of small
businesses served by Open for Business Fund grantees are projected
to be those hardest hit by the pandemic, including Black, African
American, Hispanic, Native American, women, and Asian American
owned small businesses.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a leading financial
services company that has approximately $1.9 trillion in assets,
proudly serves one in three U.S. households and more than 10% of
small businesses in the U.S., and is a leading middle market
banking provider in the U.S. We provide a diversified set of
banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as
consumer and commercial finance, through our four reportable
operating segments: Consumer Banking and Lending, Commercial
Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, and Wealth &
Investment Management. Wells Fargo ranked No. 37 on Fortune’s 2021
rankings of America’s largest corporations. In the communities we
serve, the company focuses its social impact on building a
sustainable, inclusive future for all by supporting housing
affordability, small business growth, financial health, and a
low-carbon economy. News, insights, and perspectives from Wells
Fargo are also available at Wells Fargo Stories.
Additional information may be found at www.wellsfargo.com |
Twitter: @WellsFargo
1 Challenges Faced by Women Entrepreneurs and Some of the Most
Successful Women to Follow, Business News Daily, June 2020
News Release Category: WF-SB
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220614005684/en/
Media Brittany Anthony, Wells Fargo
Brittany.Anthony@wellsfargo.com
Matt Paget, The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center
mpaget@extensionpr.com
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