On October 6, according to a Purdue press release, the Purdue Foundry spoke about WomenIN, a program that will give resources to Indiana’s female entrepreneurs.
The program will be available “across the entire state,” according to Juliana Casavan, entrepreneurial programs manager at the Purdue Foundry, an organization that provides business resources such as coaching and workshops. Casavan said there are “hub locations that can provide resources” to people in southern Indiana.
“Our goal is to increase the participation of women in Indiana’s entrepreneurial community,” Casavan said in a press release. “Purdue University and the Purdue Foundry are at the forefront of this movement, and we have the ability to activate a change in women’s involvement in entrepreneurship.”
Casavan also said women can both help and be helped.
“(People in Southern Indiana) could provide a resource to women that are participating in the program ... or they could participate as far as being involved,” she said.
Workshops will be customized to specific areas and media, Casavan said.
“There will be some workshops and things that are local to the particular communities and some of them will also be virtually available,” Casavan said.
According to the press release, women will be able to utilize things such as in-residence assistance and online brainstorming sessions. They will also have access to networking events and other educational resources.
The press release also said Karen Griffith Gryga, chief investment officer of Dreamit and founder of Dreamit Athena, an organization that aids startups, spoke at the at the Women in Entrepreneurship luncheon where WomenIN was announced.
“Just 12 percent of venture-backed companies have women in executive ranks, yet studies have shown that companies with women in top management achieve a 35 percent higher return on equity and a 34 percent better total return to shareholders,” Gryga said. “Regardless of diversity or fairness, this is about straight economics. Women have challenges in attracting funding because of things such as access to female role models, access to capital, the confidence gap and women’s need to multi-task which can limit scale as well as give the tendency to take on too much personally versus aggressively delegating.”
Lalita Amos, a consultant for business executives for and founder of Total Team Solutions, which provides services to business executives, is one of Purdue Foundry’s resources. She started Total Team Solutions about two decades ago, and she worked her way up through networking and her graduate program.
She also needed to figure out how to do routine activities, like charge clients, receive funding and get her foot in the door. She says the foundry could have helped with this process.
“I think what it could have done for me was get me moving faster,” Amos said. “There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know I didn’t know.”
Amos said she thinks the foundry could “help women get past the stuff that we don’t know that we don’t know (and) get access to things we don’t know we don’t know.”
As far as the program collaborating with other colleges, Casavan said it is a possibility.
“Not that we’ve identified yet but we’re definitely open to it.”
