Latina Women Build Entrepreneurial Dreams and Pitch Business Ideas at the WISE Women’s Business Center with support from Onondaga County Office of Economic Development

Through a grant from the Onondaga County Office of Economic Development, the WISE Women’s Business Center, a program of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, will host a graduation and pitch competition for the women in the “Exito!” program on Monday, July 10, 5:30pm at The Tech Garden, located at 235 Harrison St. in Syracuse, NY.

With the goal to assist the Central New York Latina community, the WISE Women’s Business Center created a six-week course called “Exito!” (Success!), which encompassed: online learning; in-classroom training; roundtable discussion; accounting practices training; and pitch competition coaching. Each week, the courses were based around a special software program designed to train women in entrepreneurship to create the first stages of a business plan and clearly articulate that plan in a five-minute pitch to an audience.

“The women in our group have learned so much about owning their own businesses. The WISE Women’s Business Center staff, community collaborators and other experts have made a huge impact on these new entrepreneurs,” said Marisol Hernandez, “Exito!” program facilitator.

The WISE Women’s Business Center was founded in 2006 and is one of 105 women’s business centers nationwide funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration and is hosted by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. In the ten years of its existence, the WISE Women’s Business Center has assisted thousands of entrepreneurs through training and educational events as well as hundreds of clients with one-on-one, free business counseling. In the last fiscal year, 133 individual counseling clients came through the Center with total revenues of more than $58 million dollars in sales and 1,003 women entrepreneurs were trained. For more information, visit http://wisecenter.org.

Lindsay Wickham
Latest posts by Lindsay Wickham (see all)