Speaker's Information

Women-Owned Business Boards

The issue is this: We need to create more opportunities for entrepreneurial women to acquire the real business experience of serving on boards of directors.

The issue is significant because: Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. Women-owned business boards present the training and experience opportunities that women need to become great board members, while ensuring women-owned businesses grow and succeed.

Between 1997 and 2002, women-owned firms:

  • increased 14% (vs. 7% for all firms)
  • increased employment 30% (vs. 18% for all firms)
  • increased revenues 40% (about the same as all firms)

Between 1997 and 2001, women-owned firms:

  • increased 44% for those with 100+ employees
  • increased 32% for those with $1 M + revenues (over twice the growth of all comparable firms)

[Source: National Women's Business Council.]

Now, which statistic should bother you more? The fact that,

  • women represent only 12.4% of the directors on boards of the Fortune 1000 firms or
  • only 13.3% of all women-owned businesses with revenues of $1 Million or more even HAVE boards of directors.

If women-owned businesses do not recruit women to be on their boards of directors, then how can we expect men to recruit women for their boards of directors?

Elizabeth Ghaffari would like to have a conversation with you about Champion Boards
-- for your business, for your organization, for your future.

Appropriate audiences: Who can benefit from hearing the "women-owned business board" message.

  • The entrepreneurial woman who is considering building a board for her business.
  • The entrepreneurial women who is considering being a candidate for a board.

For entrepreneurial women, the goals are:

  • to revolutionize the way women business-owners strategize for their future;
  • to ensure that women business-owners access the resources they need to grow and succeed;
  • to create collaborative teams that augment individual women's skill sets; and
  • to advocate the creation of boards by women-owned businesses.

How does the issue impact you: Women business entrepreneurs constitute tomorrow's board leadership. If entrepreneurial women are not using boards effectively, their businesses will not reach their full potential. If we do not training women today to build effective boards and to serve effectively in board roles, then they will not be prepared to accept the challenges of the future.

My ideal outcome is this: In my lifetime, I will see at least 40% of the California-based women-owned businesses earning $1 Million or more a year establish effective boards of directors for their firms.

What do we need to understand: What is the current status?

  1. why do boards exist?
  2. why have there been so few women on boards?
  3. what is a "champion board" in today's economy?
  4. how does one build a "champion board"?
  5. when will it happen?
  6. how will it happen?

Where do we go from here:

  1. Educate women-owned businesses in how to build boards that will enable them to grow and succeed.
  2. Highlight the unique value and contribution that women bring to entrepreneurial boards of directors.

Who am I?

Elizabeth Ghaffari is a dynamic, energetic, and entertaining speaker who will challenge you and your audience to think differently about the way they do business today.

Her message is refreshing, hopeful, and realistic. Most of all, her message is optimistic. We can do better. We can find and build better boards that collaborate more effectively and that can chart new paths to the future. We can do this.

Credentials:

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