Calling all women risk-takers

Is it still a man’s world?
When it comes to entrepreneurship, more women are taking the leap to become business owners.

“In Good Company,” a conference sponsored by the University Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is designed to help women take that step.
“We certainly acknowledge the contribution made by male entrepreneurs,” said Mary Paulsell, director of UCIE, formerly the Central Missouri Small Business Development Center. But the Feb. 26–27 conference is mainly for women.

Businesses owned by women are making up an increasingly large percentage of the economic pie. In Missouri, by 2006 an estimated 209,949 privately held firms were owned—or co-owned by 50 percent or more—by women. They generated nearly $42 billion in sales and employed 297,486 people, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, a nonprofit research and information agency. Nationwide, the last decade brought us 51 percent more women-owned firms—7.7 million in 2006 compared to 5.4 million in 1997. Such firms account for almost one-third, 29.7 percent, of all businesses in the U.S., according to the CWBR.

The Columbia conference is not just for women in or starting their own businesses. It’s for all women who have an “entrepreneurial state of mind,” said Paulsell, “women who are risk takers, willing to embrace new ideas and opportunities and see what’s possible.” And that could mean department heads, human resources managers, educators and heads of nonprofits as well as women who work in other areas.

Conference topics include marketing, human resources and financial management, and the event will feature two keynote speakers. Barry Moltz of Chicago, a business coach and serial entrepreneur who has founded three businesses, kicks things off with a talk titled, “You Need to be Crazy: The Inside Scoop on Starting a Business.”

Tuesday’s keynote speaker will be Suzanne Magee Joyce, president of TechGuard Security, an international provider of technology security products such as Great Walls of Fire, a trademark registered security appliance. Joyce opened the company in 2000, and today it employs 50 workers at offices in St. Louis, O’Fallon, Ill., Baltimore, Md., and Grand Rapids, Mich. Joyce and her partner, Andrea Johnson, have been named the SBA Small Business Persons of the Year for 2006 for the Eastern Missouri Region, and TechGuard twice has been named to the Missouri Top 50 Company list and was Maryland IT Incubator Company of the Year in 2005.

In her conference address, Joyce said, she will challenge women to think of their small businesses as becoming big businesses—and to consider engineering, technology and scientific fields.

Paulsell said she hopes the conference will encourage more women to consider working in such scientific industries. Currently most women-owned companies are in the service and retail industries, according to CWBR.
“We want to encourage women to consider all possibilities,” said Paulsell.