Corporate Partner Corner
Special benefits and offers from our corporate partners for NAWBO members.
Join NAWBO-SV and get access to Launchwise 100
- 100 steps to launching a product, brand or business digital course ($599 value), which will begin in January!
President’s Message | October 2018
Dear Members:
Our October 9th event was filled with many reasons to celebrate, and we are so proud that you are part of our NAWBO history!
We honored the NAWBO architects of 30 years ago who helped in the passage of HR 5050, allowing women to qualify to take a business loan without a male counterpart. We also celebrated the signing of SB 826, requiring California publicly-held companies to have at least one woman on board or directors by the end of 2019 and a minimum of two by July 2020.
The evening was enhanced with our corporate panel experts, Ami Bernard-Bahn, Briana Brownell, and Irene Murphy who shared game changing strategies for becoming a board member. Our facilitator, Jennifer Dizon, and our members and guests had the opportunity to engage in this exciting conversation.
Our evening was also a celebration of Griselda Quezada-Chavez, who earned the most prestigious Susan Hagar Award by NAWBO National. Through Griselda’s determined efforts and hard work in making international business relations and issues at the forefront, we continue to advance our global agenda today and into the future. We are very honored to have Griselda as our International Director of Silicon Valley chapter.
As NAWBO members, we embrace SB 826 and want to create opportunities for women from all different experiences, backgrounds and education that want to be part of a forward thinking organization. Our founder, Susan Hager, believed in bringing your seat to the table, and if you don’t have a table, build one. Then bring other women with you. Simply put, we have just built an unlimited number of tables and have an open invitation for you to join us as we continue the movement of helping women business owners thrive!
Next month, we look forward to an educational and interesting topic on Money Matters: The Finance, Cash Flow and Best Practices that Increase Your Bottom Line. The program will include mini sessions such as “Savvy Cash Flow Strategies”, “Simple Tactics to Increase Your Bottom Line” and “Best Practices” from our small business financial experts. We are thankful to Bank of America for sponsoring this event, and we hope you can join us!
Many thanks for taking this journey with us in making our”One Voice” loud and clear in accomplishing great things together!
Warmest regards,
Flordelisa Harris
Congratulations Griselda Quezada-Chavez!
Griselda has been an advocate for NAWBO on the international front, holding NAWBO’s seat at2018 National Women’s Business Conference’s Impact All Year Long
By Molly Gimmel
As Americans, and as incredibly busy women business owners, we are more disconnected than ever. In between the thousands of emails, texts and calls we receive, social media posts we have to share and respond to, and the time we spend in planes, trains and automobiles traveling to and from work and meetings, the time we take to create and nourish deep connections with others and the time we set aside for solitude and reflection has grown increasingly less.
3rd Annual Girl’s Festival
The 3rd Annual Girl’s Festival was a blast! NAWBO-Silicon Valley volunteered and got to see over 2,000 girls attend 100+ activities-an interactive EXPO, Maker’s Fair, 20+ workshops, all day performances, coding classes, contests and much more.President’s Message | September 2018
We are off to a great new fiscal year, focused on achieving our 5 Star for Advocacy, helping members grow their businesses and creating our One Voice in becoming better and stronger leaders as women business owners!
Susan Ellenberg, President of San Jose Unified School District Board of Trustees, kicked off our first dinner/networking event in a lively and engaging presentation and workshop on “Civic Engagement in Times of Incivility”, helping us take our first step toward the 5 Star for Advocacy achievement.
Our September monthly event will showcase a Silicon Valley Media Panel that will share fresh media insights to grow your brand, access new opportunities and forge valuable partnerships. The panel will bring their experience from Forbes, NBC, KRON, NBC Bay Area and Valley Talks, and it is guaranteed to be a successful event.
We have so many more exciting topics and reasons to celebrate that are sure to keep you engaged with NAWBO and its members, so please look out for future communications. For October, we’ll focus on “How to Build and Join Corporate Boards”, which ties into the pending SB 826 legislation that is currently on Governor Brown’s desk for signature, requiring CA publicly-held companies to have at least one women on board by the end of 2019.
Hopefully, we will be celebrating this monumental new law in conjunction with our planned 30th anniversary celebration of HR 5050. With the instrumental help of NAWBO, the Women’s Business Ownership Act (HR 5050) was passed to eliminate bank lending discrimination against women business owners.
Although we are very lucky to have a dedicated and hardworking board of volunteers bringing together impactful and worthwhile programs and events, we encourage you to get involved and become a committee member to strengthen our sisterhood. We cannot do this on our own. By joining our leadership team, you become part of the women business owners who help make positive changes on a local, national and global level.
In closing, we want to thank Monika Miles, Robin Fisher and Mina Doshi for becoming committee members.
We look forward to our journey in creating One Voice in accomplishing great things together!
ALOM Opens Amsterdam Office to Expand Presence in Europe
“Our expanded European presence in Amsterdam benefits our customers by creating technology-driven efficiencies for delivery to suppliers and end-users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, improving service and quality, and reducing costs.”
– ALOM President/CEO and NAWBO Member, Hannah Kain
ALOM, a global leader in supply chain management, has announced the opening of its European headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. ALOM has been doing business in Europe and servicing European customers since 2006. With this move ALOM is deepening its commitment to serving a growing number of customers and suppliers throughout the region with sophisticated supply chain services, including procurement, inventory, fulfillment, production and marketing support services, and logistics management capacity.
The Amsterdam facility represents ALOM’s 19th global location and is part of the company’s multi-year expansion that includes a state-of-the-art 120,000 square foot addition to its US global headquarters in Fremont, CA, now totaling 270,000 square feet, and its 48,000 square foot Indianapolis, IN, plant opened in September, 2017.
Luminoustudios Makes Storytelling a Good Business Decision
Reema Dutt, Luminoustudios
If you’re like most people out there, you probably describe yourself as a “visual learner.” You learn, engage, communicate and appreciate things more naturally when they are visually shown to you. That’s at the crux of how Reema Dutt and her team at Luminoustudios are helping businesses to market themselves-through high quality, strategic video production for clients across the world.
With a background in the film industry, Reema and her co-founder Sania Jhankar both started to recognize a gap that needed to be filled. “We saw all these startups that didn’t really understand video marketing,” she says. “Given our indie film background, we thought we could help those people leverage video marketing with a smaller video production, and smaller budget, but maintain that high quality.
NAWBO National Endorses Young Kim For Congress
(Washington, D.C. September 18, 2018) -The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) is announcing its endorsement of Young Kim in her bid for election in California’s 39th Congressional District.
“Young Kim has a long history of advocating for and representing small business owners and women business owners throughout her career at the state and federal levels,” explains Molly Gimmel, NAWBO National Board Chair. “As a small business owner herself, she has a unique understanding and appreciation of the obstacles and opportunities facing women business owners. We look forward to working with her on the issues impacting our members and all women business owners.”
NAWBO National considers candidates for endorsement after they have won their primary. The selection of candidates is based solely on their history of business ownership or their voting record demonstrating their consistent support of business owners. Additional endorsements will be made by NAWBO prior to the November 6 general election.
What to “Know” When Redesigning Your Website
The small business game has changed. When you are looking at new ways to showcase your business online, the first place to start is your business website. Redesigning your website is a major task, and can cause hurt your ranking and search value if you don’t plan ahead. Here are some tips to keep in mind.
Look at Other Sites in Your Industry
Most entrepreneurs have no idea what their goals should be when they create or redesign their website. The first suggestion that we make to our clients is to look at other successful businesses in your industry and see how they are presenting themselves online. This will give you a sense of how they brand themselves and you can discover key features that you might be able to leverage in your own site.
Know Your Goals
Most businesses have a website but don’t identify any goals for their site. Be clear on what the 1 or 2 top goals are for your site so that your redesign aligns with them.
Know Your Metrics
…the right metrics that provide insight into what is valuable on your existing site and what kind of traffic it has. This gives a baseline to measure the new site against. Without knowing what is being viewed, you might decide to move or eliminate content that is actually bringing you traffic and helping your rankings.
Know Your Optimization Strategy
If you work with an SEO firm, make them aware of the new site redesign BEFORE you start so they can ensure all the hard work done is not lost. One big mistake made is failing to add proper redirects when URLs change, creating 404 error pages – which are bad.
Know Your Audience
Knowing how to relate to your target audience’s challenges will help craft the right content — content tailored for people, not search engines.
Have a Maintenance Plan
How the site is built can depend greatly who will be doing the updating so be clear on how that will happen. Update the core software regularly so your site is not risk for security breaches, slow downs and broken pages.
Final Tips
- Always make a backup of the existing site – just in case!
- Be realistic about timeline and budget.
- Make your site mobile friendly and add an SSL certificate – these are not optional
- Secure forms with anti-spam options
- Phase out rotators – they slow the load times and people ignore them
- Optimize images to help with load times
- Write descriptive page title and descriptions
Submitted by Roberta Kiphuth
President, Detati Digital Marketing
For more information about building a better website, visit us at www.detati.com.
President’s Message | August 2018
Welcome to NAWBO Silicon Valley’s 2018 – 2019 fiscal year! We have an outstanding new and renewed group of board members who are eager and ready to serve our chapter and its members.
As the new President, I’m honored and privileged to build upon our chapter’s success, which was recently led by Maxine Goulding along with our past board members. Maxine’s fearless leadership has allowed us to be where we are today, and we are ready and excited to take our organization to the next level.
We will build upon our Silicon Valley’s uniqueness and create One Voice in making our message clear. NAWBO is about women business owners succeeding through technology, education and expanding global markets. Melissa Grimshaw-Vargas, Program Director, and Toni Navy, Communications Director, will help us promote and advance NAWBO with the marketing techniques and technology available today. Maxine Goulding will focus on raising money and awareness for our NAWBO Education Group through our annual Crystal Chair gala event, so we can create and foster a mentorship program in the future. We are the only NAWBO chapter that has an International Affairs Director, Griselda Quezada-Chavez, bringing global interests to the forefront. These women, along with our other highly qualified board members, will play an important role in making our chapter innovative and exciting.
Our goals this year will be to increase Advocacy, Member Engagement, Corporate Partners and Membership, and we will do this with the help of our members. We want to encourage your involvement so that we can strengthen our sisterhood and grow our businesses. In addition, we will focus on highlighting stronger business connections within the organization, advocacy opportunities and your impact on the communities we serve.
We ask for volunteers to help in the various committees where you can share your knowledge and expertise that will help us build a powerful organization. By joining our leadership team you become part of the women business owners taking action, growing their business and making change on a local, national and global level. We will think and act like connectors and networkers whether it’s at one of our NAWBO events or through other events we attend, so we can support our members and increase the number of business women that we serve.
Our passion and commitment is to NAWBO and our member’s success. When we unite our efforts and wide background of experience and knowledge, it will lead us into resonating One Voice in carrying out our mission and goals for 2018 – 2019. I’m looking forward to a fun and successful year with our dedicated board members, along with our amazing members!
Warmest regards,
Flordelisa Harris
President, MAWBO-SV
President’s Message – March 2018
Hello NAWBO Silicon Valley Members and Friends,
NAWBO has made history for 40 years. I am proud to continue this tradition through our Crystal Chair Award Gala to be held on March 20 at the Silicon Valley Capital Club in San Jose. In 1975 our founding member, Susan Hager said, “Get a seat at the table or build your own table, and make sure to include other women.” She invited a dozen or so like-minded women to a meeting to talk about entrepreneurship and the rest is history.
In 2017 the NAWBO Silicon Valley Board of Directors decided to honor women that brought their seat to the table and what better way to do it than to recognize them at a very special event – Crystal Chair Award Gala. This was the foundation for our gala and we will celebrate women who have made a bit of history of their own. It’s perfect timing with March being Women’s History Month.
Come enjoy our keynote speakers, Diane and Carl Stuart that are in law enforcement and a Navy Seal, respectively. They will talk about how two successful and dynamic business owners handle their working relationship.
There will be surprises, raffle prizes, a delicious menu created by the Capital Club, an award-winning Emcee, Janice Edwards and much more.
Register from our event page HERE.
NAWBO Silicon Valley also recognizes Women’s History Month.
Did you know Women’s History Month started in the 70’s and gained momentum in the early 80’s? In the 70’s women in history was an unknown subject. It was not being taught in the classrooms or talked about. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration for 1978.
President Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th, 1980 as National Women’s History Week. In the same year, Representative Barbara Mikulski, who at the time was in the House of Representatives, and Senator Orrin Hatch co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women’s History Week 1981. This co-sponsorship demonstrated the wide-ranging political support for recognizing, honoring, and celebrating the achievements of American women.
By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women’s History Month. This momentum and state-by-state action were used as the rational to lobby Congress to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women’s History Month. In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women’s History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.
Read more
To your success in 2018 and beyond.
Maxine Goulding, President
NAWBO Silicon Valley
President’s Message – February 2018
Hello NAWBO Silicon Valley Members and Friends,
Much is happening at NAWBO Silicon Valley in 2018. To give you a sneak peek I have listed a couple of very exciting events in February.
February 12 – Bizwomen Mentoring Monday
A few of our NAWBO Silicon Valley members will be mentors at the Bizwomen: Mentoring Monday, hosted by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Mentoring Monday is a one-of-a-kind event that brings together women in a casual, fast-paced coaching atmosphere. As an attendee, you will have the opportunity to meet individually with highly successful businesswomen in Silicon Valley for one-on-one coaching sessions for conversations. It is expected that every attendee will have the opportunity to meet with four to seven mentors. The quick turnaround is organized chaos which will be fast, fun and fulfilling as everyone gets the chance to meet new people and gain new insights.
February 20 – NAWBO Silicon Valley at Adobe
Join us to hear Donna Morris table about “How Employee Success Translates to Customer Success”.
Adobe challenges everyone in the organization to Make it an Experience. The ability to deliver these experiences to its customers starts with its employees. At this special event, Donna Morris of Adobe will share Adobe’s journey to foster a culture where employees understand the value of creating great experiences and the opportunities they have to influence the experience of its customers.
Come see this exclusive and unique look into the progressive culture at Adobe. Meet Donna Morris, our host and guest speaker, whose rallying cry is “disrupt or be disrupted.” Catch a rare glimpse into their global headquarters for a quick tour and delectable appetizers; all while networking with our NAWBO members and elite guests.
Our events hosted by companies such as Adobe are always a ton of fun, high profile, and very well attended. Adobe Systems, Inc. is a premier Silicon Valley enterprise and we are honored that they are hosting us this special evening.
NAWBO Silicon Valley continues to diligently work on bringing exciting and informative events to you. We know connections are important to our members, we know that building relationships are important and insightful educational a networking event for Tuesday, April 21st.
I do hope you join us at our fabulous February events. To see the details for both events listed go to www.nawbo-sv.org.
To your success in 2018 and beyond.
Maxine Goulding, President
NAWBO Silicon Valley
President’s Message – January 2018
Hello NAWBO Silicon Valley Members and Friends,
I don’t know about you, but 2017 went by like a rocket ship. The last month I remember was March 2017. In fact, this is the second year in a row that time flew by. I know why. I decided a few years back to concentrate my energies on business growth, researching the best clients and how to find them, and creating new services. The good news, it is working – really working.
I attribute a lot of my success to NAWBO Silicon Valley, NAWBO California and NAWBO National for the work they do to provide support, member value, business events and more. They continue to evolve and expand their offerings such as, online access to business education, informative keynote speakers and streamlining Chapter Operations Nationwide, just to name a few.
NAWBO gave me the opportunity to be a Board member, which taught me how to run an organization, and those skills transferred into my business. It was all about taking the information that was provided to me, with the help of my peer support and business education that got me going. I felt braver in taking a little more risk and not analyze everything seven ways to Sunday to make decisions. With that attitude I was making inroads in my business, attracting more clients and hiring more people. Voila! This takes me back to my first paragraph of this letter and how I got to where I am today.
NAWBO was created to help women business owners in various stages of business. I recommend you get to know your organization from top to bottom and take advantage of what they offer and use all the information on their websites. To give you an idea of the benefits for our members, see the shortlists of your local and national benefits:
NAWBO Silicon Valley Benefits (short list):
- Networking Events: a chance to engage in deeper conversation, learn from others expertise and insight, build partnerships, and possible business opportunities.
- Business Education: through our monthly meeting keynote speakers and networking
- Online Membership Directory enables members to update and manage their own profile.
NAWBO California Benefits (short list):
- Public policy voice in State Legislature an opportunity to testify in front of legislators
- “Best Practices” training for chapter leaders
- Annual conference provides opportunities to get to know NAWBO members throughout the state and information for business owners
NAWBO National Benefits (short list):
- Website: members have access to a multitude of tools and resources critical for navigating the everyday challenges of business ownership.
- Leadership Development: NAWBO provides an opportunity for members to hone their leadership skills at the local and national level.
- National Conference: The Women’s Business Conference is the only event of its kind that provides women business owners with personal and professional business development opportunities to take their businesses to the next level of success.
Please see entire lists on www.nawbo-sv.org, wwww.nawbo.org/california, www.nawbo.org
To your success in 2018 and beyond.
Maxine Goulding, President
NAWBO Silicon Valley
President’s Message – December 2017
Dear NAWBO Silicon Valley Members,
What I learned this month about prospects in this New Age of the Seller.
I was going over my sales efforts to check if I am getting the job done. I found out it’s not because my sales team isn’t working hard enough, it’s because the rules of prospecting have changed – the New Age of the Seller.
Here are reasons why:
- Cold calling is over. In the New Age of the Seller, prospects want to get to know you first.
- Potential clients don’t need a salesperson to make an informed decision, buyers are acquiring much of that information on their own, online.
- Prospects are pre-qualifying prospective vendors. In the New Age of the Seller, a prospect might have considered a dozen vendors, but in the new Age, that number might be as few as two, maybe even just one.
- Reality, vendors are being ruled in or out before they know the prospect even exists.
This new empowerment for prospects are finding it saves them time, contributes to their decision-making journey, and reduces contact with uncompetitive, and therefore, irrelevant vendors. Consequently, getting in front of a prospect for a first meeting requires more time, effort and strategy.
New rules:
- Demonstrate some level of relevance before granting an introductory meeting, let alone a sales call.
- How are you relevant to that individual prospect, because the prospect decides what’s relevant.
- Networking – in person and online – you must become a professional networker.
- Prospect development and nurturing must be practiced with patience and a dialed-down sense of urgency.
- Don’t lead with any element of the price/product/service value proposition. That won’t get you through the door.
- Demonstrate your corporate values. Today, what your company stands for is a major relevance factor.
- “Contribute first, contract second” is the Holy Grail of relevance.
Today is a whole different story of how to get in front of your prospect. You have to put more emphasis and resources in training, equipping, budgeting and measuring prospecting skills.
Maxine Goulding
NAWBO Silicon Valley – President
President’s Message – November 2017
NAWBO is more than networking and a place to find a direct link to a revenue stream, it’s a place where we can build long lasting relationships that lead to better business and personal lives.
I joined NAWBO Silicon Valley in 2006 and I have been on various positions on the Board of Directors. I thought if I’m going to build a business I should know “how” to run a business and not just work in my business. I knew I was good at what I did, but without the prior it’s very hard to stay in business. What a surprise to discover a secret of business growth – (people do business with someone they like, know and trust) and then I got out of my own way. I introduced myself to members, I joined the Board of Directors, helped on Committees, attended the National Conference, attended NAWBO-CA Propel Your Business Conference, and collaborated with other like-minded organizations. The rest is history.
There are many ways to get visibility and credibility as a member of NAWBO Silicon Valley:
- Gain valuable Internet exposure with an online profile.
- Have your photo displayed on the NAWBO Silicon Valley home page. Submit a testimonial and provide a photo when you create your directory listing and you will be highlighted in the rotating testimonial section of the home page. Send photo and testimonial to our Executive Administrator at info@nawbo-sv.org.
- Get exposure through NAWBO’s Facebook Group and interact, ask questions, and promote your business with other NAWBO members. To join the Facebook Group, search Facebook Groups for “NAWBO Silicon Valley” and request to join.
- Highlight your business at the dinner meeting by purchasing a sponsor’s table. Sign up for a display table ($75) when you register for the monthly dinner meeting.
- Volunteer to support other NAWBO members. How? Join a committee, or become an ambassador to network more closely with other powerful business women.
- Attend workshops and classes when available. NAWBO Silicon Valley will periodically send out information for these business education opportunities.
- Exhibit your business at exclusive NAWBO Expos and Trade Shows. How? Act on various opportunities throughout the year at a reasonable cost.
- Be in the spotlight at dinner meetings by hosting the Wine Bar. How? $120-$200 estimated cost; host the wine bar and speak to the group to introduce yourself/your business.
- Participate in the incredible networking opportunities at NAWBO Silicon Valley events. Attend NAWBO-SV lunch meetings, dinner meetings, and NAWBO Silicon Valley special events/mixers, etc. Check our website for upcoming events at www.nawbo-sv.org.
Contact our Executive Administrator at info@nawbo-sv.org for more information on any of these.