I attended the 9th Annual Women in Business conference on April 2 at Montgomery County Conference Center. The conference featured two outstanding inspirational speakers — Debra Poneman, Founder of Yes to Success, Inc. and Emily Greene, Founder of VIVA Creative. Debra is a speaker, seminar leader and author. She underlined the importance of believing in your dreams and referenced “the law of attraction” — the idea that your dominant thoughts manifest your outcomes.
Emily Greene, an entrepreneur who started a communications business, VIVA Creative in 2001, spoke about the characteristics of truly effective networking. She emphasized that networking is not prospecting. Many people attend networking events with their business cards handy, seeking to get clients or other desirables. Emily highlighted the importance of being ready to give. People who give and connect others are among the most successful networkers.
Rockville Economic Development, Inc. administers the StartRight! Business Plan Competition which awards prizes to the best business plans developed by women entrepreneurs. Several women who had submitted outstanding business plans were honored and awarded prizes. And the winners were:
Lisa Chan, ZaraCom Technologies, Inc., First Prize Winner ($10,000 and 9 month virtual office solution from Intelligent Office) ZaraCom has developed a patent-pending artificial intelligence-based technology that identifies the bottlenecks in wireless carriers. It then offers instant solutions to resolve the bottlenecks. This year the company signed contracts with China Mobile.
Sharon Flank, Ph.D., InfraTrac , Second Prize Winner, ($5,000 and 6 month virtual office solution from Intelligent Office) InfraTrac is a venture-backed start-up company established in 2006 that uses patent-pending near-infrared spectroscopy to detect counterfeits.
Jessica Feltz, The Turning Point – A Community Acupuncture Center, Third Prize (tie), ($2,500 and 3 month virtual office solution from Intelligent Office) The Turning Point offers high-quality alternative healthcare at an affordable price.
Colleen Nye and Dr. Loleta M. Robinson, Syan Biosciences, Third Prize (tie), ($2,500 and 3 month virtual office solution from Intelligent Office) Colleen Nye and Dr. Loleta Robinson are licensing and bringing to market “lab-on-a-chip” technology that will enable performing rapid, accurate and inexpensive diagnostic analysis in a non-laboratory setting.
June 17, 2008 at 12:20 am
Congratulations to the lucky women that were able to take home the top honors! I think it’s wonderful that there are organizations dedicating to helping out my fellow businesswomen!
Currently, I’m an official Microsoft ambassador and right now we’re really trying to scale up our connections with influential bloggers like yourself. I’d love to share with you some of the stuff we’ve been doing in the last couple months to help women entrepreneurs; we’re really committed to providing all the necessary resources to help women start, grow and expand their business.
We just wrapped up a women’s entrepreneurial tour across the US called “Vision To Venture;” the response and turn-out was great!
I’d really love your take on these offerings we have right now; I would have contacted you via email but I didn’t know which was the best way to reach you.
Thank you so much, I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds by directly contacting you. Definitely get back to me if I’ve piqued your interest– I’d love to share more info with you.
Best,
Tanya M.
Official Microsoft Ambassador
t-middleton@live.com
January 2, 2009 at 5:27 pm
We are delighted by your coverage of the StartRight! Women’s Business Plan Competition, and your support of entrepreneurship. The deadlines and rules for the 2009 Competition have been set, and may be found at http://www.rockvilleredi.org. We invite all women business owners in DC, Maryland or Virginia with companies that have been in business for two years or less to write (or polish) their business plans and enter. We offer free business plan writing classes each month, and SCORE offers free weekly business plan writing assistance sessions. Dates and times are found at http://www.rockvilleredi.org. Thank you,
Lynne Benzion
Associate Director, Rockville Economic Development, Inc.
Benzion@RockvilleREDI.org