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As a marketing major and an aspiring entrepreneur, there is a dire need for female-focused support that will help empower women to seek success and venture capital funding. Women are generally outnumbered in all aspects of business-related careers and business opportunities. The problem is exacerbated in the venture capital space and the numbers are incredibly discouraging for future female entrepreneurs:  Currently in the U.S., only 11% of VCs are women and 71% of VC firms have no female partners. In 2018, a mere 12% of venture capital dollars went to companies with a woman on the founding team, a decline from 15% in 2017. The numbers get even worse when you look at female-founded startups that aren’t focused on female customers: They’ve received less than 2% of VC investment dollars since 2014 (https://www.allraise.org/data). My Key Insight, the importance of articulation and argument formulation, reinforces the necessity of being able to formulate a solidified argument, something that female entrepreneurs are struggling with when attempting to pitch their proposals to their male-dominant VC panel.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

source: https://fortune.com/2019/01/28/funding-female-founders-2018/

 

The graphs included above help to illustrate the stark contrast between qualified men and women in the VC space, highlighting the value of VC deals by gender and the overall total number of VC deals by gender. The graphs serve as a visualization of the large gaps that exist in venture capital funding and help bring awareness to the issue at hand.

 

 

 

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Starting the conversation is just a step in the right direction, but more action needs to be taken in order to close the gender gap in venture capital funding. We must also promote models of successful female founders and funders, further encouraging other qualified women to enter male-dominant fields. As a marketing major, the use of social media can be incredibly helpful in elevating successful women and sharing their stories of success with others, inspiring women and giving them the feeling ‘If she can do it, I can do it too.’

 

 

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While this overarching problem is not one that I can solve entirely on my own, I am proposing the introduction of an ongoing women-only workshop within the Darla Moore School of Business that provides entrepreneurial background information and additional education on topics like finance, loans, personal marketing, advocacy, ethics, argument formulation, and commercial law—giving female business students a holistic background and understanding of the skill sets and information needed in order to be successful entrepreneurs.

 

The first step in implementing this workshop series is to advertise it. I would like to take advantage of existing on-campus resources like the Office of Career Management and the Student Success Center and have informative flyers and handouts available that explain the purpose and plan for the workshops. I would also like to target business fraternities and clubs so that we can market the workshop to women who are already involved in business-related extracurricular activities and organizations.

 

As far as the timeline for the workshops, they would be held once a month throughout the duration of the school year. These workshops would be an hour to two hours long, depending on the agenda and what is being covered. These sessions would be held in the larger classrooms within the business school, giving speakers the ability to lecture and access to technology to aid in their presentations.

 

Given the fact that our business school at USC is named after Darla Moore, a successful female investor and philanthropist, I would like to have her involved in these workshops as a speaker and mentor to the young women attending these workshops. USC has a strong alumni association and it would be desirous if we could take advantage of this and bring in Carolina alumni who are successful businesswomen to present their stories, experiences, and provide advice and networking opportunities.

 

As mentioned above, the Office of Career management is a resource that we should take advantage of as well. The OCM is an underutilized resource on campus, one that provides career advice, professional development help, and other career-related resources to undergraduate students in the business school. The OCM could be involved in these workshops too, giving presentations regarding internship and job searches, resume and LinkedIn building, and general career advice.

 

Additionally, it would be advantageous to include WREN, the Women’s Rights Empowerment Network in our workshops. This organization provides a strong voice for women and girls across South Carolina. WREN is committed to fostering an environment in which women are encouraged to lead and to advocate for policies that positively impact our lives. WREN wants women to have the tools, facts, and skills to advocate for themselves and their children (https://www.scwren.org). Of the topics that this organization focuses on, their Economic Opportunity and Leadership and Civic Engagement matters are relatable and would be informative to share with workshop participants. Additionally, WREN provides an Advocacy 101 Training, which aims to educate women on how to advocate and lead change in South Carolina.

 

After I leave South Carolina, I hope to leave this program in the hands of a workshop participant who is as passionate as I am about women in business and their continued success. If at all possible, I would hope that with the relationships we would have built with WREN, the OCM, and our strong alumni base, that the workshops could continue on under the organization and supervision of another female business student.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Another way I would measure success of these workshops would be in the interest of alumni participating in the speaker series. While getting these workshops off the ground and running, we will need to reach out to alumni first, but I would find this workshop to be a success if we had successful USC Alumni expressing their desire to come and present to us.

 

I would also like to survey participants throughout the duration of the workshop series, gauging their perceptions of women in business and see if their attitudes change over the course of the workshops. I would create an anonymous survey, asking questions that would help evaluate whether they felt more empowered or positive towards women in leadership roles in general after being a participant in the workshop.

 

This workshop series is a multi-part plan that given its success, I would like to transition into an elective course offered to women in the Darla Moore School of Business. Like University 101 was a flagship program for first year students at USC, this seminar class would ideally become a model course for universities across the nation, aiding in the education and empowerment of women across the United States.