THE Tory Burch The Foundation has joined forces with the U.S. Department of Commerce to further the foundation’s mission of providing women entrepreneurs access to capital, education and community.
On Monday, Gina M. Raimondo, the U.S. Commerce Secretary, visited Burch’s headquarters in New York to discuss the partnership. There were more than 100 attendees, including foundation fellows, business leaders, government and nonprofit partners, and media. Participants included Lauren Bush Lauren, CEO and co-founder of Feed Projects; Reshma Saujani, founder of Moms First US and Girls Who Code; Dee Poku, founder of Wie Suite and Black Women Raise, and Brett Heyman, founder and creative director of Edie Parker.
The conversation, moderated by Tiffany Dufu, the new president of the foundation, focused on the obstacles that women entrepreneurs face to what the Ministry of Commerce can provide them, ranging from capital and resources to help them export their products.
Tiffany Dufu, Tory Burch and Gina Raimondo.
Noa Griffel, courtesy of Tory Burch
Each year, Tory Burch selects 50 women entrepreneurs for a year-long program designed to help them grow their businesses through workshops, coaching sessions, networking and financial resources. There are more than 300 Tory Burch Fellows. The Fellows program awarded $1.9 million in grants to help 280 women grow their businesses. Before the conversation, Ellie Kassner of Kassner Ironwork, Taylor Shaw of Black Women Animate, and Shalini Samtani of Open the Joy – all Tory Burch Fellows – spoke about their experiences.
When asked how she and the Commerce Secretary came together, Burch, executive chairwoman and chief creative officer of her brand, explained that when she first met Raimondo last October, she didn’t didn’t know what they could do together, but they were both aligned on understanding the power of collaboration. Once Burch realized the abundance of resources available to the Department of Commerce and how she could combine them with the network of women she had who were not necessarily familiar with these resources, she realized that ” it could be transformative.”
Raimondo said she was a longtime admirer of Burch. “Every time I meet an exceptional woman, I ask myself: ‘How can we work together?’ How can I support you?’ ” Raimondo said. She told the audience of entrepreneurs: “Help each other because it makes a difference. »
Raimondo said that before entering public life, she was in business financing small businesses in the health care world. (She later served as governor of Rhode Island from 2015 to 2021.)
“For me, every start-up needs a few things. You need customers, you need to protect your IP (intellectual property), and you need access to capital. We can help you at the Department of Commerce. We run the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,” she said. She said that since meeting with Burch and the team, they have launched webinars on intellectual property protection.
She added: “We can help promote exports. Let us help you export. You can double or triple your income. It’s hard to know if you’re a small business. She also said they can provide access to capital and have “a whole bunch of initiatives around that.”
The Department of Commerce is hosting a series of publicly accessible workshops with the Tory Burch Foundation’s network of more than 1.8 million women to help increase access to critical government resources and further support the community with opportunities free public education, counseling and networking, tools to navigate DOC resources for small businesses and information for women entrepreneurs to use across the federal government.
When asked about the three biggest obstacles women entrepreneurs face, Burch responded: “The three things women need: capital, education and community. » She said women have a harder time accessing capital than men. Fifty percent of entrepreneurs are women and less than 2 percent of venture capital goes to them. She said they partnered with Bank of America and reached $100 million in low-interest loans. They deployed $3.2 million in grants to women of color. They have another program that gives $1 million in interest-free loans to fellow students, which they want to expand. “Women are a great investment. They repay their loans at a rate of 98 percent,” Burch said.
“If women succeed, economies succeed. Until we get rid of this misunderstanding, we will never progress. I also talk about progress in terms of bottom lines. Forget progress for humanity, but progress for the bottom line,” Burch said.
She said the foundation offers free education on its website and some 650,000 people benefit from it each year. She said that men are much better at networking than women. “The best gift we can give each other is each other. Many businesses face the same challenges. To have each other’s support, whether it’s word of mouth, help purchasing the company’s products or marketing them, is incredible,” she said.
Raimondo gave this advice to women entrepreneurs: “First of all, women, don’t be afraid to say you want to have wealth. She said being independent and successful “is a good thing, so go for it.”
“You want to have very successful, very profitable businesses,” Raimondo said. She said they are working on a national strategy for entrepreneurship and that President Joe Biden has established a task force that Raimondo chairs. She works hard to put the spotlight on women entrepreneurs and to ensure that this is also focused outside the metropolitan hubs. They are running a technology hub program and are spending $500,000 on it. “Communities in the United States that aren’t New York, San Francisco, and Boston, but have innovation hubs… We’re just trying to tap into every entrepreneur, wherever they are, and make it possible for you to succeed.” , she said.
From the beginning, Burch said she wanted to create a business with a central purpose.
Twenty years ago, when she went to present her business plan to investors, “the idea of purpose and business was unknown; I actually laughed out of the room,” Burch said. “I have always been intrigued by the concept that ‘doing good is good for business.’ »
In conclusion, Dufu asked if they could wave a magic wand and do one thing to advance women entrepreneurs, what would it be?
“There’s so much,” Raimondo said. “First, having more women at the helm of countries would help the world. When I look at the world, Russia, China, what is happening in the Middle East. All of them are led by men… I think we need to have more women in leadership positions in the biggest institutions, the biggest banks, nationally. Make money, move fast, don’t lower your standards, but have some sense of humanity while you do it,” she said.
Burch said bias goes into everything. “If I could take a magic wand and get rid of prejudice against women, that would be a good start. Whether women have to take care of children, they have to take care of their parents. The fact that we are (still) talking today about fairness and remuneration is absurd. Women’s rights should be a given, not a favor.”
