The White House brought together emerging entrepreneurs from across the United States and the globe – joined by several of the celebrity investors from the hit TV show Shark Tank. The stated goal was to raise awareness of “the importance of investing in women and young entrepreneurs to create innovative solutions to some of the world’s toughest challenges, including poverty, climate change, extremism, as well as access to education and healthcare.”
Brava!
The White House event comes as President Obama prepares for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kenya later this summer. You can read more about this week’s event here and get the transcript of the President’s remarks here.
A highlight of the White House event was the President’s announcement of the creation of the Spark Global Entrepreneurship initiative and its goal to generate over a billion dollars in private investment for emerging entrepreneurs around the world by the end of 2017. Half of this goal will be specifically for women and young entrepreneurs.
The White House event also featured the introduction of the newest Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE). Nine new ambassadors were named to join 17 who were appointed when he launched PAGE last year.
I’m thrilled to say one of the new ambassadors is my friend Julie Hanna, the executive chair of the board of the non-profit Kiva, the first and largest crowdfunding marketplace for underserved entrepreneurs.
Julie joins Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky; Elizabeth Holmes ,the founder of Theranos; and Alison Rosenthal, the vice president of Strategic Partnerships Wealthfront, among other new appointments to PAGE.
As part of her commitment, Julie introduced Kiva’s new $100 million initiative, “Global Capital Access,” which is committed to delivering crowdfunded Kiva loans to 200,000 women and young entrepreneurs across 86 countries, including the U.S. Entrepreneurs will have an opportunity to receive crowdfunded loans through Kiva and its global network of 1.3 million lenders in 198 countries. (Since 2005, Kiva and its global community have crowdfunded $700 million loans to 1.6 million entrepreneurs in 86 countries. For as little as a $25 loan, anyone can back an entrepreneur.)
Julie is truly an amazing entrepreneur, leader and mentor. She also generously participated in a video for my SXSW “Boardroom or Baby” presentation earlier this year, to give advice to young women seeking VC investment.
I am particularly delighted to say that I will be joining her for a “Women in Tech Executive Roundtable 2015” sponsored by the Churchill Club this Friday in Palo Alto, CA. For more info and to sign up to attend go to www.churchillclub.org.
The roundtable is designed to be a frank and lively conversation about what matters most for advancing women in business and technology. We hope to share actionable insights and takeaways to empower women and to help create a new conversation in the year ahead.
I’m looking forward to our discussion, as well as the opportunity to personally congratulate Julie and hear about the White House event and her plans as ambassador.
As Julie noted at the White House event, one of the most encouraging things happening toward empowerment of female entrepreneurs is the public conversation occurring about public and hidden bias. As she said: “We need to elevate the discourse to make it an issue for humanity, not just for women – much like Martin Luther King did on Civil Rights.”
Title image courtesy of Levo.com
