Empowering women

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This article was published 03/11/2022 (1264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Carla Devlin, the newly elected mayor of East St. Paul, knows a thing or two about juggling work and family life.

Devlin was just elected mayor of East St. Paul after a four year stint as a councillor, which happened to take place during the pandemic.

In addition to her part-time duties on the East St. Paul municipal council, she is also the CEO of her own construction company, Carrington Property Developments, a design, build and renovation company, as well as the mother of four children, the youngest of whom was in elementary school at the start of the pandemic.

She’s also the new Manitoba ambassador for Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO), a global organization that will be holding its first event in Winnipeg on Nov. 18.

WEDO is especially focused on empowering future women entrepreneurs by granting scholarships to deserving female university and college students and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Devlin said she takes every opportunity she can to be an advocate for women entrepreneurs and for women in the business world in general. She is also speaking at a Women in Trades conference later this month

“WEDO Canada does great things for empowering women and providing scholarships,” Devlin said.

She will hand out two or three such scholarships at the Nov. 18 event, which will feature speakers including: Rochelle Squires, manitoba’s Status of Women Minister; Joelle Foster, CEO North Forge Technology Exchange; Michelle Cameron, CEO/owner Dreamcatcher Promotions; Theresa Bolton, principal and professional recruiter, Customized Recruitment; Tanya Bachmeier, CEO/owner, Cornerstone Timberframes; and Kate Holden, entrepreneur, The Pourium.

WEDO Canada is seeking sponsorship support to help achieve their goal of granting $1 million in scholarships over the next 25 years to make a lasting impact for women entrepreneurs and the economy.

“Focused and supportive education resources for existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs will put us on the right path to achieve this” said Milena Radakovic, ambassador of Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Organization (WEDO) Canada.

The initiative is all about advancing gender equality and women’s participation in the economy, that research has shown could add up to $150 billion in GDP to the Canadian economy. Meanwhile the number of women-led companies remains proportionately low, at about 17.5 per cent.

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Carrie Simpson, knows all about the challenges of being a women and running a business.

The former Winnipegger started a home business with the help of the North Forge incubator in 2014. Managed Sales Pros was a leads generator that helped other tech startups find potential customers.

She eventually grew the business into a 35-seat call centre in Las Vegas and she sold its subsidiary, Everywhere Managed LLC, in 2020 during the pandemic.

She started up another leads generator business that was just sold this week to another female entrepreneur based in North Carolina

“How many 100 per cent women-owned (IT businesses) are there to begin with?” Simpson said. “And how many transactions involve two companies that were bootstrapped to over seven figures by first-generation female founders? I’m proud of my role in this. This is a great day for women.”

Simpson, now based in Michigan, said the pandemic was a real eye-opener.

“The pandemic highlighted income inequality in a different way,” she said. “Not everyone has a spare bedroom and high-speed internet in their homes.”

She said her challenges in staffing a call centre during the pandemic had nothing to do with the fact she was a female business owner, but seeing the challenges that her female employees faced regarding issues like access to childcare made those inequalities even more apparent to her.

For her part, Devlin said having four school-aged children at home taking classes on line presented challenges for her that she had not had to face in the past.

Although progress has been made in Canada and worldwide with the number of women in business increasing over the past few decades, women continue to have to overcome hurdles than men do not, including gender biases and difficulty accessing financing.

Women-led businesses remain proportionately underfunded, yet data reveals more diverse organizations greatly outperform homogeneous ones.

Information to obtain one of 100 tickets available for the WEDO event can be found at: http://wfp.to/summit

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca