BREAKING THROUGH

Americans (BCNA) to start Smiles Around Us Day Care
Center to serve the sizeable Russian immigrant community
in Staten Island. Today, that day care center has
grown into three schools, including an elementary and
a middle school that employ 30 teachers and assistant
teachers and educate 250 children annually, many of
them from immigrant families.
This year, BCNA will make some 300 microloans to
immigrant entrepreneurs, half of them women, which
will help to support families, anchor communities and
provide vital services to the people who live there.
“They’re creating jobs and they are role models
for women in their community,” says Yanki Tshering,
BCNA founder and executive director. “When women
succeed, it’s very good for the whole family.”
It’s also beneficial for neighborhoods. Home day
care businesses, for example, allow their women founders
not only to earn income for their families, but make
it possible for other working parents to hold jobs and
support their families and communities.
Tameka Silva is one of those women. She quit her
job as a building manager to give her seven-year-old
son more time and attention. When neighbors and
friends learned that she was at home, they started asking
her to care for their children during the day as well.
Eventually, she turned her babysitting into a certified
home day care center that employs two people and provides
day care services for 15 children and their working
mothers and fathers.
Like all entrepreneurs, women founders are in it to
make money, but many also to want to have a positive
impact on the world
Many of the people we interviewed for this report
say that women entrepreneurs are more likely than
men to start businesses that have a social impact. “In
general, I see more women looking to figure out whether
they can impact the world through the technology
they build,” says Jessica Lawrence, executive director of
New York Tech Meetup.
Deepti Sharma Kapur, for one, runs an online platform
that Manhattan office workers use to pre-order
from restaurants, food trucks and food carts. She also
helps her vendors, many of them immigrants, use technology
to grow their businesses and works with them
to help them adjust to changes in the market. Not long
ago, she was in discussions with the city of Philadelphia
about using her company, Food to Eat, along with local
vendors, to provide meals for an upcoming conference
instead of the national catering service the city was
planning to hire.
“[The idea] comes from my maternal instinct wanting
to help a community grow and thrive,” says Kapur.
“We grew because of the way we thought about the
business, not always about making money, but how to
help the community.”
Kapur isn’t alone. Over the past 15 years, national
nonprofit Echoing Green has provided seed funding to
31 fellows starting social ventures in New York City,
and 10 of them—or 32 percent—have been women. 14
Women entrepreneurs don’t necessarily start off or
think of themselves as do-gooders, but when they see
opportunities to make a difference, they grab them.
That’s what Deborah Koenigsberg did. The owner
of a well-known boutique in the Flatiron district, Noir
et Blanc, Ms. Koenigsberger in 1994, started Hearts
of Gold, a non-profit that helps homeless women and
their children become self-sufficient and move into
permanent housing. One way it does that is through
its resale shop The Thrifty HoG, which sells vintage
and gently used clothing and provides sales training to
women in shelters.
“We give them job skills and pay them a competitive
wage and help them have something to put on
their resumes,” said Ms. Koenigsberger.
Women have a lot to contribute, often in industries
that are struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing
demographic and social structure. By harnessing their
unique experience, perspective and aptitudes, modern
society has a better chance at solving looming problems,
such as caring for the burgeoning population of
elderly and disabled. It’s an opportunity, say investors,
ideally suited to women entrepreneurs.
“If you’re thinking about big plays, a huge portion
of the population is aging and it’s women who end up
being the caregivers,” says Maria Gotsch of the Partnership.
Fund for New York City. “Unleashing that set of
experiences against that big problem can result in new
companies and new ways of dealing with aging.”
Breaking Through 17