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ICSB World Congress in Northern Ireland Is Focus for Tsunami Meetings and Speeches
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The International Council on Small Business ICSBheld its annual conference from June 15 18,
this time in Belfast, Northern Ireland. ICSB is a 48-year old association of researchers, policymakers and other experts focused on small and medium enterprises SMEs. This year’conference focused on several themes, including women’s entrepreneurship. Canadian, American, European and Asian researchers who are active on Tsunami’s Global BrainTrust presented papers on various issues. To access more information about this conference, please see www.icsb2003.org or Programme p7-17.doc
In marathon meetings around the ICSB conference, Tsunami Co-Chair Virginia Littleohn spoke at the Investing in Women Conference in Belfast and met with several hundred women entrepreneurial leaders, policymakers and business support providers across Northern Ireland NITsunami’s visit was organized by Global BrainTrust member Anne McMurray, who is the women entrepreneurial advisor for Invest Northern Ireland. Others who participated in meetings to discuss mutual synergies included:
• Terri Scott, Managing Director, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise for Invest Northern Ireland; Sharon Polson, who oversees women’s entrepreneurship for Invest NI; and Michael Maxwell, Head of the Equality and Diversity Unit of the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment,
Terri Scott, Managing Director of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise for Invest Northern Ireland left, met on June 19th with Tsunami Co-Chair Virginia Littleohn rightto explore areas for potential cooperation, and expressed particular interest in Tsunami’s work on high-growth women entrepreneurs.
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Coordinators of FACE Female Access Channel to Enterprise--five initiatives set up in NI to provide an access point for information and support for women entrepreneurs, and development of a standardized database to track women entrepreneurial activity across NI--as well as with the FACE Advisory Board in Belfast
Tracy Hegarty, Coordinator of the Women in Enterprise Network in the northwest of NI, and numerous members of this network in Derry-Londonderry,
Anne Rutledge and the emerging southern network of enterprising women, including Debbie Boyd, Board member of Invest NI, in the town of Armagh, and
Opportunity Now Board members, a national initiative to promote female intrapreneurship as a way to stimulate entrepreneurship.
Sharon Polson, Virginia Littleohn, Mike Maxwell and Anne McMurray outside Invest Northern Ireland’s office in Belfast.
Jackie Brierton of Scotland chairing Invest Northern Ireland’s “Investing in Women” Conference on June 18 in Belfast. She was the advisor to the Small Business Service and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for the UK’s Strategic Framework for Women’Enterprise, released in London on May 8 and profiled in Tsunami’s May 31 issue. She is also a member of Tsunami’s Global BrainTrust.
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“Sixty-five percent of the people in Northern Ireland’s biotech industry are women.” [Apparently because girls and women in NI are quite interested in math, technology and life sciences]
Terri Scott, Managing Director, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise, Invest Northern Ireland
About Proect Tsunami
Proect Tsunami, Incorporated www.proecttsunami.org, is a non-profit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, that is a global accelerator for women’s entrepreneurship. It was designed to help create a tidal wave of economic opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, by identifying and connecting key women entrepreneurial leaders, facilitating the sharing of best practices across countries, and helping to link effective programs with resources. It uses 21st Century technology to make a clearinghouse of resources and best practices available to its powerful global network of leaders and multipliers, who then disseminate this information widely to their members and stakeholders. The organization began its work with a maor seed grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which funds innovative programs that foster entrepreneurship.
Tsunami is an outgrowth of two maor international conferences on women-owned small and medium enterprises WSMEsput on by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECDin Paris in 1997 and 2000, for which Tsunami’s Co-Chair Virginia Littleohn served as Senior Advisor. Proect Tsunami influences policies, practices and programs that expand the WSME sector by concentrating on 5 core strategies: WSME research, data and statistics; Entrepreneurial education and training; Access to finance; 4Access to networks and to corporate, government and international markets; and Technology as an entrepreneurial enabler. We also are analyzing how these five areas impact high-growth women entrepreneurs.
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