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Up Close: For Linda Torrence Muir, opportunities for women are a priority and passion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Linda Torrence Muir is co-founder of the group Project Tsunami, which advances women entrepreneurship. When asked why she's so concerned about entrepreneurial opportunities for women, Linda Torrence Muir refers to a speech she heard three years ago in Paris. There, at a conference sponsored by a global policy group called the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Virginia Littlejohn told delegates to imagine they were each holding a pebble. Littlejohn, then the group's senior adviser on women-owned businesses, said the pebble was to symbolize the effort each would make in advancing women's entrepreneurship. "Virginia said if everyone threw those pebbles in different places at different times, it would create little waves that would cancel each other out," Muir remembers. "But if we all threw them at the same place at the same time, it would create a virtual tsunami of economic opportunity for women entrepreneurs." Muir was so moved by this image that she and Littlejohn -- along with Linda Tarr-Whelan, formerly the United States representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women -- created Project Tsunami in October 2002. With headquarters in Atlanta, Project Tsunami is a nonprofit corporation that aims to advance women's entrepreneurship around the globe by researching what obstacles exist and providing recommendations -- to governments, organizations and corporations -- on how the obstacles can best be overcome. Christine Van Dusen of the Journal-Constitution spoke recently with Muir. Q: What about this movement moves you? A: It certainly taps into my own philosophy about the importance of women advancing. I've been a direct exponent of what's happened in the last 30 years, with the advancement of women and the opportunities available to women. I believe strongly that economic empowerment for women is a major part of the solution for many of the issues we all face. When women are economically self-sustaining, they are themselves healthier. Their families and communities are healthier. Their children do better. It really is beneficial to all society, including men in society. I was interested in this from a public policy point of view, not to mention the fact that I have daughters and granddaughters. Q: Why headquarter Project Tsunami in Atlanta? A: It's true that if I were not here, this project wouldn't be here. But the fact that Atlanta has great things going for it, that's another reason why. This city is a center of business and a center of transportation. Small business, in particular, does very well here. And there is plenty of evidence that women entrepreneurs are a major part of the Georgia economic scene. Q: So would Project Tsunami create programs for women entrepreneurs, or provide other organizations with information that would help them create such programs? A: We'd be a catalytic force. Through our strategy we'd bring together all the key leaders in all the primary areas having to do with women's entrepreneurship. For example, there is an active group of women angel investors and there are a number of banks that have special programs targeting women-business owners to facilitate finance and credit for women-owned businesses. Essentially what we'd want to do is have a conference focusing on those key areas and have those leaders together to have a face-to-face opportunity to crystallize what is the situation in the United States. Then we'd issue a report at the end of the conference, saying here are the recommendations and here's what needs to happen. Q: Would you also make recommendations on a regional basis? A: Yes. Georgia is in kind of a difficult economic situation right now, just like every other state. We've seen over the last two years, at all businesses, diminished revenues. And revenues generated by women also have diminished. We would demonstrate that through data. And we'd show that the encouragement and advancement of women-owned businesses is a significant accelerator to the state's economy. Our report would say, here are the best practices that work, here are the things that are happening, here's what we need. It puts a public policy recipe in the hands of folks in the Legislature, the Small Business Administration and state government. They can say, 'Where should we put our scarce dollars?' Now they'll have a reason to say, 'Let's put some more money and some more emphasis on women's entrepreneurship.' Q: What trends are you seeing for women entrepreneurs in Georgia? A: Up until about two years ago, Georgia was an engine for growth, and the women-owned sector was clicking right along. But the downturn in the economy has affected women-owned businesses as much as others. Some studies show that many of the women business owners who have been part of this kind of revolution over the last five years, a lot of reason for that was because women leave high-powered corporate jobs where they were in senior management. Sometimes they get completely burned out in a corporate job and say, 'That's not what I want to do with the rest of my life. I need to use my creativity better.' Q: Why did you leave the corporate life? A: I was last at BellSouth and was [executive director of corporate outreach, focused on being a liaison to the women's community]. That's how I embraced this movement around women's entrepreneurship. So, being entrepreneurial myself, I decided to start my own law firm in the summer of 2000, having been a lawyer for about 20 years. This gives me the opportunity to do what I'm trained to do, to spend time with my lawyer hat on, but I'm also able to use my talents and training and contacts and so forth in a way that supports something that's important to do for, really, the global economy, the national economy and the city economy. It's very consistent with a very long-held view I've had, which is that it's important to maximize the ability of women to be economically self-sufficient and make the maximum economic contribution to society. |