Latest News from Ridgewood Moving

June 16, 2010

Women’s Business Intelligence Alliance (WBIA)

is as follows:

"Our mission is to team up together to grow our individual businesses by offering potential customers a single point of access to a unique group of business services. We also share business intelligence obtained during the course of running our individual businesses as well as from networking contacts to team up and put together a unique package when proposing bids for work in various industries." To see more on the WBIA, Click Here.

Fall 2009

Last year we participated in a wonderful fund raising even for Shelter our Sisters (www.shelteroursisters.org)

October 13, 2009

Women Business Owners Chosen
NJAWBO Corporate Supplier Diversity Mentoring Initiative

This pilot initiative was developed to help our members position themselves to compete more effectively for corporate contracts. At the same time it will help the corporations to understand how they can more effectively communicate and support their internal outreach programs to outsource more of their purchasing needs to women business owners. The first step was for the corporations to choose the woman or women (some chose two people and others could only support one) they wanted to mentor from those who applied.

That has now happened and we are pleased to announce that eight NJAWBO women business owners have been chosen by the participating corporations for NJAWBO’s new Corporate Supplier Diversity Mentoring Initiative. Since the purpose of the program is to not necessarily award business to each of the women business owners, that reason alone could not be the reason for them to choose one person over the other. Some of them asked: “Please tell us who to choose. How can we decide from all those who applied?”

While we had a diverse cross sampling of members that applied, we could not tell the corporations which ones they should choose. So we encouraged them to read each profile and then decide which individual’s needs best matched the corporation’s strengths and resources. With which individual did they think they could make a difference? And thus the list of participants was completed.

The formal kick-off of the initiative is April 20, 2009 hosted by PSEG. However, some of the mentors have already met with their mentees and started building that relationship of trust and respect. The excitement among our members who have been given an opportunity like this is indescribable. It is so unique.

Congratulations to the following Mentoring Initiative NJAWBO members:

• Pam D’Aleo, Informaxx
• Judith DeLorenzo, Plast-O-Matic Valves, Inc.
• Holly Kaplansky, Minuteman Press
• Cynthia Myer, Ridgewood Moving Services
• Marge Offutt, Mediagraphics
• Carmela Roberts, Roberts & Reymann Engineering, LLC
• Lois Spagnola, Environmental Technologies Groups, Inc.
• Kathleen Cashman, Cashman Consulting, LLC

A big “Thank You” to the corporations that are participating in this. Not only are they mentoring, but they are helping to decide the structure and goals of the initiative. Their commitment to making sure their mentee is given every opportunity to build her business and capacity is truly remarkable! We at NJAWBO thank you:
Enterprise Rent-A-Car
NJ Transit
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG)
Sanofi-Aventis
Verizon

You will be hearing more about how this pilot is progressing in subsequent Bottom Line articles.

Paula Gould
NJAWBO Executive Director
pgould@njawbo.org

October 12, 2009