Los Angeles County has a women’s business center backed by the Small Business Administration. So does San Bernardino and San Diego.
Orange County doesn’t, which comes as a surprise to many. Others say that women entrepreneurs already have plenty of resources amid a fragmented collection of business groups here.
Women’s business centers offer training on issues such as marketing, writing business plans, finding funding. The centers also provide a network of contacts for women entrepreneurs.
The Santa Ana district office of the Small Business Administra-tion is hopeful that OC will soon get a women’s business center.
Last month, the SBA issued a request for proposals in OC and nationwide to gauge interest from nonprofits or universities that might be interested in bidding to bring a women’s business center to their region.
The Santa Ana office of the SBA, which oversees San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, has made it a high priority to bring a women’s center to OC, said Adalberto Quijada, district director of the local office.
“When I arrived here six months ago, I asked myself why there wasn’t one,” said Quijada, who took over from retiring Sandy Sutton in December. “We should have one here. I hope by the end of the year we’ll have an OC women’s business center.”
A big hurdle in starting up a women’s business center is finding a sponsoring organization, such as a university, that will match federal funding of a few million dollars during its first five years.
After the initial five-year period, the centers become self-sufficient. Nearly all of the women’s business centers in Southern California are less than 5 years old.
“It is a very heavy workload,whoever takes over the job must have a passion,” said Rachel Baranick, SBA’s deputy district director in Santa Ana.
Three years ago, a handful of local OC groups showed interest in forming a women’s business center. But disagreements over how to run it and raise funds to make it self sufficient couldn’t be settled, according to SBA officials.
Another way OC could get a center would be through the expansion of a regional operation.
“There was talk of our center expanding to Orange County, but that’s not something we’d be interested in at this point,” said Stephanie Gisler-Rashid, administrator of the women’s business center in San Diego’s Torrey Pines.
The San Diego center is sponsored by La Jolla-based National University, a private college with a campus in Costa Mesa.
“We just got a new director in January,” Gisler-Rashid said. “We are restructuring our organization to make it grow in San Diego. Maybe in a couple of years we will expand to Orange County.”
Michelle Skiljan, head of the women’s business center in San Bernardino, has a staff of three to cover her county plus parts of Riverside County in the Coachella Valley.
“I can’t believe there’s not a need in Orange County,” Skiljan said.
Business groups that are geared to women have fragmented in OC during the past few decades.
Among the groups are local chapters of Women in Business; the National Latina Business Women Association; Hispanic Business Women’s Alliance, Asian Women in Business, the National Association of Women Business Owners and the University of California, Irvine Extension’s Women’s Opportunities Center.
“There are a lot of organizations here in Orange County that are trying to address this need,” said Martha Ryan, a Corona del Mar consultant who formerly worked as chief information officer for Carl’s Jr., part of Carpinteria-based CKE Restaurants Inc.
A few months ago, Ryan and other women business leaders in South OC began holding a “Breakfast for Champions” meeting for women at the El Adobe de Capistrano restaurant in San Juan Capistrano.
“We had to close the registration down,” Ryan said. “To have 105 women go to breakfast before 7 a.m. shows there is clearly a need for networking.”
Is there a need for a women’s business center?
Some argue that there’s overlap between women’s business centers and the SBA’s small-business development centers or Service Corps of Retired Executives program.
Service Corps is made up of retired executives that help struggling small businesses or those trying to launch. The development centers provide management assistance.
Diane Goepp, a volunteer for UCI Extension’s Women’s Opportunities Center, said she’s seen a steady decline during the past several years in the number of women coming to her organization for career counseling.
“The majority of women seem so busy, they don’t spend their valuable time to go down to our center,” Goepp said.
