Meet the Microloan Modernization Act

United States Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, announced the Microloan Modernization Act, a new bill to help minorities and women start small businesses and succeed.

She says the bill will help provide loans and technical assistance to women and minority business owners who face problems getting loans from banks to start or improve their small businesses.

More good news. Gillibrand says the Small Business Administration will set more money aside as an extension of their Microloan Program.

Read more about the new bill to help small businesses start businesses.

The Future is Female

Women march on.

More than 120,000 protesters attended the march in New York on Saturday, according to a senior adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio, who cited the figure as the official count but did not explain the methodology behind it. Thousands also turned out in Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Rome and hundreds of other cities and towns.

Read more about how a year after millions of people turned out for the Women's March and took the streets en masse in a variety of USA cities to make herstory.

Corporate America Must Examine Its Hiring and Promotion Policies for Gender Bias

Love this post by Jeanne Shaheen, United States Senator, Ranking Member, U.S. Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship.  In it, she talks about the barriers that keep women entrepreneurs from achieving their best in growing a business.  One of her findings is this:

Corporate America must examine its hiring and promotion policies for gender bias. Investors, company leaders and human resources departments must also have zero tolerance for sexual harassment and discrimination that hurts qualified women.

In "Tackling the Gender Gap:  What Women Entrepreneurs Need to Thrive," Senator Shaheen claims that women are the center of the American economy.  I personally feel women [entrepreneurs] are the center of the universe.

She ends with, "Let’s lift up the stories of successful women-led businesses and inspire the next generation of women entrepreneurs. There is nothing women can’t achieve if given an equal opportunity to compete."

Thank you Senator Shaheen.  We salute you for putting the wind behind our sails!  

Keep Up With Trends in 2018

I trust you are off to a great start in the New Year!  May it be your best year yet.

I am presenting a WEGGinar™ on Wednesday, January 10 at 11:00 a.m. Central time on "Laurel Delaney's Global Trade Trends Report 2018."  I would love for you to participate and my gift to you is that it is FREE!  All you have to do is register and even if you get busy, you can listen to it later, at your convenience.

I"ll cover artificial intelligence, micro-learning, wearables, quantum computing and more -- technology advancements that we need to know about to run our businesses successfully.

Register here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1940601026277957634  Connect then!