[Music in background throughout]
I’m Tina Fears, and I am the founder at Stage Ready.
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Tina Fears
Founder
Stage Ready
Bank of America Customer
Well, Stage Ready does everything from producing your events to helping you create digital content for your new product.
I'm a business owner, and I'm also a performer. So dance is important to me, but it also reflects the way that I run my business.
When I’m choreographing or creative directing, I want to think about what impact I want to make.
We were in the middle of a pandemic. And that impacted, you know, the event industry. And this was a time where my business was pivoting.
I wanted to figure out what the future looked like for Stage Ready. The Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell was a game changer.
My name is Sharon Miller, and I’m the President of Small Business at Bank of America.
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Sharon Miller
President of Small Business
Bank of America
We know how important women entrepreneurs are to the country. One of the biggest barriers is having the right resources and the right access to capital. And that's why this program is so important because it really focuses on helping women understand when it's right to access capital, and then resources.
Initially when the program began, we had 50,000 slots for enrollment, and because of such demand, we've now increased that to a hundred thousand available, for entrepreneurs to go through these courses.
Cornell is the right university to partner with us on this program because of its focus on entrepreneurship.
I’m Deborah Streeter. I’m a faculty member at Cornell University.
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Deborah Streeter
Faculty Director
The Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell
Bank of America and Cornell shared the goal of equipping women to be successful in entrepreneurship. The certificate program is an online, virtual program. We have a course in legal issues, negotiation, the entrepreneurial presence, and we knew it would be very important for the women in the program to understand the double bind. Women are stuck between having to be nice and the need to be powerful.
The program told us you can anticipate this, and this is how you can pivot around that and overcome it. Knowing who I am as a woman, and knowing the value that I bring to the table, really reinforced who I am as a business owner today.
I was really encouraged by the fact that Bank of America provided this program at no cost, because to me that spoke to the fact that they understood what the journey of entrepreneurship looks like. After completing the program, banking with Bank of America was kind of second nature.
The onboarding process at Bank of America was one of the easiest I've experienced. To be able to go through the process of setting up an account, and it not be a headache, that gives me more time to go make money with my business.
We work every day to help people really live out their financial lives and their dreams. And especially with business owners, it’s important that we educate. We have two thousand small business bankers in our financial centers working every day with business owners.
We have to give space for people to grow, and they have to be empowered to do so. All of the young women who have worked with me, maybe came on as interns, they now have their own businesses. And that’s how we grow this idea of entrepreneurship in this country.
Our relationship with Bank of America has enabled us to help so many thousands of women. It's just really impressive.
Helping women business owners, and empowering women to really move forward. It moves our entire communities forward.
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What would you like the power to do? ®
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