(Chicago Sun Times) — Mayoral challenger James Meeks scrambled Thursday to put out a political fire touched off by his suggestion that only African Americans should be eligible for city contracts set aside for minorities and women. Meeks made the statement on Wednesday during an interview on WVON-AM (1690). It happened during a discussion of […]
(AJC) — When Mitzi Smith Moore started in plumbing two decades ago, she never imagined she would one day own her own plumbing company. Moore, who had a bachelor’s in finance and was months away from a master’s in middle childhood education, joined her father’s plumbing business in 1990 after a divorce made her the […]
(Crain’s) — Women own more than a third of Chicago businesses, and Illinois generally is a female-friendly state for entrepreneurs, the Census Bureau reported. Cook County had 165,272 firms owned by women in 2007, second only to Los Angeles County, according to a survey of business owners conducted every five years. In Chicago, 36% of […]
(The Business Review) — Using a downtown Buffalo coffee shop that’s owned by an African-American woman, New York Gov. David Paterson signed a new bill into law that encourages more investment in minority and women-owned businesses across the state. The bill, championed by Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, now ensures that minority and women-owned businesses will have an […]
(Businessweek) — The performance gap between women-owned businesses and their male counterparts is well-documented. Yet the Obama Administration would rather spout rhetoric about how it is helping female entrepreneurs than develop policies to address what its own research shows are the causes of the problem. At least that’s what a recent Commerce Dept. report seems to […]
(Small Business Trends) — The Census Bureau recently trumpeted news about growth in Black and women-owned businesses. With the press release bearing the headline of “Census Bureau Reports Minority Business Ownership Increasing at More Than Twice the National Rate,” the Census’s Press Office gave the impression that the 2007 Survey of Business Owners unearthed a boom […]