Greetings NAWBO Nashville Members:
My, how quickly a year flies! Last July, I stepped into the Chapter President role with a passion to help women entrepreneurs reach the next level of success. Each month has been a wonderful journey to explore what makes our organization unique and the value we bring to one another and the entrepreneur community.
Our intention this past year has been to provide relevant programming to our members and focus on what makes us different: NAWBO is the only national organization dedicated to meeting the needs of women business owners.
We focused on growing our chapter through collaboration with our members and partners. We invited the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development to discuss the creative economy. We co-hosted a holiday event Toast to Success with Pathway Women’s Business Center and International Coach Federation of Tennessee. We invited our friends at SCORE Nashville to share their business planning strategies. We brought together successful women entrepreneurs to share the inside scoop about their rise to the top at our annual NAWBO Business University series.
As part of NBU, we showcased organizations that serve entrepreneurs in a Resource Expo including ScaleUp Nashville, BizStudio, Williamson, Inc., SBA and corporate partners Nationwide and Ascend Federal Credit Union among others.
We diversified our monthly meetings to be held at various venues and different times of day to accommodate new members and guests. We’ve had the pleasure of meeting at Belmont University, Bytes of Knowledge Studio and The Refinery with upcoming events at Arts Business Council of Greater Nashville (May 31st), Nashville Entrepreneur Center (June 28th) and Pinnacle Financial Partners (July 26th).
These changes have expanded our horizons to see the impact NAWBO members have on the entrepreneur economy that makes Nashville such a great place to live, work and play. The positive energy is palpable at our monthly meetings and we’ve felt the momentum by welcoming 12 new members to our chapter in the last few months.
Most importantly, we made many meaningful connections with NAWBO members throughout the year and hope you did too. We hope you learned a valuable nugget or two from our meetings that you could apply to your own business.
I would like to thank our corporate partners, members and committee members for a great year. A special thank you to our board of directors for their leadership and dedication to NAWBO. It has been an honor to serve with you:
Brittany Lorenzi, President-Elect and Programming Co-Chair
Jacqueline Hayes, Immediate Past President and Marketing Chair
Cara Aaron, Treasurer
Amanda Blanck, Programming Co-Chair
Maria Brannon, Social Media
Becky Bayne, Graphic Design
Andrea Farr, Webmaster
All the best,
Julie Lilliston
President | NAWBO Nashville