Marking Women’s History Month 2016
Marking Women's History Month 2016
On March 24th, BCNA officially marked Women’s History Month with an exciting event at our Queens office, highlighting the challenges and opportunities for women owned businesses in New York City.
We were honored to have Judy Messina, lead writer for "Breaking Through," moderate a panel composed of successful immigrant female entrepreneurs. 
Panelists included Nancy Soria Reynoso, who is the owner and operator of a Green Taxi, a spokesperson for the Outer Borough taxis, and who has her own radio show; Alimata Zabsonre of Alima Hair Braiding, a salon that has created 5 jobs for women in her community; Elpida Vasiliadis of Souvlaki Lady Food Truck, who was a finalist for the Vendy Awards in 2015; and Yukiko Sato, founder of Tresage by Yukiko Sato, and now founder of two new start-ups, SnowSugar Video and TeSage Dream Solutions.
Executive Director Yanki Tshering took the opportunity to salute another Queens business entrepreneur, Estee Lauder, as well as introduce BCNA’s new Quick Action Short Term Loans, that will provide women – and other – business owners with much needed working capital without the usual red tape and waiting time.
All four panelists spoke about how their passions for design, meeting new 
people, cooking, hair styling, or helping other businesses grow, led to them start their businesses. All four agreed that access to capital was a challenge to starting their business. Elpida Vasiliadis mentioned the excessive fines for minor infractions by street food vendors and lack of new permits for food vendors. Another panelist spoke about how she had relied on credit cards for start-up capital and racked up huge interest rates.
When asked by a member of the audience what they would do if they had access to a million dollars, each panelist had plans that not only included 
expanding their businesses, but also benefitting their community. Elpida Vasiliadis said she would like to start a restaurant and hire people from her neighborhood; Nancy Reynoso would like to acquire a number of taxis, but also to start a membership organization that could advocate on behalf of the outer borough taxi drivers; Alimata Zabsonre would like to expand her hair styling business and the African Women’s Network, a networking group for African entrepreneurs that she started; and Yukiko Sato would like to provide advice to female entrepreneurs on how to use social media to promote their business.
Hearing their exciting – and supportive – ideas made it clear that, while their ideas on how to invest the $1 million may differ dramatically from traditional – male – ways to invest $1 million dollars, perhaps we should rethink the traditional models and how we calculate the cost and benefits of investments.
We’ll be checking back with our panel in time for next year’s #WomensHistoryMonth to see how close they’ve come!
BCNA’s peer networking groups for female entrepreneurs are funded by a grant from the New York Women’s Foundation, a cross-cultural alliance of women catalyzing partnerships and leveraging human and financial capital to achieve sustained economic security and justice for women and girls. Click here to learn more about the New York Women’s Foundation.