Academy inspires commerce in youth
Anna Ouroumian, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Academy of Business Leadership in Rosemead, knows firsthand some of the challenges facing the inner-city youth she recruits for her year-round programs.
She spent her childhood in orphanages in war-torn Beirut before coming to Los Angeles to attend UCLA on scholarships and money saved from working for the Armenian nuns who ran the orphanages in her native Lebanon. Based on her own experience, she believes young people can do much more than they, or most adults, realize.
Ouroumian says she has raised more than $20 million in contributions and steered more than 45,000 students through the business academy’s workshops and seminars since taking over the organization in 1998. That includes 1,800 students who have graduated from an intensive seven-week summer business program.
“I don’t call them at-risk,” Ouroumian, 32, said of the academy’s students. “I call them high-potential, low-opportunity.”
Some of the nation’s largest corporations agree with her, including Merrill Lynch & Co., which last month pledged $500,000 over five years to the center. Washington Mutual Inc. just agreed to fund Ouroumian’s Center for Ideation, she said.
The new program will teach students how to market the inventions and innovations they come up with in some of the academy’s other projects.
For more information about the Academy of Business Leadership, visit www.goabl.org.
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Centers seek to nurture women entrepreneurs
The number of Women’s Business Centers in California jumped 50% this month to 12, with Small Business Administration funding for four new centers, three of which are in the Los Angeles area.
The new centers in Los Angeles, Santa Ana and the Coachella Valley are needed. Since the late 1990s, the Golden State turned in a leaden performance in the growth of businesses owned by women, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research.
The 7% increase from 1997 to 2004, the most recent figures available, earned the state a spot near the bottom -- No. 47 -- in a ranking of the 50 states and the District of Columbia by the center, which counts all firms at least half-owned by women. There are 1.3 million such companies in California.
The center’s numbers also show that women-owned businesses in the state posted higher growth in employment and sales than the national average for women-owned firms.
That points to the need for the Women’s Business Centers, whose mission is to build the number of start-ups owned by women, particularly those who are minorities or economically disadvantaged.
To do so takes “a different approach. It takes longer,” said Wilma Goldstein, associate administrator for the SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership.
Forging close relationships with clients is an important part of the process, said Michelle Skiljan, director of the Inland Empire center, which is affiliated with Cal State San Bernardino.
“There are a lot of programs that help business owners but we are more hands-on,” she said. “That takes the fear away of doing it on your own.”
The program is run by the university’s Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship, which received an SBA grant to open a second Women’s Business Center in Palm Desert.
The centers typically offer workshops, classes and seminars on the nuts-and-bolts of starting a business, as well as resource rooms. And, in the case of Skiljan’s center, a play area is available for children accompanying their entrepreneurial moms.
Monica Almond spends two to three days a week at the Inland Empire center as she attempts to launch her college and career planning service, Higher Learning Network, for high school and college students.
“It’s definitely helped me jump-start my business,” said Almond, a former mortgage broker. “As a new entrepreneur you don’t know what in the world you are doing.”
To assist Almond and other business owners, the SBA awarded grants totaling $12 million to 19 new Women’s Business Centers nationwide and 80 existing centers. The new centers each received $150,000 for first-year operations. They are expected to match half that amount with private contributions.
For more information, visit www.sba.gov.
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SDSU to offer global entrepreneurship MBA
Companies are on the hunt for professionals with the international business and entrepreneurship skills needed to hone a competitive edge in today’s fast-changing, global business environment.
To help fill the gap, San Diego State University said last week that it had created the first international entrepreneurship MBA. The one-year program sponsored by the College of Business Administration will require students to spend 36 weeks studying in India, China and the Middle East.
Students will take business classes at universities in each region and tour the local operations of the programs’ five corporate sponsors: Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Invitrogen Corp., KPMG and Qualcomm Inc. Company executives in each location will lead lectures on cross-cultural business practices.
“We’ll be able to give students not only a strong academic training but we’ll be able to expose them to the high-tech, bio-tech and telecom experts who started out as entrepreneurs who are now global leaders,” said Gail Naughton, dean of the business college.
The global entrepreneurship MBA is expected to cost about $80,000, including $35,000 or so for travel, lodging and food. The first class is expected to start in October. For more information, visit gemba.sdsu.edu.
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