Archive for May, 2011

By Amanda Roberson
MBA Candidate, 2012

“I’m taking you to the end of the world!” our taxi driver Hector shouted as he deftly navigated the hillsides heading into the outskirts of Lima. Hector was quite surprised by some of the locations he took us to for our visits with women business owners. As a Peruvian police officer, he told us that even he had never been to some of these remote parts of the city. Despite Hector’s friendly concern and armed with  adventurous spirit and a toolbox of basic business skills to teach, we five interns headed deep into the barrios of Lima where the business owners who are a powerful part of their country’s economy reside.

Thursday marked the end of our first week working as part of Proyecto Salta, an initiative to train women business owners in skills that can help them strengthen and grow their enterprises. Not knowing quite what to expect, I headed out each day to be amazed as I met each woman and heard her unique story. As women in this Latin American country, they are the driving force not only of their families, but of their communities and their businesses. They tackle the challenge of juggling multiple roles every day with determination and resolve. Although they may lack the basic skills they need to maximize their businesses, they are eager to learn and are happy to receive the one-on-one training Salta offers.

Here is a snippet of the women’s stories:

Ana Maximina, the first woman I met with, lives in the district of Comas where the blocks are assigned zone numbers that escalate along with the road up the hillside. She buys clothes, mostly school uniforms, and sells them at the local Comas market. She’s been doing this work for years, but recently her profits have begun to decrease as many competitors have moved into the market selling the same products at various qualities. As she enters her mid-sixties, Ana is growing tired of the arduous effort of getting to the market every day at 7 a.m., unpacking her stall, selling into the evening hours and packing back up again. She believes she could earn more by sewing uniforms and selling them to vendors. Her daughter Elizabeth, who worked for years in a sewing shop, could help.

Edith lives in another district called San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima’s biggest. Like Comas, it begins with bustling avenues and transforms into a dusty mountainside dotted with colorful homes as the road putters to an end. She started her business selling cleaning products she makes in her home, but she would rather work as a seamstress, she told me as we chatted across her sewing machine. A neighbor who has a thriving sewing business sends her pockets to sew into jeans, and Edith tackles a pile of them each night after her two children go to bed. It’s steady work, but her simple sewing machine can’t do more than sew pockets and basic straight lines. She wants to save up to buy two more sophisticated machines, and her friend has already promised her that she has more than enough work to send Edith’s way once she has the proper equipment.

Martha is the matriarch of a family of three women. When she became a widow twenty years ago, she began selling meat at the daily market in her section of San Juan de Lurigancho. The business has done well and allowed her to maintain a two-story house in the middle of town with tiled floors and nicely upholstered furniture, amenities most of her neighbors lack. Health problems have stopped her from working at the market every day, but her oldest daughter Elizabeth has happily taken over. Although the business continues to do well, the family doesn’t know when they will be able to achieve their goal of expanding the sales counter and buying a new refrigerator. Like most of the small business owners I have met with, they do not maintain any type of accounting system. As she chopped away at a giant cow liver to sell that day, Elizabeth told me she is excited to work together on learning some basic accounting practices that can empower her to fully take over and expand the business.

Anila runs a lively bodega in the center of San Juan de Lorigancho. Her niche is serving customers late at night as they search for a snack, a single cigarette to smoke, or some pisco to take to a party. She also sells the basics you find at most bodegas, or Peruvian corner stores, such as sodas, snacks, cleaning products and toilet paper. She takes pride in her small shop, but the work is exhausting. She opens every day at 10 a.m. and works until 2 or 3 a.m. Realizing that she can’t keep up this schedule forever as health problems set in, she would like to develop a plan that allows her to maximize profits. Establishing a basic accounting and inventory system will be a good first step. Her speedy math skills and expertise in the market will guide her in the right direction.

Marizol’s story is different from that of the other women. An accountant with one successful office close to the center of Lima, she recently opened another office in Magdalena, a bustling district that borders the Pacific Ocean. She hopes to offer Magdalena’s small business owners accounting services that can help them manage their finances and provide the proper documentation to banks when necessary. Young, energetic and extremely busy, Marizol told me of her hopes for the new office as we chatted on the office couch. She wants to develop a marketing plan that will help her partner, who is managing the Magdalena office, to enter this new market.

This is just a snapshot of the women who are part of Proyecto Salta. Working with each of them for three more three-hour sessions, I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together to hopefully make some of their aspirations a reality.

After two weeks, 15 entrepreneurship training sessions, a handful of off-campus site visits and final presentations to a panel of potential “investors,” nine Pakistani businesswomen have completed Project Artemis Pakistan at Thunderbird School of Global Management and moved on to Washington, D.C., for a third week of business and cultural immersion.

The women’s empowerment course, designed at Thunderbird in partnership with the U.S. State Department and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, was modeled on the school’s successful Project Artemis Afghanistan.

The Arizona portion of the Pakistan program ran May 2-15, 2011. Classes covered business topics such as best financial practices, accounting and bookkeeping, business planning, management and leadership, decision making and setting expectations, negotiating strategies, customer service, market evaluation, marketing and human resources consulting, and goal setting.
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Nine Pakistani businesswomen recently delved into the dizzying world of budgets, revenue projections, cost analysis and more with Thunderbird Professor Michael Petersen, PhD., who led classroom discussions covering two days during Project Artemis Pakistan. The women’s empowerment program, which ran May 2-15, 2011, was organized at Thunderbird School of Global Management in partnership with the U.S. State Department and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women.

“This is a very rewarding experience for all of us,” said Petersen, a clinical accounting professor who visited with each Pakistani entrepreneur individually to discuss her particular business and her accounting challenges. “The ladies are all very impressive; their current level of business knowledge and the great amount of experience they have helped them to be able to relate the concepts I was teaching to their own situations.”

He said the accounting lessons can have immediate impact on the women’s businesses. “Unlike some students who are far removed from the real inner workings of a business, these ladies wanted to know the information so they could apply it now,” he said. “It’s rewarding to see that Project Artemis and the topics we are discussing seem to be able to make a real difference in someone’s life.”
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From purchasing pencils for pennies, and from building a pizza parlor from the ground up to best business strategies for growth, nine Pakistani businesswomen recently received classroom lessons in entrepreneurship from Thunderbird School of Global Management Professor Nathan Washburn, Ph.D. The women entrepreneurs came to Thunderbird as part of a partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program. The two-week entrepreneurship training program, Project Artemis, was modeled on the successful Project Artemis Afghanistan program, which launched in 2005 and has trained more than 60 businesswomen from that country.

The strategy session led by Washburn focused on business development and growth and included a pair of hands-on exercises that taught supply-and-demand principles and the practical application of the four categories of business strategies: Cost leadership, focused cost leadership, differentiation and focused differentiation.

“Very much, this has helped me as a businesswoman,” said Artemis fellow Rukhsana Zafar, who owns an herbal hair and skin product line, and is also developing an agribusiness focused on ecofriendly, healthy food. “Business strategy is not my greatest strength, so every moment has been valuable and exciting.”
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Thunderbird School of Global Management Professor Mary Sully deLuque, Ph.D., recently shared leadership and management lessons with nine businesswomen in Project Artemis Pakistan, an entrepreneurship training program that represents a partnership between the U.S. State Department and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program.

Recognized as a leading professor of international business, Sully de Luque is a Research Fellow in the Garvin Center for Cultures and Language at Thunderbird, has written dozens of articles, book chapters and academic-conference proceedings in the areas of global leadership, organizational management and global human-resource management. Here is Sully de Luque’s top 10 list of leadership qualities:

Decisive: Management involves operational discipline and managing complexity. Leadership involves inspiring and managing change.

Visionary: Leaders help create organizational vision, communicate this vision, empower employees to do their jobs, and help set goals to achieve organizational performance and personal goals.
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Thunderbird Professor Christine Pearson, Ph.D., talked May 12, 2011, about Project Artemis Pakistan. She and other Thunderbird faculty hosted nine Pakistani businesswomen May 2-15, 2011, as part of a management training program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative. Pearson led a Project Artemis Pakistan classroom session on communication strategies May 11 and also helped other Thunderbird faculty prepare the women for final presentations on their respective businesses. Pearson took time before departing for a research project in Peru to talk about her impressions of the Artemis fellows.

Q. What most impressed you about these Project Artemis fellows?
A. Our Artemis participants from Pakistan have tremendous desire to succeed. At the same time, they remain mindful of their fellow students who have enabled them to take part in this Artemis program and to succeed back home in Pakistan.
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Thunderbird Professor Mary Sully de Luque, Ph.D., talked May 12, 2011, about Project Artemis Pakistan. She and other  Thunderbird faculty hosted nine Pakistani women business owners May 2-15, 2011, as part of a management training program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women initiative. Sully de Luque led a Project Artemis Pakistan classroom session on management and leadership on May 3 and also helped other Thunderbird faculty prepare the women for final presentations on their respective businesses. Sully de Luque answered questions about the Project Artemis fellows and the program itself following the business presentations.

Q.  Is this your first experience with the Artemis Project, or were you also involved in the Afghanistan project?
A. I guess you could say that I’m a seasoned veteran of Project Artemis. I taught in the very first Artemis program in 2005 and have been the academic co-director in all subsequent Artemis cohorts from Afghanistan. I also have worked with women entrepreneurs from Jordan, Peru and Pakistan. In the process, I have learned much about the women, their business challenges and their cultures.
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Syeda Marriam Shafi Ahmen is one of nine Pakistani women who are fellows in the Thunderbird School of Global Management Project Artemis program, an entrepreneurship training partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program. Syeda and the Artemis group spent two weeks at Thunderbird in May 2011 learning from faculty and local businesswomen, while sharing their own experiences as a group.

Syeda, 28, is the owner of 360M, a multifaceted consulting business offering services such as event management, management consulting, management training, IT products and HR training. She has been in operation less than a year and currently counts four employees. 360M is located in Karachi, a city of more than 20 million that is the largest in Pakistan and is the country’s financial capital.

Syeda was recently with the Artemis Project fellows when they visited My Sister’s Closet, a consignment store offering high-end apparel and owned by Thunderbird graduate Ann Sider ’85. The visit came at the end of an in-class session with Thunderbird Professor Mary Sully de Luque, Ph.D., on leadership, strategic vision and decision making. Here’s what Syeda had to say about one of her first days as a Project Artemis participant.
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Ann Siner graduated from Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1985. After a stint as director of marketing for Pet Food warehouse (before it became PetsMart), Siner teamed with her sister, Jennifer, to open a small Phoenix store selling consigned clothing. Today, 20 years later, the sisters control a 10-store empire that includes four My Sister’s Closets and four My Sister’s Attic locations offering home furnishings, and a pair of Well Suited Men’s Resale stores.

For the second time in as many years, Ann opened one of her Closets to Project Artemis fellows. On May 3, 2011, the nine Pakistani businesswomen who came to Thunderbird for entrepreneurship training under the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, met with Siner at her My Sister’s Closet location in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Siner shared startup secrets and business advice with the group and then escorted them across the shopping center to one of her My Sister’s Attic locations. The Pakistani participants asked lots of questions, shared their own experiences, and generally soaked up the opportunity to observe a U.S. retail outlet in action.
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From what leaders do to how they communicate, a group of nine women business owners from Pakistan received the low-down on entrepreneurship May 2-15, 2011, at Thunderbird School of Global Management as part of a new partnership between the U.S. Department of State and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program.

Following kickoff sessions focusing on financial literacy and accounting, Project Artemis participants joined Thunderbird Professor Mary Sully de Luque, Ph.D., in a discussion centering on management leadership. Sully de Luque, a research fellow at the Garvin Center for Culture and Languages, covered a variety of topics that encouraged the women to share experiences.

“These are women who have great potential to be able to learn the curriculum being taught here and take it back to their home country and make a significant economic impact on their businesses,” said Wynona Heim, program manager for Thunderbird for Good, the school’s philanthropic arm that includes Project Artemis. “A great lesson for these women is that they are not alone; that there is a network of entrepreneurs all over the world, facing many of the same problems. They can draw from this network.
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