Are Female Entrepreneurs Saviours of Our Economy?
Rotterdam, September 2009 --- Three successful female entrepreneurs’ visions of their contribution to the economy and their insights into managing businesses drew both men and women to a Rotterdam workshop entitled “Female entrepreneurs- the saviours of our economy?”
The event was the second workshop organised by members of the OneMBA Women 2010 class at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in co-operation with the European Professional Women’s Network (EPWN) on 10 September, and the first such event hosted on campus.
The three experienced Dutch entrepreneurs; Eleonore Breukel, Ursula Rozemeijer and Patty Kruiswijk were introduced by RSM’s Associate Dean of MBA programmes, Dianne Bevelander, who compared female and male entrepreneurs with an extraordinary example when she asked: “What do Peru and Japan have in common here?” During 2007, said Dean Bevelander, Japan and Peru were the only two countries where women were more active than men in starting a business.
Eleonore Breukel was the first to share her experience. She is Managing Director of Intercultural Communications BV, an intercultural training and coaching firm and an entrepreneur for the past 25 years. Ten years into her business career she started her own company in the Antilles. By focusing firmly on her objectives, and by keeping an open mind and remaining resilient, she overcame the barriers of being a foreigner. After returning to the Netherlands, she started another new business, which has been trading for 15 years. Again, her success was built on her strengths and capabilities, and her insistence that a business leader should ’walk the talk’ and remember that ’doing the right thing is not always being right’.
Second speaker was Ursula Rozenmeijer, a graduate of the management development programme at VNU. Later she became a successful e-business consultant with her own consultancy Emio, working with the offices of Beam’it and for the past three years as the director and co-founder of TC-One, a company supporting business sales. Ms Rozenmeijer spoke of her experience dealing with internal stakeholders and how the ego sometimes gets in the way of doing the right thing. Her insights were useful for deciding if one has the right capabilities for starting a business, and for showing how to focus efforts in the right places to leverage business. As a strategic consultant, Ms Rozenmeijer was able to demonstrate from personal experience what questions an entrepreneur must be able to answer before starting a new enterprise.
Last, but not least, Drs. Patty Kruiswijk with a Master’s degree in Social Sciences and a business in coaching and consultancy that she has run since 1986 provided the audience with useful mantras such as ‘confront your fears’ and ’don’t give up’. She has used these herself to stand out the crowd during her successful career as an entrepreneur.
Further discussions and questions concluded the session. Participants at the event were delighted and inspired. Sabnam (One MBA2010) said: “It has been a wonderful experience.”, and Teresa, also from OneMBA2010 commented: “I enjoyed the diversity of the panel. I have learned some lessons and I think we can support each other.”
David, from OneMBA2010 said he understood now that women share ideas differently to the way ideas are shared by men – which could show a different way to do business, and also that confronting fear was common to the successful careers of all three women. Full-time MBA student Patricia said: “I’ve learned that entrepreneurs are not just those who start a new business from scratch, but also anybody that starts a project and involves others to accomplish it. Maybe, women ARE the real saviours of the economy!”
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University is a top-ranked international business school renowned for its ground-breaking research in sustainable business practice and for the development of leaders in global business. Offering an array of bachelor, master, doctoral, MBA and executive education programmes, RSM is consistently ranked amongst the top 10 business schools in Europe.
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