Stella Dowling

Stella Dowling CEO 1Source International, LLC Founded: 2001 Certifying Council: Georgia Women’s Business Council Since its inception in 2001,1Source has been showing record growth numbers annually. In 2007, 1Source’s sales exceeded $2 million, a 22 percent growth.With three sales offices, the number of employees and contractors grew from eight to 15 in 2007, and the company plans to grow in 2008. 1Source, led by CEO Stella Dowling, offers the latest and greatest conferencing technology by striking strategic partnerships with several technology partners worldwide.In addition to offering four Web conferencing platforms, three reservation-less audio conferencing platforms,1Source has developed a tool offering translated prompts for audio onferencing specifically designed for the Hispanic community.1Source recently signed a contract with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Along with over 100 nonprofit organizations nationwide, 1Source offers exceptional conference calling services to women’s organizations including Executive Women’s International, Georgia Women’s Business Council, Women’s Business Council – Southwest,Women’s Business Council – Gulf Coast, National Association of Professional Mortgage Women and Women’s Council of Realtors. www.1source-intl.net

Kathy Bellowoar

Kathy Bellowoar PPT Consulting LLC, an information technology and management consulting firm specializing in the enablement of IT and supply chain initiatives, from planning to execution, was founded in 2003 by former Arthur Andersen Worldwide Partner Kathy Bellwoar. The firm’s corporate clients are primarily manufacturing and pharmaceutical firms in the greater hiladelphia region. Placing an emphasis on people, process and technology, PPT strives to exceed its clients’ expectations on each and every project.The company provides clients with areas such as program/project management, IT services, supply chain and change management and process improvement and optimization. Bellwoar attributes the continued success of the firm to her team’s commitment and passion for excellence. This success is evidenced by the dramatic increase in recent sales, with 2007 revenues doubling those of the year before and industry recognition from national media outlets. www.pptconsultants.com

WBCS awards members for 2007 accomplishments at Parade of Stars Gala

The Women’s Business Council – Southwest members gathered Jan. 28 at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas for its 12th Annual Parade of Stars Gala to honor the 2007 accomplishments of exemplary women’s business enterprises and the corporations that support them. Don McKneely, president of Business News Group, was the emcee for the evening, addressing the 400 guests in attendance.

This year’s award winners included:
WBE of the Year – CRC Group, Inc., Patricia Rodriguez Christian, president
WBE Rising Star – MEB Construction, Eve Fields, president, and Becky Whelan, vice president and chief financial officer
WBE Advocate of the Year – Valerie Freeman, CEO, Imprimis Group
Corporation of the Year – Texas Instruments
Corporate Rising Star – Dell Inc.
Corporate Advocate of the Year – Connie Magers, manager of supplier diversity development, JCPenney
WBE Volunteer of the Year –Dianne Fletcher, CEO, Purdy-McGuire
Corporate Volunteer of the Year – Debbie Barnard, senior procurement associate, ExxonMobil
Regional Volunteer of the Year – Jan Harper, owner, Employment Research Services

These businesses, along with the WBCS membership, contributed to the economy by generating more than $3 billion in 2007.That represents the average revenue per business of $6.26 million, a 23 percent increase over 2006, according to the WBCS. “The annual gala honors women business enterprises that have achieved success and positively contributed to their industries and their communities, along with corporations that understand the value of supporting these WBEs,” said Debbie Hurst,president of WBCS.“Everyone benefits from this cooperation.The WBEs are aided on their pathway to success, and the supporting corporations as well as the communities at large are enhanced by the value these enterprises add.”

This year’s event sponsors were: Title – JCPenney; Underwriters – BNSF Railway, Frito-Lay, Morgan Stanley,Texas Instruments and TXU; Platinum – Alcatel-Lucent, EDS, American Airlines, ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin, Shell and Women’s Enterprise;Gold – Baylor Healthcare and Southwest Airlines; Silver – Austin Industries, Brinker International, Capgemini Energy, City of Dallas, Corporate Express,DCCCD, Dell, DFW International Airport, Fluor, Haley-Greer, IBM, Jackson Walker, LOPEZGARCIA GROUP, Sabre Holdings, Sanmina – SCI, UPS and Windstream.
Other sponsors were: Diamond – Business Interiors, CRC Group, Inc., CFj Manufacturing, Consumer and Market Insights, ETC Group Inc.,Icon Information Consultants,Marketwave,MDI, K Strategies Group LLC and The TransSynery Group; Emerald AD-A-Staff, Inc., Akorbi Language Consulting, Bell Janitorial Services, BIZPHYX, Inc., BKM Total Office of Texas, EduCorp, Fit to Print, Superior Search & Staffing, The Warrior Group and Wynne Transportation; and Ruby – Artful Corporate Interiors, Bergerac Company, EventLink International, Inc., Gilbert Financial Services, Joy Promotions, Inc., Karlee, Inc., Marfield Corporate Stationery, Maximum Leverage, MEB Construction LLC,Pinnacle Technical Resources,Purdy-McGuire,Telecopy, Inc., Texas Moving Co., Inc. and Valerie & Co.
WPEO honors members, gains partnership Three hundred members and sponsors of the Women Presidents’ Educational Organization celebrated their corporate and public entity partnerships on Jan. 24 at the Haworth showroom in Manhattan, N.Y. The WPEO honored more than 50 corporations, government agencies and nonprofit organizations committed to advancing workplace diversity and inclusion. The WPEO also announced a new partnership with New York State,which allows WPEO-certified women’s business enterprises to fast track their state certification. Michael Jones-Bey, director of Empire State Development, attended to co-sign the Memorandum of Understanding with WPEO President and Founder Marsha Firestone, Ph.D. The WPEO currently maintains a similar relationship with the City of New York. Among those honored were Altria Group;AT&T; Avaya;Avis Budget Group, Inc.;AXA Equitable; BAE Systems; Baker Botts LLP; Bank of America; Capital One;Citigroup;City of New York;Colgate-Palmolive; Con Edison; Contemporary Graphics; Cornell University; Deutsche Bank; Eckert, Seamans, Cherin & Mellott LLC; Enterprise Rent-A-Car; Ernst & Young; Exxon Mobil Corp.; Goldman Sachs; HIP; IBM; Johnson & Johnson; JP Morgan Chase & Co.; Lehman Brothers; Macy’s East/Bloomingdale’s; Major League Baseball; MasterCard; Merck; Merrill Lynch; MetLife; Microsoft; Morgan Stanley; NBC Universal; New York Life; Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp.; PepsiCo; Pfizer, Inc.; Pitney Bowes; Price Waterhouse Coopers; Prudential; Public Service Enterprise Group; Schering- Plough; The Hertz Corp.;Time Warner; University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; UPS; Verizon; Wachovia; Weil, Gotshal & Manges; and Wyndham Worldwide. For more information on the WPEO, visit www.wpeo.us.
A C C E N T ON B U S I N E S S
A simple handshake leads to a career in coaching leaders BY TONIE AUER

Laura Morales was a skinny little girl with thick eyeglasses and lots of self-image issues.Shy, awkward and the youngest of four, she found herself blending with the walls. That is until a young friend of hers ran up to Morales’ aunt, introduced herself and shook her hand. “I can still see this girl and remember thinking ‘how did she do that,’” Morales said.
Morales, age 12 at the time, recognized how impressed her aunt was in regard to her friend. “I thought ‘how great is that?’ That was a changing point in my life. It was from that moment that I realized that I didn’t know what I was so afraid of,” Morales said. “That started things. I realized that if I made efforts, especially to help someone feel not so awkward or let them know I was interested in them, it opened up a whole new world.”

From that point on,she became more involved in school activities and her confidence grew. Coming from a lower-middle class Hispanic family, Morales took that confidence and followed the encouragement and applied to Southern Methodist University, where she received a grant and a scholarship. All in all witnessing that one handshake changed her course and outlook on life.

Today, she is the president of Houston-based Energize Your Outlook, a business coaching practice which focuses primarily on helping business executives motivate their employees to create trust within their teams. “Improvement in morale is a natural result of being positive, building trust and commitment from within your team,”Morales explained.“By exploring and understanding the basis from which you are leading your team, [whether] sales representatives, project managers, accountants, engineers, customer service representatives, etc., you can literally bring about positive changes that will successfully spread throughout your entire organization.”

Morales worked in the telecommunications industry for more than 22 years in a variety of positions in sales management, support management, retention and highgrowth sales and marketing and international business development. “My background was in sales and it seemed that every six months for the last two years I was [with my former company] we had a reorganization,” Morales said. “Like most corporations we ended up with a smaller budget, but giant quotas. So, I had to try to get my people to work as a team, and achieve these huge evenue/sales goals. It was a gigantic challenge, but it really helped me because it showed me that I have something to offer.” Morales said she wanted to do something else, but still wanted to interact with people.That led her to branch out on her own with Energize Your Outlook. “I wanted to be able to have more control of my time,” she said.“My main focus was to go into coaching, but I’m also enjoying speaking now. I have been told that I have a gift. My interest is in helping others succeed; to inspire them to be more than they thought they could be.”

IBM sponsors 5th Tuck-WBENC executive program

More than 50 successful women business owners from Washington State to New Jersey gathered recently for the 5th Tuck-WBENC Executive Program at the IBM conference facility in Palisades, NY, sponsored by IBM. Led by Dr, Len Greenhalgh, professor of management and director of executive programs for minority- and women-businesses at Tuck, the attendees received intensive executive level training in management, financials, growth strategies and personnel development. The five-day program was taught by Tuck professors in a curriculum developed especially for women business
enterprises certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council to help WBEs who are beyond the startup phase of their businesses to assess, improve and grow their businesses.

The coursework was designed to assist WBEs in developing a clear strategy,pursuing excellent customer value, making the most of business processes, developing the keys to adequate cash flow, managing relationship for the long term and motivating and empowering employees.

This invaluable intensive learning experience focused primarily on increasing the competitive advantage of the participants’ businesses. The attendees benefited not only for the outstanding instruction, but also from the synergy that developed almost immediately among the business owners.The exchange of ideas as well as open discussions of successes and challenges helped to build a coherent learning community that will be a continued source of support, expertise and strategic lliances for a long time after graduation.
The program is designed to make a big difference in how owners and top executives think about and operate their businesses when they return from the program. Each participant used her own business as the case study.
Using learning groups, the WBEs applied the tools they have learned to assess and improve their businesses,using the same diagnostic and strategy-implementation approaches that external consultants would use.The design of this program draws on Tuck’s decades of experience in refining programs for minorityowned business enterprises. Tuck is the nation’s oldest graduate school of business, and is rated the number one business school by The Wall Street Journal.
In addition to the WBEs,Linda J.Denny, president and CEO of WBENC and Michael. K. Robinson, global director of supplier diversity for IBM were in attendance. Javette Jenkins-Hines,U.S.sourcing manager, technical services/ integrated supplier chain at IBM was the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony. This joint-sponsored program is one of many example of IBM’s commitment to supplier diversity development. The idea for the program another “out of the box” IBM initiative. IBM has committed to being the host through 010, according to the IBM Web site. The next program is scheduled for Oct. 5-9, 2008 at the IBM Palisades, NY conference center.

Over 9,000 business-owning regulatory Websites available through government sponsored site

Business.gov, the official business link to the U.S. government, has launched new search features and expanded content that make it easier for small business owners to find essential information they need to run their operations, including forms, licenses, permits and regulatory information from federal, state and local governments.

In addition to federal government resources, business owners now have access to over 9,000 state, territory, county and city government Web sites providing information on starting and managing a business while complying with regulations from all levels of government.

“The inclusion of state and local content on Business.gov means that small business owners can go to one Web site to find what they need to successfully manage their operations,” said Nancy Sternberg, program manager of the Business Gateway Initiative.“Business.gov helps give small business owners a complete understanding of what’s needed to comply with government regulations.”
Business.gov has also expanded the content of its Small Business Guides which help business owners understand what regulations and programs apply to them, how to comply and how to stay in compliance while growing and managing their operations.

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