| 2023-2024 Course Catalog
The Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University
Mission
The Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University creates economic opportunities for women through entrepreneurial counseling, education and training. Building on Chatham University's tradition of educating women for 150 years, The Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University has provided high quality education and training for women entrepreneurs since 2005.
The Center for Women's Entrepreneurship at Chatham University (CWE) is funded in part by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide services geared specifically to women and underserved populations, minority entrepreneurs and veterans throughout Western Pennsylvania. CWE offers aspiring and existing business owners free or low-cost business counseling, training programs, technical support, networking and mentoring focused on business planning and leadership, marketing, financing, access to capital, federal contracting, and business expansion through international markets and exporting. CWE offers a suite of programs for early stage to established stage businesses. CWE's signature programs include, Concept to Launch, Women Business Leaders Breakfast Series, IncubateHER, Roadmap to $1MM+ and Membership. With the support of the SBA Women's Business Center award in 2016, CWE expanded its programming to offer free one-on-one business counseling and technical assistance.
CWE designs and implements programs and services that are targeted to women in underserved communities and the challenges they face in starting, growing, and succeeding in business. The programs are structured to meet the needs of regional communities and are offered with the assistance and support of community organizations, at no or minimal cost to the participants. CWE serves women within the 11 counties surrounding Pittsburgh, PA.
Impact
Since receiving SBA Women's Business Center award in 2016 and with the support of community partners and economic development agencies, CWE has offered 214 training programs from April 2016 through September 2020, including Concept to Launch a 6-week entrepreneurial training program, Build Your Business workshop, webinars, and seminars on topics including financing a business, digital marketing, branding, accounting, exporting, certification, legal issues, hiring employees, veteran business ownership, and business startup, growth, and new product/service development. Through these programs, CWE has served over 5630 women entrepreneurs with 578 training hours.
CWE offers free business counseling and technical assistance to startup and established women entrepreneurs at our Chatham Eastside location, and multiple locations in Allegheny, Butler, Beaver and Westmorland counties. The business counseling and technical assistance is provided in person, online and by phone. From April 2016 to September 2020, CWE provided 2649 hours of business counseling to 1399 clients, which directly contributed to 164 new businesses and $12.5M in raised capital through a combination of equity, SBA loans, and private loans. Since April 1, 2020, CWE has provided COVID-19 resource, recovery and loan counseling sessions to nearly 185 unique clients, resulting in over $4.6M in capital infusion.
To visit the Center for Women's Entrepreneurship page, click here.
