DC Tech Leaders Launch Major Initiative to Support

Women Entrepreneurs
BEACON Initiative receives backing of Mayor Bowser, looks to make the
District the top U.S. city for women innovators and entrepreneurs
WASHINGTON, DC, November 30, 2016 Washington, D.C. area leaders
and entrepreneurs announced today the launch of BEACON: The DC Women
Founders Initiative, a campaign to make Washington, D.C. the most
supportive ecosystem for women entrepreneurs in the United States. The
initiative will bring together business leaders, investors, government leaders,
mentoring networks and other allies in a unified effort to expand funding and
other resources and opportunities for women entrepreneurs.
As part of the launch, BEACON unveiled a key partnership with D.C. Mayor
Muriel Bowser that includes dedicated grant funding for organizations that
provide resources, mentoring and other support to women founders in the
D.C. area.
I am committed to continuing Washington, DCs reign as a top city for
women entrepreneurs, said Mayor Bowser. I am excited to support
BEACON, an initiative that brings together the Districts public and private
sectors to foster an innovative environment for DCs next wave of women
entrepreneurs.
BEACON also announced a series of workshops to engage area innovators in
a collaborative effort to understand the challenges and needs of women
District entrepreneurs. The workshops will inform future projects of the
initiative and are supported by the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at
Georgetown Law, with sponsorship from Google as part of its efforts to bring
more diverse voices into technology.
Support from Georgetown will help ensure that the DC Women Founders
Initiative attains specific, quantifiable measures of success and that the
Initiative develops a replicable model that can be scaled to benefit other
communities in the District and across the United States.
The innovation community in Washington D.C. is vibrant and growing, said
Shana Glenzer, co-founder of the DC FemTech collective and a member of
the BEACON board. By amplifying the resources for women entrepreneurs

and would-be entrepreneurs, we are making D.C. a leading hub for women
founders.
Investing in women is smart business, said Anna Mason, director of
investments for Rise of the Rest at Revolution and D.C. co-director of The
Vinetta Project, another BEACON leader. We are seeing a nationwide effort
to expand the concept of entrepreneurship and empower more founders to
succeed. D.C. is well-positioned to showcase the best approaches for
supporting women entrepreneurs.
Todays launch comes at a time of increasing focus on the imbalance of
funding and resources available for women entrepreneurs. Just one in ten
venture dollars goes to companies with a women founder, and on average,
women start their businesses with half the capital of men. Women of color
face even greater barriers: of 10,284 venture deals funded from 2012-2014,
just 24 involved startups led by black womenabout 0.2 percent
Womens entrepreneurship is on the rise, but women still face
disproportionate challenges in gaining access to capital and other resources
that businesses need to thrive, said Alexandra Givens, Executive Director
of the Institute for Technology Law & Policy at Georgetown Law, which will
contribute to BEACON with policy and management support. BEACON aims
to disrupt that narrative, pulling together resources in a playbook we hope
other cities will follow.
The launch of BEACON takes place today at MakeOffices Dupont with a
roundtable of stakeholders from across the business and tech community.
The roundtable will focus on specific steps that can be taken by local
organizations and individuals to improve resources and opportunities for
women entrepreneurs.
Present were representatives of the D.C. Mayors Office including Deputy
Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Brian Kenner, investors and
entrepreneurs from the D.C. area, and BEACON leaders Aerica Banks of
Google, Xina Eiland of BFF, Black Female Founders and X+PR PR, Shana
Glenzer of MakeOffices and DCFemTech, Alexandra Givens of Georgetown
Law, Mariana Huberman of Cartier Chevy Chase & Tysons Galleria and The
UPS Store #5259, Anna Mason of Revolution and The Vinetta Project, and Joy
Whitt of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic
Development.

For more information on BEACON, visit http://www.thebeacondc.com/.

Press Inquiries should be directed to beaconinitiativedc@gmail.com.