Melinda believes that through technical support and education, small business owners can overcome the challenges they face and play an important role in building the U.S. economy. The Melinda F. Emerson Foundation is dedicated to igniting a movement to end small business failure.
This foundation is being established to enable more people to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams, by providing free tools, educational materials and executive education opportunities for minority and women-owned businesses.
The foundation will support entrepreneurship educators, host mentorship events and provide resources for existing small business owners to upgrade their management and leadership skills.
“I really wanted to create a way to affect more small business owners,” says Emerson. She adds, “This foundation will stand in the gap for minority and women owned business owners and provide access to executive education courses like the ones that helped me learn how to be a better business owner.”
Emerson, turning 40 this month, wanted to party with a purpose and will kick-off the foundation’s activities with a star-studded fundraiser at the Loews Hotel Philadelphia on October 13th for her birthday. Instead of gifts, guests were asked to contribute at least $50 to the Melinda F. Emerson Foundation. Contributions have exceeded expectations.
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About the Foundation: The Melinda F. Emerson Foundation for Small Business Success (www.melindafemersonfoundation.org), was founded in 2012 in response to Melinda Emerson’s mentoring needs of small business owners across the country.
About Melinda F. Emerson: Known as SmallBizLady, Melinda F. Emerson is America’s #1 small business expert. She is an author, speaker and small business coach whose areas of expertise include small business start-up, business development and social media marketing. As CEO of Quintessence Multimedia, Melinda develops audio, video and written content to help her Fortune 500 clients engage small business customers. She is a weekly columnist for the You’re The Boss blog for the New York Times. She publishes a resource blog, which is syndicated by the Huffington Post, entitled succeedasyourownboss.com and hosts a weekly talk show on Twitter called #SmallBizChat for today’s entrepreneurs. She reaches 1.5 million small business owners weekly on the internet. Forbes Magazine named Melinda Emerson #1 Woman for Entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter. She is also the author of the bestselling book “Become Your Own Boss in 12 months; A Month-by-Month Guide to a Business That Works.”