Women In Business

While women have made significant strides in education, having long accounted for about half of all college graduates in the country, they are still largely underrepresented in business and government leadership roles.

The Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation (WWBIC) of Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Business Development Finance Corporation (WBD) of Monona will receive national awards from the U.S. Small Business Administration, the SBA’s Wisconsin District Office announced.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! Inc.’s chief executive officer, caused quite a stir when she banned telecommuting from home. All Yahoo! employees must report to their offices starting in June, or find a new company to work for. In a memo sent to internal employees, Mayer says that speed and quality are often sacrificed when work is done from home and in order to have the best communication and collaboration, employees need to be working side-by-side.

In recent years, regionalism has been a hot topic in the news and a trend among area businesses and local governments. From boardrooms of area businesses to County Board and Common Council meetings, our elected leaders have looked to find ways to share services and create efficiencies. However, the benefits and efficiencies of regionalization are not unique to businesses and municipalities, they can be equally as important for nonprofit and service-oriented organizations.

Milwaukee played host to the second annual Women in Manufacturing conference last week, attracting women from all over the country who work in the manufacturing industry to the Pfister Hotel.

Each year the World Economic Forum publishes a Global Gender Gap report that ranks the countries of the world on four metrics to measure their degree of gender equality or inequality:

Over the past five years most observers would agree there has been little to cheer about in the broader economy. The recession of 2008-09 negatively impacted many economic metrics; from gross domestic product to income to employment to investment spending.

Wisconsin banks that have received capital from the federal Small Business Lending Fund have increased small business lending by $109.2 million over their baselines, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Pinstripe Inc. has been doubling in size every 12 to 18 months since it was founded in 2005, and the Brookfield-based company recently received a substantial investment from California private equity firm Accel-KKR.

Gail Lione will be honored Thursday as the BizTimes Woman Executive of the Year. Lione will receive the award at the BizTimes Women in Business Breakfast, which will take place at the BizEpo.

A panel of accomplished executives will be featured in the BizTimes Women in Business Conference to be held on the morning of Thursday, May 17, at the BizExpo at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino.

A panel of accomplished female business leaders will share their insights at the 2012 BizTimes Women in Business Breakfast, which also will feature the presentation of the BizTimes Woman Executive of the Year to Gail Lione.