"The Women's Business Enterprise Alliance increases business opportunities for women and provides qualified suppliers to buyers through women-owned certification," says Danielle Vara-Aleman, Marketing and Events Coordinator for the WBEA. The Workshop provided an in-depth assessment of the certification process, as well as explained the benefits of certification. "Corporations depend on it (certification). Our corporate members have made a commitment to recognizing women-owned businesses in their supply chain. They depend on us to provide them with bona-fide women-owned businesses who are 51% owned, managed, and controlled by a women." Vara-Aleman states.

WBEA's Daniella Vara & EMG's Ashim Das

The Women's Business Enterprise Alliance, a nationally recognized purchasing council and affiliate of the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), is an independent 501 (c) (3) full-service purchasing council for nationally certified women's business enterprises (WBEs) through WBENC. The WBEA is strongly committed to increasing opportunities for women-owned businesses and providing qualified suppliers to corporate and government purchasers. Headquartered in Houston, the Women's Business Enterprise Alliance serves a 94-county region with programs, activities, and educational opportunities designed to support and promote women-owned enterprises, e-mail Danielle Vara at dvara@wbea-texas.org, or call 713-681-9232.

The Workshop was a collaborative event led by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce (IACCGH) . "The workshop was the first in a series of monthly programs focused on educating our members and the small business community about small business/HUB/Minority & supplier diversity opportunities", states Jagdip Ahluwalia, Executive Director of the IACCGH. Through solid alliances with other community organizations, the WBEA hopes to increase awareness of the benefits to woman-owned certification to women entrepreneurs.

To quote Ashim Das of the EMG at the Houston Technology Center "In order to bring Houston to the technological forefront and bring the benefits of such technological advances to the diverse communities in Houston, all like minded social, business, government, and technology incubator organizations such as HTC should work together with a common and shared mission. This alone can ensure continued prosperity and make Houston 'The place of choice' for local and immigrant people deciding where to live, work and raise a family". The series was inaugurated by Paul Frisson , President of Houston Technology Center and HTC's Aruna Vishwanathan told the audience about HTC.

Aruna Vishwanathan from HTC

The IACCGH and the HTC's EMG will be organizing similar events on the last Wednesday of every month 5.30pm-7.30pm. The April event will feature Richard Huebner of Houston Minority Business Council and in May the speaker will be Larry Hughes of Chevron Texaco. For more information on how to sign up for thses events or to learn more about the IACCGH contact Mondira Tangri at 713 624 7131 or by email at mondira@iaccgh.com