Pathways to Women's Entrepreneurship: Understanding Opportunities and Barriers (Senate Small Business Committee hearing, July 26, 2023)
Summary
The printed record of a Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship hearing, S. HRG. 118-90, titled Pathways to Women's Entrepreneurship: Understanding Opportunities and Barriers, held July 26, 2023 in the 118th Congress. Benjamin L. Cardin is Chairman and Joni Ernst is Ranking Member, and the committee met at 10:00 a.m. The witnesses are Adrienne M. Somerville of Somerville Consulting Group, Patrice Onwuka of the Independent Women's Forum, Nik Sweeney of Amani Nicol Wellness and Catherine Koch of K-Tec Systems, Inc. The record also includes an Engine letter, a statement by Kathryn Rose and responses to questions for the record from Koch and Onwuka.
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“Pathways to Women's Entrepreneurship: Understanding Opportunities and Barriers (Senate Small Business Committee hearing, July 26, 2023).”
Original at www.govinfo.gov. Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/pathways-to-women-s-entrepreneurship-understanding-opportunities-and-b-c202a2f97c/
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S. HRG. 118–90
PATHWAYS TO WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEURSHIP:
UNDERSTANDING OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
OF THE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JULY 26, 2023
Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
(
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53–226 WASHINGTON : 2024
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COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland, Chairman
JONI ERNST, Iowa, Ranking Member
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington MARCO RUBIO, Florida
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts RAND PAUL, Kentucky
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey TIM SCOTT, South Carolina
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware TODD YOUNG, Indiana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada TED BUDD, North Carolina
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
SEAN MOORE, Democratic Staff Director
MEREDITH WEST, Republican Staff Director
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CONTENTS
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Benjamin L. Cardin, Chairman, U.S. Senator from Maryland ............................ 1
Joni Ernst, Ranking Member, U.S. Senator from Iowa ........................................ 3
WITNESSES
Ms. Adrienne M. Somerville, CEO, Somerville Consulting Group, LLC, Talent
& Technical Solutions Corporation ..................................................................... 6
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 8
Ms. Patrice Onwuka, Director of the Center for Economic Opportunity, Inde-
pendent Women’s Forum ..................................................................................... 14
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 16
Ms. Nik Sweeney, Founder/CEO, Amani Nicol Wellness ..................................... 23
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 25
Ms. Catherine Koch, President & CEO, K-Tec Systems, Inc. .............................. 32
Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 34
ADDITIONAL LETTERS/STATEMENTS FOR THE RECORD
Engine
Letter dated August 3, 2023 ............................................................................ 52
Rose, Kathryn
Statement dated August 9, 2023 ..................................................................... 56
QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD
Ms. Catherine Koch
Responses to questions submitted by Ranking Member Ernst .................... 58
Ms. Patrice Onwuka
Responses to questions submitted by Ranking Member Ernst .................... 60
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PATHWAYS TO WOMEN’S ENTREPRENEUR-
SHIP: UNDERSTANDING OPPORTUNITIES
AND BARRIERS
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2023
UNITED STATES SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
106, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Benjamin Cardin, Chair-
man of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Cardin [presiding], Hirono, Rosen, Ernst,
Hawley, and Hickenlooper.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARDIN
Chairman CARDIN. Well, good morning, everyone.
[Chorus from AUDIENCE.] Good morning.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Ernst and I are not used to this type
of attendance at our hearings. [Laughter and applause.]
Chairman CARDIN. We really welcome you to this hearing. We
know that America is in great shape when we see the spirit that’s
in this room. The entrepreneurial spirit of women has really car-
ried us into an unprecedented growth in small businesses during
this period of time.
So we applaud your entrepreneurship and we welcome you to our
committee. We are looking forward to this particular hearing as we
talk about how the Small Business Administration, how all of us
work together to remove obstacles that have been in the way for
women entrepreneurs.
So we welcome you to the hearing and we look forward to the
distinguished panel of witnesses and their testimony.
I particularly—and I’ll introduce the two witnesses that happen
to be here from Maryland in a few moments, but whenever I have
Marylanders in the room—I got some more Marylanders in the
room—they get special attention. So I’m going to have special
words to say about Ms. Somerville and Mrs. Sweeney.
Every day I’m inspired by the tenacity and innovation of small
businesses across the country, especially women-owned small busi-
nesses. Today, we are witnessing an historic rise in women’s entre-
preneurship under the Biden-Harris Administration. It has lifted
individuals and communities across the country to prosperity.
As Chair of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Com-
mittee, one of my highest priorities is to ensure that our nation
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taps into the entrepreneurial spirit that is sweeping our nation to
build a fair and more just economy for all.
Women-owned small businesses, particularly black women-owned
small businesses, are leading the charge post-pandemic with his-
toric numbers of new small business startups but unfortunately
still face systemic barriers to success as entrepreneurs.
In a committee staff report released prior to this hearing, we out-
line how access to capital, gaps in mentorship, under-utilization of
women-owned firms in federal contracting, and under-investment
in childcare all make the job of operating a small business unneces-
sarily harder for women, and I want to compliment my staff for the
production of this report.
I encourage you all to please take a look at it because it provides
a chronology of the challenges that we face today for women entre-
preneurs and I hope this will be a guidepost for us moving forward
in trying to deal with some of the changes in the Small Business
Administration’s tools that are in their toolkit that will help our
women.
That’s why throughout my tenure in Congress I have been laser
focused on comprehensive legislation to reauthorize several impor-
tant programs that support American women-owned small busi-
nesses.
Last month, for example, I introduced the Women’s Business
Center Improvement Act, which would increase federal support to
women’s business centers or WBCs by doubling the maximum an-
nual grant to $300,000. [Applause.]
Chairman CARDIN. Both Senator Ernst and I appreciated your
initial response. That was great. But I have to exercise the respon-
sibilities of the Chair and ask that you allow our testimonies to go
forward without response from the audience.
The bill appropriates—even though I like the response. [Laugh-
ter.]
The bill appropriates $31.5 million for each fiscal year from 2024
through 2027 and requires an annual report on the program.
WBCs provide free or low-cost counseling and training focusing
on addressing the unique challenges facing women who want to
start, grow, and expand their small businesses.
Just last year, I was able to secure a new Women’s Business
Center at Bowie State University, Maryland’s oldest historically
black university. The SBA awarded a grant to Rockville Economic
Development to launch the center. The new center is the fourth
WBC in Maryland, joining a WBC in Rockville, a WBC operated by
Morgan State University, and a WBC in Salisbury operated by
Maryland Capital Enterprises.
American women-owned small business owners and entre-
preneurs deserve the very best tools and resources to keep them
growing. It’s the right thing to do as for the values of our nation.
It’s also important for America’s growth.
Congress must do more to ensure women and particularly tradi-
tionally underserved women have access to the same opportunities
as their male counterparts.
I look forward to the testimony of our witnesses and I’m eager
to learn more about what Congress can do to further advance the
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interests of women entrepreneurs.
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And now let me recognize the distinguished Ranking Member
Senator Ernst.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST
Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of
our guests here today, as well.
I walked in the room and I was incredibly impressed by having
so many just wonderful strong women entrepreneurs. So thank you
for joining us.
I also want to welcome the Association of Women’s Business Cen-
ters and thanks for all the work that you are doing and it’s incred-
ibly important that you’re out there supporting women all across
our great United States, and a special shout-out to T.J. Daniels of
the Iowa Women’s Business Center who is also——
Chairman CARDIN. You can respond to that.
Senator ERNST [continuing]. With us. Yeah. [Applause.]
Who is with us here today. So thank you so much.
Today, we will examine ways to help women-owned small busi-
nesses succeed. There are more than 12 million women small busi-
ness owners contributing $2.1 trillion in total sales to our national
economy.
While women entrepreneurs are creating jobs and igniting local
economies, according to the National Federation of Independent
Business, the Small Business Optimism Index remains below the
49-year average for the 18th consecutive month. Inflation and ris-
ing interest rates are top concerns.
Unfortunately, small businesses continue to suffer under
Bidenomics. Despite the White House attempting to paint an opti-
mistic view of the economy, small business owners aren’t buying
the narrative.
President Biden has issued nearly $360 billion in new regulatory
costs on our small businesses. Rather than focusing their time and
energy on strengthening and growing their small businesses, many
have to spend time figuring out how to comply with burdensome
government regulations.
In an effort to address this, I’m working on the PROVE IT Act
to ensure small businesses have a voice in federal agencies’ rule-
making process.
Another challenge I hear from businesses and families is the lack
of access to affordable quality childcare options. In Iowa, 53,000
women have left the workforce since 2020 due to lack of childcare
options.
While the Iowa Legislature and Republican Governor Kim Rey-
nolds have made progress, there’s much more work to be done spe-
cifically at the federal level.
That’s why I’m proud to say my bipartisan Small Business
Childcare Investment Act with Senator Rosen passed out of our
committee just last week. The bill allows nonprofit childcare pro-
viders, including religious nonprofits, to access the SBA loans. This
legislation will create a greater number of affordable childcare op-
tions, especially in rural areas, like mine, and I will continue to ad-
vocate for this bill to be signed into law.
Furthermore, accessing quality business training and coaching is
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critical to our women small business owners. By modernizing the
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Small Business Administration’s SCORE Program, we will be giv-
ing entrepreneurs, especially our women entrepreneurs, access to
quality mentorship.
My SCORE Act of 2023, which revitalizes SBA’s Mentorship Pro-
gram by adding a team of women business leaders called the Na-
tional Women’s Business Coaches, will work alongside SCORE
coaches and pair them with aspiring and existing entrepreneurs.
These coaches will work to recruit individuals with expertise
across all job industries to join the SCORE Program. This will help
guarantee our young entrepreneurs receive the relevant and pro-
ductive assistance to support their path to success.
Lastly, I want to highlight a critical bill I introduced to close
loopholes that enable fraud in the Women-Owned Small Business
Contracting Program.
The Accountability in Women-Owned Small Business Con-
tracting Act eliminates self-certification in the program and holds
federal agencies to task by forcing department and agency heads
to testify before Congress when they fail to meet their own women-
owned small business contracting goals.
Since much of the discussion today will focus on the SBA’s
Women Business Center Program and I’m glad for that, I am
thankful that we’re able to focus on this, but I want to be very
clear about my priorities as we consider any potential reauthoriza-
tion of this program.
The distribution of program resources must be made more con-
sistent across all states, especially in our rural areas.
Mr. Chairman, I do commend you for having four women’s busi-
ness centers in Maryland, but I’m sure you can understand my
frustration that in Iowa we only have one, one center to service the
entire state and our state is very large.
Many of my colleagues on the Republican side share my frustra-
tion that as the Administration has added additional women’s busi-
ness centers to the program, they haven’t seen the benefits in their
own states, many of which like mine have only one service center.
The placement of new centers and the allocation of taxpayer dol-
lars by the SBA must be distributed broadly in the future.
Again, I want to thank all of you very much for being here today
and I look forward to our discussion on how we can best serve our
women entrepreneurs.
Thank you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman CARDIN. Well, Senator Ernst, thank you for your open-
ing statement.
I share your concern. I want to make sure the resources are fair-
ly distributed in all parts of our country and you have a big state
and it’s difficult with just one center. So I recognize your concerns
and I assure you I want to work with you to make sure that women
entrepreneurs are served throughout the entire country.
I’m now going to introduce our panel of distinguished witnesses.
I’ll be introducing you in the order in which you will be pre-
senting—we’ll rotate between my introductions and Senator Ernst’s
introductions.
But I’m very pleased to introduce Ms. Adrienne Somerville, the
CEO of Somerville Consulting Group, LLC, and Talent & Technical
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You have an impressive background of academic achievements
from Norfolk State University, Florida Institute of Technology,
Georgetown University, and Harvard University Kennedy School
Executive Program.
I was very impressed in your background that you were
partnering with Apple and Google and developed and produced a
Mobile Career Guidebook that is downloadable to smart phones
and tablets. So we thank you for that service that you have pro-
vided to the community.
And now for the introduction of Ms. Onwuka, I’ll turn to Senator
Ernst.
Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Patrice Onwuka, Director, Center for Economic Opportunity,
Independent Women’s Forum. The Independent Women’s Forum is
a nonprofit organization whose goal is to develop and advocate for
common sense policy solutions that enhance people’s freedom, op-
portunities, and well-being.
The Center for Economic Opportunity specifically seeks to pro-
mote and develop policies that expand workplace choice, flexibility,
freedom, and opportunity.
Prior to her career at IWF, Patrice served as the Senior Fellow
at the Alliance for Charitable Excellence and before that she
worked as the Communications Director for Generation Oppor-
tunity.
Thank you for joining us, Patrice.
Chairman CARDIN. We then have Mrs. Nik Sweeney, the Found-
er and CEO of Amani Nicol Wellness in Baltimore, Maryland.
We’re pleased to have you with us.
In the spring of 2019, Nik was unemployed, recovering from sur-
gery. She then decided to take her experience as a Zumba instruc-
tor and put that to entrepreneurship. In the fall of 2019, she made
the big jump to become a full-time entrepreneur. She opened the
first and only of its kind holistic wellness spa integrating self-care
with lifestyle medicine and programming to meet the needs of
women in under-resourced communities.
Lastly, we have Mrs. Koch, Koch. Sorry.
Senator ERNST. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chair.
We have Ms. Catherine Koch and she is the President and CEO
of K-Tec Systems. K-Tec Systems was founded by Koch in 1989 in
Southeast Michigan. This small business is a global manufacturer
of advanced control and automation technology, specializing in ac-
curate and reliable temperature flow and pressure measurements.
As a female entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, Cath-
erine is passionate about helping other women start their own
businesses. As a Global Forum committee Member of the Women’s
Business Enterprise National Council and the Board Member and
Vice President of—and it got cut off there. So we welcome you but
thank you, thank you, Ms. Koch, very much for being here.
Chairman CARDIN. To our witnesses, your entire statements will
be made part of our record without objection. You may proceed as
you wish. We ask you to try to summarize your statements in
about five minutes and leave a little time for us to ask you some
questions.
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So we’ll start with Ms. Somerville.
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STATEMENT OF ADRIENNE M. SOMERVILLE, CEO, SOMER-
VILLE CONSULTING GROUP, LLC, TALENT & TECHNICAL SO-
LUTIONS CORPORATION, HUGHESVILLE, MARYLAND
Ms. SOMERVILLE. Good morning and thank you, Chair Cardin
and Ranking Member Ernst and Members of the Committee on
Small Business and Entrepreneurship, for this amazing oppor-
tunity to share my experience as a female business owner and gov-
ernment contractor in Maryland.
My name is Adrienne Somerville and it’s an honor to highlight
my incredible benefit of how technical assistance helped me in my
pursuit of business ownership.
I am the Founder and CEO of two small businesses. I am Con-
sulting Adrienne Somerville Consulting Firm and we collaborate
with diverse leaders to ensure the success in providing ethical,
transparent, repeatable, and affordable talent management solu-
tions focused on improving accountability and ownership at all lev-
els to build strong performance within each company to ensure
strong profit margins.
In addition, Talent & Technical Solutions, we focus on building
IT solutions that result in a plethora of data analytics to help build
companies that manage their talent portfolios.
Throughout building a business, I experienced many challenges
that I later learned are similar to those of other women across the
nation.
Today, I will highlight a few: accessing sources of funding, navi-
gating available information and tools available for business own-
ers, and identifying effective mentorship.
By far, the biggest barrier, of course, to any business is
resourcing. I was faced with difficulty identifying capital opportuni-
ties to support the purchasing of business development tools and
resources which were expensive and needed to enable the success
of my business and scale accordingly.
Ultimately, it was my work with resource partners that helped
me identify these avenues for private and philanthropic capital
which took my business to the next level.
As we identify opportunities to support women business owners
like me across our nation, I ask this committee to consider capital
solutions to incentivize both public and private avenues to capital.
Additionally, another challenge I was met with was navigating
resources available for entrepreneurs. SBA resource partners pro-
vided me with the tools and strategies during my entrepreneurship
journey that set me up for success, sustainable success.
The resource partners I worked with uniquely supported my
needs throughout my entrepreneurship journey. I worked with four
different small business resource partners in various capacities: the
Baltimore-Metro Washington Business Center, the Virginia Wom-
en’s Business Center, SBDC, and SCORE, all of which helped me
as a business owner in different ways.
I have firsthand seen the uniqueness and the value and the im-
pact each resource partner has had in offering me various opportu-
nities through the stages of my development.
SCORE supported me with my pre-business establishment. This
organization provided robust access to tools and training materials
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early in my process. I was able to leverage the tutorials, the manu-
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als, the books, the algorithms, and the structural outlines. They
helped me with the groundwork and the creation of my business.
Once established as a business, I connected with the benefits of
SBDC, the network in Maryland, as well, which helped me develop
the application of the tools, the identification of resources, the es-
tablishment of mentorship.
Through this resource I was able to identify local opportunities
in my community in which I could have the greatest targeted im-
pact. As my business infrastructure was built, the Baltimore-Metro
WBC and Women’s Business Center of Virginia enabled me
through a Guide of Designated Programs that were very targeted
and rich for my business.
This resource was critical in providing assistance to support my
needs as a woman business owner. Through initiatives like
UpScale, certification, training, digital training, conferences, net-
working events, and specialized finance sessions, I was able to
build a true access plan.
Through this program, I was able to apply for the WOSB Certifi-
cation for the State of Virginia which will also open doors for my
business and increase opportunity in terms of visibility in my net-
work.
As a business owner with only six employees, the WBC helped
me provide a one-stop shop when approaching this certification
process. When considering additional solutions that will support
women entrepreneurs like me in pursuit of ownership, I ask that
you consider the following: expand reach to economically-disadvan-
taged regions, equal encouragement for resource partners to col-
laborate with other agencies and organizations, focus on technology
adopting in this hybrid work environment, focus on streamlining
reporting.
We heard a little bit of that today in terms of the administrative
requirements. Designated marketing specifics for resource part-
ners, the reauthorization of the WBC Program along with other re-
source partners, and also support increased appropriation and
funding for the WBC.
I thank you for your time today and I look forward to answering
any of your questions. It’s truly an honor to be here.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Somerville follows:]
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Chairman CARDIN. Thank you very much. [Applause.]
Chairman CARDIN. And you did it exactly in five minutes. That’s
really good.
Mrs. Onwuka.
STATEMENT OF PATRICE ONWUKA, DIRECTOR OF THE CEN-
TER FOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY, INDEPENDENT WOM-
EN’S FORUM, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. ONWUKA. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Cardin,
Ranking Member Ernst, and the Members of the Committee, for
having me to appear today.
I work for the Independent Women’s Forum and, as mentioned,
we want women to value free markets and personal liberty and so
we advance policies that enhance people’s freedom, opportunity,
and well-being.
I’ve got to say entrepreneurship has created ladders of oppor-
tunity for women of all ages, backgrounds, and races. So it’s critical
to ensure that government policies do not erect barriers to oppor-
tunity for women.
Now the growth of female entrepreneurship over the past few
decades has been tremendous. As the Ranking Member mentioned,
women own 12 million businesses, small businesses, or 43 percent
of them.
Interestingly, only about one in 10 actually employ workers.
Most women that own businesses are one-woman shops and they
tend to be concentrated in sectors that track closely with where
women’s labor force participation is.
Most female business owners strike out on their own because
they’re looking for independence, flexibility, and the ability to fulfill
their passion. This actually sets them apart from a lot of their male
counterparts.
Now despite many bright spots, women’s businesses face strug-
gles. Some challenges are universal to men- and women-owned
businesses, such as labor shortages. We’ve seen this in the national
economy. Inflation, unfortunately, still has not gone back down to
pre-2021 levels. Regulations, taxes, and uncertain economic condi-
tions.
Average women’s revenue for women-owned businesses are rising
but they lag behind those of firms owned by men, a lack of capital.
I’m sure we’re going to hear a lot about that. Interestingly, men
start their businesses with six times as much capital as women do.
Women also lack robust networks and that particularly is true
in rural environments. Almost half of female founders cite a lack
of available mentors or advisors as an impediment and so it’s im-
portant that government programs where private programs are not
available be a support to them.
Two additional challenges to starting businesses that I actually
think are directly the result of government-imposed barriers to
building human capital, Number 1, overly restrictive occupational
licensure at state levels, and Number 2, restrictions on inde-
pendent contracting.
I’ll skip a little bit on the occupational licensure since that tends
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to be a state level issue.
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But on independent contracting, many women have found the
flexibility and the freedom to balance work-life-careers by being an
independent contractor, and unfortunately we see some congres-
sional legislation currently pending that would impose restrictions
on the nation’s 65 million freelancers in this country.
I bet you we have some freelancers right in this room today.
They’re not traditional employees. They work for themselves. They
define when, where, and how they work, and for women flexibility
is what allows them to continue to raise their families, to take care
of aging parents and sick family members, and, frankly, just to ful-
fill their passions.
So it’s important that Congress does not needlessly reclassify
independent contractors across this country. We would lose thou-
sands of jobs, millions of jobs, frankly, and raise business costs on
small businesses by anywhere between $18 to $64 billion each
week.
So Congress should not be nationalizing independent contracting.
A piece of that, though, a piece of the entrepreneurship and what
makes it so interesting is that it allows for flexibility for care-giv-
ing and I dropped my kids off right at daycare before this, so I un-
derstand how important it is.
That’s why we should make childcare options more affordable,
plentiful, and diverse. Diversity is key. Not every parent wants a
formal childcare center. Some informal childcare options that are
home-based care, for example, or, frankly, staying with relatives is
really important and, unfortunately, unnecessary regulations that
don’t have anything to do with the quality of care in childcare cen-
ters is increasing costs by up to $1,800 per child each year.
So there’s opportunity for us to look at legislation that would
make it easier for small businesses to be able to offer quality
childcare for their employees and I thank Senator Ernst for men-
tioning the Small Business Childcare Investment Act because I
think that’s one of those opportunities.
Congress needs to consider also just reducing the burden on
small businesses. On average, regulatory costs amount to $11,700
per employee each year, and small businesses, they are the ones
who bear the brunt of those increased regulatory costs.
So there are lots of measures that are floating around that look
at how do we ensure that the Small Business Administration is en-
suring that every new piece of regulation that is passed by Con-
gress does not impose new compliance costs on small businesses.
I have lots of other ideas but I will stop right there. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Onwuka follows:]
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Chairman CARDIN. Thank you very much for your testimony, ap-
preciate it very, very much.
Ms. Sweeney.
STATEMENT OF NIK SWEENEY, FOUNDER/CEO, AMANI NICOL
WELLNESS, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
Ms. SWEENEY. Good morning, Chair Cardin, Ranking Member
Ernst, and Distinguished Members of the Committee.
It is a pleasure to be here and I’m honored today as a business
owner in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing my experience with the
Baltimore Metropolitan Women’s Business Center.
I’ll first start with Amani Nicol Wellness, where we are today
and how we would not be in the position that we are if it was not
for the support of the WBC.
So in 2019, unemployed with this big mission and only $2,000 in
my pocket and an opportunity to make this dream happen, we de-
veloped an innovative approach to help disrupt the health care sys-
tem when it comes to prevention and management of diabetes.
But how are we able to do this? Well, at this time we are a for-
profit social enterprise which means there are two sides to our
business model, one specifically for women who are looking to get
well while we’re able to leverage those resources to fund our pro-
grams for women in underserved and under-resourced commu-
nities.
We are a CDC-recognized prevention program with the highest
rank that the CDC delivers which is 4+ recognition because of our
ability to sustain our impact.
We partner with Notre Dame School of Pharmacy as an accred-
ited diabetes self-management provider to support women specifi-
cally with Type 2 diabetes.
We were accepted to Innovation Works and Accelerated Program
that helped us to raise our first six figure capital raise and we have
partnered with the Office of Women’s Health to help support self
measuring of blood pressure, our Blood Pressure Program.
In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, we were fortunate enough
to be able to relocate from a top office to a professional office park
that more than doubled the size and helped us to become ADA-
compliant so that we could benefit from becoming Medicaid-ap-
proved, contracted with six managed care organizations from Aetna
to BlueCross, as well as Medicare.
Why is that significant? Because in Baltimore City alone, one of
the cities with the highest disparities in terms of diabetes, we are
one of only four Medicare providers when it comes to diabetes pre-
vention.
We’re happy to note that we’re also the only diabetes prevention
program for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in the entire country and
yet we’re facing many challenges and barriers.
While all that success if notable, it would not be possible without
the support of the Baltimore-Washington WBC where as soon as
we closed doors in March of 2020, within a week we received a
mentor, Carmen Braxton, who for nine months walked us through
strategically to keep us on point so that those goals that we just
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So as a result of that, we were able to contract federally. We
were able to expand access, including to the Hispanic-Latino com-
munity. Our Diabetes Prevention Program that was launched in
2022 was the first one launched in the state of Maryland next to
Johns Hopkins.
So while all that sounds great, what about these barriers? Well,
interestingly, we had just provided access to women and the deaf
community and three months later, April 2022, I was diagnosed
with breast cancer. With capacity constraints, revenue suffering,
and trying to figure out how to keep working because there was no
option to close, what mattered most would be the resources and the
ecosystem like that provided by the WBC.
You see, it goes full circle with support. Being able to access
other resources like additional funding would not have been pos-
sible. Being able to benefit from Morgan State University who is
a partner for us because we are able to benefit from interns and
a Master’s of Public Health Program and Doctorate Programs.
We are excited because that program is the reason why Amani
Nicol Wellness did not become one of those businesses that failed.
In less than four years in the heart of a pandemic, we are sup-
porting the health in Baltimore and Maryland as a whole because
of their efforts.
So reauthorizing that program, sustaining the money that it
needs in order for it to continue is not just about helping the
women entrepreneurs like myself to feel good about the dream
that’s been realized but it is a powerful impact on the community
as a whole and not just for today but we’re talking about the ability
to affect generations to come.
Thank you. [Applause.]
[The prepared statement of Ms. Sweeney follows:]
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Chairman CARDIN. Thank you very much for your testimony, but
thank you for what you have meant to our community in Balti-
more. We appreciate it as a fellow Baltimorean.
Mrs. Koch.
STATEMENT OF CATHERINE KOCH, PRESIDENT & CEO, K-TEC
SYSTEMS, INC., ST. FERNDALE, MICHIGAN
Ms. KOCH. Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Ernst,——
Chairman CARDIN. Your mic’s not on.
Ms. Koch. Chairman Cardin, Ranking Member Ernst, Distin-
guished Committee Members and guests, good morning.
My name is Cathy Koch. I am the Founder and Co-Owner of K-
Tec Systems, a Detroit area manufacturer of temperature sensors,
wire harnesses, and control systems. We serve diverse industries,
including automotive, aerospace, food, medical, and chemical.
I am also an alumni of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Busi-
ness Program.
It is an honor to be here today. I appreciate your invitation and
your attention to leveling the playing field for female small busi-
ness owners.
I would like to begin by thanking the committee for its bipartisan
work last week to pass a series of bills to modernize the Small
Business Administration.
I’m here today to share my personal experience and the unique
barriers I have faced and, importantly, what can be done to create
equity and leveling the playing field.
Let me start from the beginning. It was 1989. I had a one-year-
old daughter. I was a recently divorced single mother and I was
working in sales in a male-dominated auto industry. ’89 was a dif-
ferent time. I loved sales and I loved being a mom, but I was told
by my male boss that a woman couldn’t do sales, let alone a new
single mom. I disagreed.
I knew my value and my talent. So I went to a competitor. While
things were better, I was still held back. Eventually, I realized the
only way I could reach my true potential was to start my own busi-
ness. I put together a business plan. I sought a loan from a tradi-
tional lender but because I was a woman, I couldn’t get one with-
out a co-signer. In fact, I hadn’t been able to secure a loan without
a co-signer until three years ago, even though I’ve been profitable
in business every year.
Do you think male small business owners face similar cir-
cumstances?
I can honestly say the women I speak to are not aware of the
Women’s Business Centers and I don’t know the programs they
offer. Wow! Since I couldn’t get a loan to start a business, I bought
a house with a land loan. I used $10,000 from the loan to finance
the start of K-Tec. I had succeeded in overcoming the first chal-
lenge female small business owners face, far more limited access to
capital than their male counterparts.
Starting a business is hard. I made sacrifices. I brought my
daughter to work with me regularly because like many female
small business owners access to affordable and reliable childcare
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Eventually my hard work paid off. We were doing business with
every major automobile manufacturer and had broken into other
industries. Then COVID–19 changed everything. I didn’t think my
company would survive. Thanks to PPP, EIDL Loan, seed loan
from Great Lakes Women’s Business Council, and my amazing em-
ployees, K-Tec pulled through COVID and is thriving again.
In fact, we are doing some of our most meaningful work yet with
the new contract to supply temperature sensors for the transpor-
tation of a new cancer drug.
Here’s the truth. My story, while troubling, is a success story.
The challenge that I faced and still face didn’t stop me but they
persist. The extra challenges female women businesses face in our
nation’s economy output.
Think of the charge we could put into our economy if we weren’t
wasting time and energy breaking through these barriers. As this
committee continues to work, I offer these perspective where Con-
gress and the SBA can focus to give us a fair shake.
First, make mentoring and coaching opportunities more acces-
sible and tailored to the women they serve. I wish I had more fe-
male mentors who understood my situation and could help me
navigate the challenges of starting a business. That is why I men-
tor female entrepreneurs.
I can honestly say that women I speak to are not aware of the
Women’s Business Centers and don’t know the programs they offer.
Second, reform the procurement process. It is nearly impossible
for small business owners to sell their product to the Federal Gov-
ernment. Even though I am a WOSB, I’ve effectively given up and
I’m far from not alone. It’s no wonder the SBA regularly misses its
five percent contracts awarded to female small business centers.
Here’s a true story that should resonate. My products are cur-
rently purchased by the U.S. Air Force. They aren’t bought from
me. They’re purchased from a larger male-owned business who
quite literally is the middle man because he can afford the re-
sources to navigate the procurement process. If that doesn’t trouble
you, consider this.
The Federal Government is paying more for them than they
would be purchasing directly from me because he marks up the
price. The only reason for this is because the procurement process
is too difficult and resource-intensive to navigate.
And third, continue to modernize the SBA to address the chal-
lenges of today’s small businesses. A lack of access to childcare is
a workforce issue and a small business issue and it must be treated
as such.
I’d like to thank this committee and Senator Ernst for working
to address the childcare challenges small owners face. We must
also examine how the SBA Federal Government can increase access
to affordable capital for small businesses.
I could share more as this is a real passion for me. However, in
the interest of time I would conclude by thanking the committee.
I look forward to answering any questions you have and stand
ready to work with you to find solutions.
Thank you.
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[The prepared statement of Ms. Koch follows:]
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37
Chairman CARDIN. Well, thank you very much for your testi-
mony. [Applause.]
I must tell you we’ve always been impressed with the Goldman
Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses. We now see a face for one. So
thank you very much for your testimony.
Well, I just want you to know, Senator Ernst, I know, will agree
with me, we hold many hearings during the course of a Congress.
The four of you, very impressive testimony, very helpful to us, and
each one of you stayed exactly within the five minutes. That’s the
type of—that’s right. It is unheard of here. So thank you very much
for the input that you’ve made to our committee.
I just really want to underscore a couple points. I’ll start with
Mrs. Sweeney. We had a hearing that I chaired in the Senate Fi-
nance Committee last week on transplant needs which basically we
do a lot of kidney transplants because people are not taking care
of their diabetes and hypertension.
So what you’re doing is critically important for the individual,
but it’s also important for our health care system because dialysis
and transplants are extremely expensive, necessary but expensive,
but if you do the maintenance and prevention of diabetes or man-
agement of diabetes and dealing with hypertension, you reduce sig-
nificantly the number of renal diseases, particularly end stage
renal disease.
So I just want to thank you for that, and you’re focusing, which
I thought was really extremely impressive, on underserved commu-
nities.
So how did you get into that commitment and does the system
reward you for reaching out because, as Mrs. Koch said, a lot of
people don’t know about the services. You have to do outreach. So
how did the SBA tools help you in reaching this very vulnerable
community?
Mrs. SWEENEY. Well, thank you.
With the WBC, we were able to focus on prevention right at the
heart of the pandemic. That has always been our focus, but with
the impact of COVID, that’s where we narrowed down on preven-
tion as the primary focus.
One out of three adult Americans have pre-diabetes which is the
precursor. So what is the support that we have? Well, (1) we are
reimbursed through Medicaid and Medicare. Those are small num-
bers. Where the barrier comes is that there’s a lot of administrative
responsibility on our staff and medical reimbursement does not
cover it all.
We’re also a for-profit. So that limits our ability to get a lot of
the funding that’s in place. Maryland alone has received millions
just these past few years related specifically to diabetes prevention
and management, but we’re rarely ever in those conversations. So
that’s one of our goals, but we do a lot of outreach in the commu-
nity and a lot of that is done with our outreach team and that is
primarily because that is the only way we’re going to keep the con-
versation going about these preventable illnesses.
Chairman CARDIN. Thank you.
The report that I referenced in my opening statement points out
the disparities with women-owned small businesses. The number of
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38
of women-owned businesses that have to use their own savings and
resources and family resources versus their male counterparts is
much, much higher and the list goes on.
The number of 7(a) loans, the number of 504 loans are much
lower than the demographics would have you think would be right,
and then you go to venture capital which is almost nonexistent in
women-owned small businesses.
Then on the contracting side, you mentioned this, Mrs. Koch, the
government has reached all of its goals on small business set-
asides, except for women. We have not reached the five percent
which is not acceptable.
So, Ms. Somerville, you mentioned the use of the Women’s Busi-
ness Centers, the SCORE Program for mentoring, and we talked
about the need for mentoring, and it seems to be working well for
you.
Mrs. Koch, you had some concerns as to whether we have women
mentors available which I think is a really strong point in the
SBDCs.
How do you put together the tools that are there today and how
can we make them more effective?
Ms. SOMERVILLE. I had a really good experience in terms of out-
reach and exposure to the different tools that are available at each
of the SBA resources and one of the greatest take-aways was the
building of the networks that are offered that allowed me to have
access to other ways to generate revenue.
For example, with the Women Business Center, I was introduced
to philanthropic opportunities in which I was able to compete at a
pitch competition, if you will, to gain additional resources.
I was able to win about $14,000 and it enabled me to buy the
IT tools I needed, my computers, licenses to build my company and
so I think it’s the outreach and it’s the resources that they exposed
me to that were also in the community available.
I simply would never have been aware had they not granted me
the opportunity, access, and exposure.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Ernst.
Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Patrice, I’ll start with you. In your testimony, you had high-
lighted findings from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that dem-
onstrated businesses with 50 employees or fewer incur regulatory
costs that are nearly 20 percent higher than for the average firm.
Earlier this year, I introduced the PROVEIT Act which will hold
federal agencies accountable when they overlook important due
diligence requirements as they impose sweeping regulations that
maybe aren’t right for small businesses.
Do you think that businesses with 50 employees or fewer should
be subject to the same regulations as businesses with over 500 em-
ployees?
Ms. ONWUKA. Well, Ranking Member Ernst, I mean, I think that
they are unfair. A lot of mom and pop shops, they don’t have the
same resources as large companies do, particularly when it comes
to compliance costs and legal experts that they have. So that they
can dive into the minutia of all of the federal code and figure out
what regulations are new and how they can, you know, abide by
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When we think about women entrepreneurs, I mean, the mem-
bers here, the panelists here have talked about it, but I’ve also
talked about the research that, you know, you’re starting with a
capital deficit to begin with and so you’re trying to build your busi-
ness and at the same time trying to figure out what the regulatory
burdens are at the federal level, not to mention state and local reg-
ulations that add a new layer of challenge.
So, absolutely, I think your bill and there are other bills on the
House side that look at, you know, every piece of new regulation
coming out from every single agency, from Energy all the way to
Labor, to ensure that there’s going to be zero costs on small busi-
nesses and then to ensure that at least small businesses under-
stand what those regulations are so that they can figure out how
they can comply with them.
Senator ERNST. So the regulatory burden is pretty heavy on our
small businesses.
What about those broader economic challenges, like the high in-
terest rates, workforce challenges, how do those affect our women
entrepreneurs, as well?
Ms. ONWUKA. Sure. Well, labor shortages are obviously not new.
For decades some industries, like construction, have had them, but
we’re seeing them in industries where women are concentrating
their businesses.
In the retail industry but particularly in caring industries,
whether it’s home care services and in AIDS, whether it’s, you
know, daycare centers, childcare, a lot of businesses, small busi-
nesses find it hard to find people to compete with larger companies
that can offer greater pay and benefits and so, you know, all of
these make it difficult for you to be able to hire and retain your
folks and then add to that the regulatory costs that can come with
keeping people employed.
Senator ERNST. Thank you.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, women in rural com-
munities lack the same resources available to those that are living
in more densely populated areas and as I mentioned, there are four
WBCs located within a 50–mile radius of Washington, D.C. and yet
there’s only one that is located in the entire state of Iowa.
So how can we better assist women in those rural communities?
Ms. ONWUKA. Well, interestingly,—thank you, Ranking Member.
Interestingly, there are a couple of different pieces that I think
rural female entrepreneurs—challenges that they face.
I mean, women, they tend to have lower incomes to begin with.
Obviously that means less capital to start their businesses. They
have higher poverty rates, interestingly, and then there are the in-
frastructure gaps and particularly when it comes to technology,
we’re seeing that rural women have—they’re the least likely group
to have internet access at home.
So when we look at the information system today and how many
new entrepreneurs are starting their businesses simply with this
little gal right here in their hands, if you don’t have access to inter-
net at home, then it’s going to make it very difficult for you to be
able to sell your wares on the internet and to find folks.
So I think looking at how we build infrastructure, make sure
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able, it’s going to be important, and then, you know, I think the
mentoring and the peer-to-peer coaching is very important and so
while it may be hard to find mentors, there may be peers in your
area.
You mentioned the fact that there are so few women business
centers in rural areas, but maybe there are peer networks that can
be built up and utilize technology to tap into all of the other women
centers that are in other states or in other regions. That can be a
way of helping to ensure that our rural female entrepreneurs have
access to the resources that they need.
Senator ERNST. Yes, and I appreciate you mentioning how much
work we do on our phones, and I think a lot of women do actually
start by using this type of technology and in Rural Iowa I know of
one woman that lived in Southern Iowa. She did not have internet
access at her home and she lived on a farm and so she would drive
into her little tiny rural community in the evenings and sit outside
of the Iowa State Extension Office and draw off of their Wi-Fi and
do all of her ordering and distribution on her phone. So we’ve got
to figure out better ways of doing business.
So thank you very much, really appreciate that. Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Hirono.
Senator HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome all of the panelists and you brought your cheering sec-
tion, I see. So welcome to all of the women in the audience. Aloha.
[Applause.]
So for our entire panel, how many of you had trouble getting ac-
cess to capital? Raise your hands.
[Show of hands.]
Senator HIRONO. So obviously and I bet, yes, I see some hands
from people in the audience, that that is one of the often-cited very
practical concerns is access to capital.
Is there anything more that Congress can do to enable small
businesses, especially women-owned businesses, to have access to
capital? Any of you have very specific ideas about what Congress
can do? Anybody? Go ahead.
Ms. KOCH. Thank you.
They could access more—the greater loans. They have a micro
loan that SEED has in our local community. It’s only $50,000. It’s
been the same for, as I know, the last 15 years. Nothing’s changed.
Then also look at second stage companies. As myself, you know,
you start out at one point, you need different needs as you grow.
Let us continue to grow.
Senator HIRONO. Anybody else? Yes, Ms. Sweeney.
Ms. SWEENEY. Yes, thank you.
The beauty of the WBCs is their ability to provide additional re-
sources. There has to be an opportunity to include access to capital
internally. From micro grants, other private funding within Balti-
more, there’s a huge resource, so an ecosystem built on nontradi-
tional funding. Being able to tap into those resources and leverage
those opportunities within the WBC so that it increases access to
capital for mentees.
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Senator HIRONO. Anyone else with other ideas?
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41
Ms. ONWUKA. Yes, Congresswoman. I would just add that and
underscore particularly small business in the childcare sector that
are nonprofits being able to have access to the for-profit SBA loans
and then broadly I think it’s important that women are able to
keep as much income coming into their households as possible and
that gets into tax policy but also gets into regulatory sides, but
that’s what I would suggest.
Senator HIRONO. Ms. Somerville, did you want to add something?
Ms. SOMERVILLE. Yes, ma’am. Thank you for the opportunity to
share.
I’d also like the recognizing of larger business and the strength-
ening of the partnerships between the larger business and the
small business in terms of mentorships. That’s another way to con-
tinue to enable our success.
Thank you.
Senator HIRONO. I know some of you, I think at least two of you
have benefited from the mentorship opportunities that were pro-
vided through the Women Business Centers.
So was that a very critical aspect of your ability to start your
businesses, the mentoring? What can we do to increase those men-
toring opportunities, Ms. Somerville?
Ms. SOMERVILLE. It was truly a significant supporter. I think the
biggest thing was with the WBC and applying for my women-
owned certification as a small business was the handholding as-
pect. The flexibility, as the Ranking Member Ernst mentioned, that
we do a lot of things in the evenings.
I think they were relentless in being accessible on weekends and
late evenings and literally enabling me line by line, step by step
because the process can be extremely challenging navigating
through that. The support was unyielding and I think the flexi-
bility that the program offers in terms of accessibility was bar
none.
Senator HIRONO. I have visited the Women’s Business Center in
Honolulu and I know that it makes a really big difference.
One of you mentioned the need to access broadband. I think
that’s very true and that is why some of the funding that we pro-
vided for this purpose, especially for rural areas, through the Infra-
structure Bill and others, I think that’s going to be really critical
to enable entrepreneurs in the rural areas of our country to be able
to sell their products.
So I think that was Ms. Sweeney who mentioned that. So thank
you very much.
I think one of the challenges is the need for affordable childcare
and our country provides less support for early childhood education
and childcare than just about any other developed country, prob-
ably the least, and so there are some bills that would provide addi-
tional support for access and affordability to childcare.
Would you agree that for the panel that that is an important ele-
ment of enabling business women to—yes, to have successful busi-
nesses?
Ms. KOCH. It is hard. I lost most of my female workers. It was
hard for them. We have a training program that we started be-
cause we partnered with a local organization called COTS. They
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are a nonprofit that helps take women off the street with children.
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42
They teach them skills and we bring them in and teach them how
to make wire harnesses and provide a place for them to work. If
we don’t have work, we sub them out to our competitors.
Senator HIRONO. And, frankly, the only three countries that do
worse than us in terms of supporting childcare affordability and
availability, Ireland, Costa Rica, and Turkey.
So we need to do a heck of a lot better and there are a number
of bills that would enable the affordable access to childcare, and I
think that’s something that we need to do for the women in our
country and I say about time. Do you agree in the audience? Go
ahead and clap. [Applause.]
Senator HIRONO. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair-
man.
Chairman CARDIN. Certainly.
Senator Hawley.
Senator HAWLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks
to the witnesses for being here.
Ms. Koch, could I just come on to you? I’d like to talk a little bit
more about your manufacturing background as well as about
women in the industry.
Can you just give us a sense of what some of the biggest con-
straints are to success in manufacturing in particular for women-
owned businesses?
Ms. KOCH. There’s not enough women-owned manufacturers to
get mentorships from, but the things that are hurting us today are
the employee rates, the finding the good talent, learning—I didn’t
have a manufacturing background. I had a marketing background.
I just had a passion on making things. So I did.
But there’s a lot of—we need help with capital, being able to get
to that next step. I’ve been presented to companies that wanted to
do work with us but I couldn’t get the funding or they thought we
were too small and we do work with all the automotive companies,
but, you know, to get to the next level is difficult, especially in this
field of manufacturing.
Senator HAWLEY. Absolutely. Let me just ask you about an issue
in your industry, in the manufacturing industry, which is
offshoring, particularly with regard to China.
I’m just curious if the offshoring of our manufacturing capacity
to China over decades now has created any challenges for you that
you see, whether that’s in the educational pipeline as it were that
we used to have in this country that we’ve now lost in many in-
stances because now those jobs have gone overseas and so now we
don’t have the education to train workers any longer or whether it’s
other things.
I’m just curious about your firsthand experience.
Ms. KOCH. Okay. I can talk about the education piece.
Senator HAWLEY. Please.
Ms. KOCH. STEM. Okay. I’m heavily believing that STEM is very
important right now. It’s where the future of manufacturing is. It’s
where the future of the jobs are. So we have to start early in our
schools partnering with manufacturing companies, letting us bring
them in early, at an early stage, also have mentoring and good pro-
grams to start with children at early ages, even in elementary, to
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Today, even just in the female sector, 29 percent of women of the
whole STEM industries are holding those positions. That’s still
very low in this day and age.
Senator HAWLEY. Yeah. Yes, thank you for that. You talked
about the need to cut red tape and reform the procurement process,
and I’m just wondering if you have any specific recommendations
for this committee that maybe we could help with when it comes
to that.
Ms. KOCH. Navigating the system is difficult. You can get cer-
tified as a WOSB through our local chapters and our local thanks
to WBENC and our local Great Lakes Women’s Business Council.
However, once you get certified, then you go to the system and
there you just get a runaround. If you ever try to go get into
their—you have to go hunt and find the contract and then when
you get the contract, the language is so difficult to understand be-
cause it’s a military language, it doesn’t break it down to what
we’re used to in the industries.
So I think that the other thing is that having more of a net-
working group where you bring your procurement agents to some
of our events to find us, help connect those procurements, the pur-
chasing to see what we do, that would really help. They have
events all the time through WeBack where women bring and show
their products. Why isn’t the military, why isn’t the government
there?
Senator HAWLEY. Very good. Thank you very much. Thanks to all
of the witnesses for being here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Hickenlooper.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Madam Ranking
Member.
I thank all of you, the entire audience for being here, but espe-
cially you being on the firing line here.
I had the great fortune. I was an entrepreneur that had a very
hard time raising money to build my first brew pub, a restaurant
that brewed its own beer. I got turned down by 33 banks and I was
just trying to get $50,000. You know, no one knew what it was
back then, but the process, the bank that finally took the risk on
me was a women’s bank, which I thought was ironic. [Applause.]
Senator HICKENLOOPER. But they understood the concept of
doing something that someone hadn’t done before and they also un-
derstood the challenge of having to deal with the bureaucracy that
we often find.
I think we’re in a global competition in terms of technology and
innovation. I think whether you’re talking about climate change,
whether you’re talking about quantum computing or artificial intel-
ligence, we need all hands on deck and we cannot leave a large por-
tion of our population not part of the effort, and I think it’s going
to have to be a national effort. I think you’re all working in dif-
ferent aspects of this that really are important and going to bear
fruit.
It’s not a question of fairness and making sure people get good
jobs. That’s great. That’s very important. But the nation needs ev-
eryone to be committed to this effort because we are in this incred-
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So, Ms. Somerville, let me just ask and, you know, roughly 25
percent of all our innovation firms are led by women. I think that’s
a generous estimate. How can the SBA better implement education
programs among its resource partners to provide young women
with the hands-on training to develop tech businesses and to sup-
port innovation?
Ms. SOMERVILLE. Thank you for that question, sir.
One of the things I think we focus on in my company is intern-
ships, partnering with academic institutions to develop curriculum
that will enable individual students from high school and college to
apply the academic piece in the real world, so looking at what
those technical competencies are needed in the real world and in-
fusing them in the academic curriculum, and then offering those
internships sponsorship, ally ships, mentorships, if you will.
We also integrate in terms of being keynote speakers to tell
many students what it’s like in the real world. We sponsor a lot
of STEM events which is also good in terms of IT because one of
the things we’ve been able to do is to with the resources we receive
from WBC and other partners was to build out our IT infrastruc-
ture so we can employ people and educate people throughout the
nation.
We even have an employee in a teeny tiny home in the middle
of Colorado somewhere, very rural area, and so it actually works,
but exciting, our youth, about the opportunity and giving them op-
portunities to demonstrate that and partnering with academic in-
stitutions, podcasts, being very relevant and relatable with today
and STEM is definitely, as mentioned earlier, it’s key in terms of
our IT infrastructure.
Believe it or not, that mentorship goes both ways because we
learn from the amazing bright future leaders of women and young
men in our communities. So the future looks bright and when we
get out there and have that outreach opportunity, but it starts with
the academic institutions, sir.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I love your emphasis on apprenticeships
and partnering with those. I think you all at various times in your
materials support that and, you know, the Department of Labor
has apprenticeships. I mean, Commerce has apprenticeships. Ev-
eryone’s got apprenticeships but no one’s really focusing on making
that a national movement because I think especially for people that
are from lower income backgrounds apprenticeships allow them to
have those models.
In Colorado, I was partners in a project with a woman named
Joyce Meskis who started the Tattered Cover Bookstore which was
the most amazing bookstore any of us had ever seen, and she told
me one time, she said the hardest thing was I didn’t have any role
models as a woman entrepreneur. There was no one I could go and
hang out with and she said, you know, if I hang out with the guys,
they didn’t treat me as a guy, you know, and I think that’s some-
thing we too often overlook.
Ms. Sweeney, research shows that women are less likely to
choose being entrepreneurs and that there’s a resistance there,
largely it is because they don’t encounter other women entre-
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So what type of public/private partnerships should we think
about expanding to foster an environment where we create an eco-
system where women have more access to mentors?
Ms. SWEENEY. Well, a good example of that is actually the Balti-
more Metro Women’s Business Center because they are connected
to Morgan State. So they are right there amidst other programs
that have already launched. Their entrepreneurial programs are
designed for college students and they have extended beyond that
to high school students.
For us particularly, we’re a partner. We take on summer youth
workers and now we’re moving into taking in youth workers
throughout the entire year starting in the fall.
So it goes back to some of those partnerships that was mentioned
earlier that we get into not just the high schools and colleges but
we start working our way through middle schools and we can build
from the WBC because of all the partners that they’re leveraging
so that we can begin to have real world experiences and I’ll say I’m
a 10K SB alum, as well.
So that partnership already there has a built-in system to help
us to continue to help the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. All right. Well, I’m out of time but not
out of heart and I love what you guys have all done. I think it’s
inspirational and delighted to see ways we can help expand and ac-
celerate the progress you all have made.
Yield back to the Chair.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Rosen’s timing is just perfect. Sen-
ator Ernst has already mentioned, several of you have mentioned
one of the initiatives that we have taken to expand the tools of the
SBA for childcare businesses, nonprofits, and I want to congratu-
late Senator Ernst for her leadership on that and Senator Rosen
for her leadership on that, and we’re now joined by Senator Rosen.
Senator ROSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Ranking
Member Ernst, for your patience. We were in a Homeland Security
markup. We just finished and I ran over. So I appreciate your tim-
ing and thank you all for being here today.
Obviously we’re here talking about women-owned businesses and
I’m going to talk, of course, about my state Nevada and in Nevada,
women make up 45 percent of all businesses throughout the state
which is equivalent to more than 80,000 small businesses that are
women-owned.
In fact, Nevada has led the nation in women-owned businesses
for the last decade and so I’m so proud of all the women entre-
preneurs and I want to see women-owned businesses increase in
the years to come and so one way to ensure that increases is to
prioritize, of course, the proper resources for women and other un-
derserved communities and so it’s why I introduced the Minority
Entrepreneurship Grant Program with Senator Tillis and this leg-
islation would establish a minority entrepreneurship grant pro-
gram at SBA.
It’s going to award grants to minority-serving institutions, his-
torically black colleges and universities to promote and increase op-
portunities for minority student business ownership and entrepre-
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So, Ms. Sweeney, can you speak to the resources that you uti-
lized to start your business and how did you hear about them and
what do you wish you had known or had available to you so we can
maybe potentiate that? Ms. Sweeney?
Ms. SWEENEY. Thank you, Senator.
I’ve benefited greatly right at the start of the pandemic from the
Baltimore Metro WBC. That connection was pivotal for us being
able to be able to strategize what our next step would be at a time
of great uncertainty.
So I was thankful that I knew about the WBC, but what wish
I knew before, before I jumped into entrepreneurship that I had a
mentor prior to. So a lot of our initial meetings was to clean up
some of what needed to be cleaned up.
So the first step, of course, is how important it is when a woman
is ready to start a business, how connecting with the WBC is so
important from the entrepreneur education perspective.
Thank you.
Senator ROSEN. Thank you. I do agree. Mentors make all the dif-
ference in so many things, so many things.
Next, I want to move on to reducing burdens for our small busi-
ness owners, something that I think you all know about, as well,
and because there’s many factors, as we know, that go into starting
a small business, develop your business plan, you register your
business, you have to understand perhaps your compliance require-
ments, and, of course, so much more, depending on what type of
business it is.
I’ve heard from Nevadans about the complex process of starting
their businesses and not fully knowing every operating require-
ment to ensure their business is up to par for their state standards.
So it’s important that the Federal Government creates a stream-
lined process for Americans to work through the oftentimes bureau-
cratic red tape to start a small business more easily. It’s why I in-
troduced The One Stop Shop for Small Business Licensing. It’s
going to require the SBA to create a central website for licensing
and business permit information. All these materials kind of in the
wish you had known before you started category.
So again, Ms. Sweeney, can you speak about your experience in
getting the proper licensing and permit requirements and how dif-
ficult was it and what else do you think we can do to streamline
a little bit?
Ms. SWEENEY. Thank you. Because we are medical, we are part
medical, so there’s a lot of compliance around Medicaid, Medicare.
The biggest piece, as you mentioned, is not just being able to go
to a website because you have access to the site.
Senator ROSEN. Right.
Ms. SWEENEY. So what has helped me specifically has been
mentorship within the State of Maryland and that mentoring has
actually come through some of our managed care organizations, our
direct contact with our partners, like Aetna, like Notre Dame
School of Pharmacy.
So what I think of and in my experience, wouldn’t it be awesome,
especially with the burden of health care right now, if there was
actually a committee in place or an infrastructure in place that
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would help people who are interested in tapping into health care
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to be able to navigate the compliance much better and we know
then we would see a huge increase in especially small business
owners that would be willing to tap into Medicaid and Medicare re-
imbursement which means more support for communities that need
it the most.
Senator ROSEN. Well, thank you. I appreciate especially working
on the workforce, skilled nursing, long-term care, all of those
things, we’re all going to need it.
Thank you again, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member, appreciate it.
Chairman CARDIN. Senator Ernst.
Senator ROSEN. Okay. Yes. I just want to expand upon that be-
cause so many members of the committee have asked about
mentorship and I want to make sure that once again I highlight
The SCORE Act of 2023 which is seeking to strengthen mentorship
and coaching opportunities for women, especially in our rural com-
munities.
Cathy, Ms. Koch, in your experience, what obstacles do women
small business owners face when it comes to accessing the
mentorship program and especially maybe in some of the rural
communities?
Ms. KOCH. Well, I did not know where to find one. Access to fe-
male mentors that understand my challenges, my challenges from
the time I started my company to the challenges that I still face
today as a growing manufacturer.
I need mentors that are more like someone said earlier. I had a
lot of male mentors early on because that’s all there were and I
didn’t even know there was such a thing as a coach. I didn’t have
access to that. Today I do.
Senator ERNST. So did you—I’m sorry to interrupt, Ms. Koch. Did
you have experience with The SCORE Program?
Ms. KOCH. Yes, I did early on and it was—so then it was—they
paired me up with an engineer that was, you know, a retired engi-
neer. I was young in my career. He didn’t understand anything
about running a business and he didn’t understand anything I was
trying to ask or say. It was so embarrassing for me that I just gave
up.
Senator ERNST. Okay. And that’s unfortunate and I think it’s im-
portant to point out when we do have failures in the system and
then how do we correct those failures and I think that’s why it’s
important that we continually take a look at The SCORE Program
and make sure that we’re meeting the right fit with the needs of
the individuals that are accessing the program.
I want to close with just a final question about childcare and
maybe you can just share your story, as well, because I know prob-
ably a number of you have struggled with childcare and many in
our audience and even as a young worker, I would take my daugh-
ter to work after hours because we didn’t have access to nontradi-
tional times and I think we need to modify the way we think about
childcare because not everybody works a 9 to 5 position and having
access afterhours or before school, a lot of that is really important.
But as a single mother with a young toddler when you were
working, what obstacles did you face when you were starting your
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Ms. KOCH. Finding the affordable childcare, so that’s why she
came to work with me. After school programs that I felt were good
for her, not just a daycare, you know, options, something that she
could still excel and learn in. Even though bringing her to work
with me, I felt like, you know, now I learned later in life because
my daughter is now a—she’s a chemical engineer and she is now
a partner at one of the largest consulting firms and a young mother
and she’s a female partner.
So to me, it was probably bringing her here was—now I look
back and think it was probably good for her to see a role model.
However, you know, I felt guilty when I was at work and she was
with me working and I was not paying attention to her.
So having those programs are so important and they’re also im-
portant for my employees. I said earlier we partnered with this
program to bring women off the streets and teaching them. Part of
the problem is when we pay them a salary and we pay twice the
amount of our local Michigan wages to start with no experience
and they still can’t afford childcare.
Senator ERNST. Wow! That is incredible.
Patrice Onwuka, you had mentioned earlier, as well, thinking
about childcare differently. If you could just help close us out on
how we should think differently about childcare.
Ms. ONWUKA. Absolutely. Thank you, Ranking Member.
Childcare is so important to women and women small business
owners because many small business owners have children and
they’re trying to balance how they can raise their kids but they’re
also employing, as my colleague here mentioned on the panel,
they’re employing workers who need childcare and so, Number 1,
I think we want to be careful about suggesting that there should
be a one size fits all solution to childcare.
I think daycare centers are one form of childcare. You also have
in-home-based childcare that a lot of parents would rather have
someone in a home that they trust than, you know, necessarily a
daycare center. So we want to make sure that there is many dif-
ferent types of options as possible and I think you can do that
through the Tax Code. I think you can do that through, you know,
different acts.
We talked about the Small Business Childcare Investment Act.
I think that’s a really smart way of looking at it and then ensuring
that the SBA provides those resources as a clearinghouse to where
employers can find information about different childcare options
and resources to offer at their centers.
Senator ERNST. Thank you very much. Thank you very much,
Mr. Chair.
Chairman CARDIN. I want to thank again our four witnesses and
thank those that are in attendance for what you do every day to
help entrepreneurship in America.
Senator Ernst and I recognize we have a responsibility as the
Chair and Ranking Member of the Small Business Committee to
modernize and update and oversight the small business laws of our
nation and unfortunately that hasn’t been done for a long time.
So some of the issues that you are referring to, such as micro
loan caps or some of the issues concerning oversight of The SCORE
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49
time. The same thing with the financing tools, we haven’t done
that.
Well, we’re determined to exercise our roles as legislators in that
regard and we’ve already started that process. We started that
process with the passage last week of 12 bills. One of those bills
dealt with the financing issues by recognizing we need permanency
with mission lenders, with the Community Advantage Program,
and modernizing the 504 Program.
So we are taking steps to try to respond to many of the concerns
that you have already expressed.
We talked a lot about childcare. Childcare is absolutely essential
for women to be able to enter the workforce and become entre-
preneurs and so we have taken steps to remove the disqualification
of childcare businesses from participating in the SBA financing
tools.
So we are taking those steps and there’s several others that
we’ve already looked at.
You’ve made a lot of really good suggestions that we are going
to absolutely take a look at. The SCORE Program, we need to
make sure that we have mentors that are contemporary with the
needs that are out there and your example points out that there’s
improvement that needs to be made. We need a mentoring pro-
gram, as some of you have pointed out, extremely important to
your successful start up of business, but let’s make sure that the
program is done correctly.
Women’s Business Centers are absolutely essential and you’ve
pointed out that, yes, there is a difficulty in figuring out how to
deal with the tools that are available through the SBA, but then
when you get to the private sector, which is another important
source for help for small businesses, women are at a tremendous
disadvantage and the Women’s Business Centers can make a big
difference.
I just want to point out to my Ranking Member four years ago
we had no Women’s Business Centers in the Baltimore Region and
Baltimore was our largest city in Maryland. We now have a center
located at Morgan State University and it makes a huge difference.
We also have one at Bowie, I might say. They happen to be
HBCUs, but connecting to a college campus allows us to connect to
mentors. It allows us to deal with some of the technical needs that
businesses need by connecting the dots and having the programs
available.
So it’s important to update the Women’s Business Center laws to
make sure that we have the resources to take care of the people
of Iowa as well as the people of Maryland.
So it’s past time that we look at how we can exercise our respon-
sibilities as legislators to update these laws.
I might tell you the Administration took steps in the Rules. We
think we have responsibilities to make sure that there is legislative
oversight and so we also want to make sure that we don’t go a long
period of time without us reviewing and we also want to make sure
that as we allow lenders into our program that there’s protection
for the public from unscrupulous-type lending practices.
So all of that is part of our responsibility and we think we are
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Contracting reform is desperately needed. Many of you have
mentioned that. I understand the DoD has a foreign language in
their rules and we really do need to be able to allow the access
from small businesses, women-owned small businesses to be able
to access government contracting in an easier way.
You don’t have the large staff that can get you through those
types of challenges. The resource partners help you, but we also
have to make sure that the agency helps you. So these are all part
of what we’re trying to do on contracting reform.
The bottom line is the suggestions that you have made here will
help us in our process in our reauthorization of these programs and
we thank you very much, the four witnesses plus the people that
are in the room. You’re invited back again. [Applause.]
Chairman CARDIN. Thank you all very much.
The Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:20 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
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File and source
- File
- CHRG-118shrg53226.pdf
- Size
- 8,286,640 bytes
- SHA-256
- f35aaba5addbd6db36bd530621a11885cb5639b85ada9b466c5c645841bd3023
- Our copy
- CHRG-118shrg53226.pdf
- Original
- www.govinfo.gov