Davids, Lucas talk entrepreneurship with local female movers and shakers

More than 20 local female movers and shakers gathered at LMG Construction on Wednesday in Kansas City to talk about entrepreneurship and small businesses.

Featured speakers included U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, Kansas Labor Secretary Delia Garcia and Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Davids, who recently co-introduced a bipartisan bill to support female entrepreneurship, said she uses her position in Washington to brag about the Kansas City metro.

"I think Kansas City has one of the strongest entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country," she said during the luncheon. "The Kansas City metro doesn't get recognized often enough for the innovative and often model-building work that's going on here."

The Kansas Democrat also stressed the importance of gleaning insight from communities to inform policymaking in Congress. The bill she introduced with U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, R-Minn., would amend the Small Business Act and increase funding for the Women's Business Centers (WBC) program from roughly $18 million annually to $31.5 million. WBC is a national network of centers that offer one-on-one counseling, training, networking, workshops and other resources to female entrepreneurs. In Fairway, the WBC facility serves more than 600 entrepreneurs a year.

Garcia highlighted the impact of female entrepreneurship in the U.S. and shared how her family owns the oldest family-owned Mexican restaurant in Kansas. Her grandmother, a Mexico native, started the business.

"Women are the largest, fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country," Garcia said. "Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Whatever we can do to support that (is important)."

The proposed bill also would increase the funding cap for individual WBC facilities to $300,000 a year and remove red tape.

"Hopefully, this is just one of many really concrete steps we can have in making a difference and creating opportunities for people," Lucas said of the bill.

Davids talked about the potential effect the bill could have on the centers and entrepreneurs who take advantage of the services. Small business development centers typically are stretched thin when it comes to the number of employees and time, she said.

The employees at WBC facilities are committed to supporting entrepreneurship in their respective communities, but they often can be burdened with large caseloads. Davids said she hopes the bill will lessen the load and enhance their ability to influence more entrepreneurs and offer more sessions — or even just one more workshop that entrepreneurs need.

She calls it "the inch." In jiu jitsu, she said, the difference between winning or losing is sometimes less than an inch.