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WASHINGTON, D.C. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation today announced that the Coalition to Back Black Businesses (CBBB) has awarded 20 Black-owned small businesses from CBBBs 2021 grant program an additional $25,000 enhancement grant to support their growth and long-term success. Among the 20 recipients 45% of which started their business during the pandemic 80% are women-owned small businesses and 85% have six or fewer employees.

Employing nearly half of the U.S. workforce, the strength of small businesses is critical to the prosperity of our communities and our economic recovery, said Carolyn Cawley, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Were committed to supporting the needs of Black small business owners in America through our Coalition to Back Black Businesses and equipping them with tools to thrive.

Now in its second year, the CBBB initiative was established in September 2020 by the U.S. Chamber Foundation, founding partner American Express, and four leading national Black business organizations the National Black Chamber of Commerce, National Business League, U.S. Black Chambers, Inc., and Walkers Legacy to provide immediate financial assistance and mentorship opportunities to help strengthen the Black business community. Since its launch, CBBB has awarded grants to 1,091 Black-owned small businesses in 40 states to help cover essential needs as they navigated the pandemic, from covering rent and payroll expenses to expanding their online presence and marketing efforts.

We proudly back small businesses because they are the backbone of communities across the country, said Madge Thomas, head of corporate sustainability and president of the American Express Foundation. In the second year of this program, we welcome the chance to continue to help Black-owned businesses recover from the pandemic, innovate, and grow.

According to a survey conducted in January 2022, Black-owned businesses hit record levels of lower sales, with more than half reporting lower sales than in the previous year. Meanwhile, CBBB grantees report being optimistic about the future of their business, with 50% of them experiencing increased revenue in the second half of 2021. After more than two years into the pandemic, reduced consumer traffic, access to capital, and employee availability remain top obstacles to business growth.

Because of COVID-19, the price of all raw goods has gone up in some cases, three times as much, and the additional funds helped cover the cost of our raw goods, said Nekia Hattley, owner of My Daddys Recipes in Inglewood, California. The $5,000 grant was a blessing, it meant someone saw my dream and believed enough in it and in me to invest capital to aid in my growth. This support encourages me to keep growing, learning, and going.

Additional funding from ADP, AIG, Altice USA (parent company of Optimum and Suddenlink), Dow, and the S&P Global Foundation, along with programmatic support from Stanley Black & Decker, Shopify, and Firefli, will provide $14 million in grants and other critical resources, like mentorship, to support Black small business owners across the country through 2024.

The mentorship and coaching support that we have received from the Ureeka platform has been phenomenal. It is unmatched, said Bupe Mulenga, owner of Stephens Southern Delights in Detroit, Michigan. That in and of itself supplied so much encouragement, support, and reassurance that although we dream big, we can definitely achieve what we set out to do.

Enhancement Grant Recipients

Twenty grantees were selected by a panel of judges to receive the $25,000 enhancement grant out of the 491 businesses in CBBBs 2021 cohort. Businesses are located in cities across the country. Top reasons for requesting an enhancement grant included developing a stronger online presence, relocating to a larger physical space, and hiring additional staff.

The enhancement grant will support us with crucial costs to propel our growth forward for 2022, including hiring more pilots, investing in SEO marketing, web platform improvements, rent, and more, said Bronwyn Morgan, owner of Xeo Air in East St. Louis, Illinois.

The full list of grantees includes:

Learn more about the winners and how the CBBB program has positively impacted their businesses at webackblackbusinesses.com/recipients-2022. Applications for the fall 2022 cohort will open in August. For more information on eligibility and the application process, visit webackblackbusinesses.com.

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Coalition to Back Black Businesses Awards $25000 Grants to 20 Black-Owned Small Businesses - uschamber.com

This year, at WordCamp Porto, I had an opportunity to interview Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress.

She gave us some very in-depth answers about what is happening in the world of WordPress, and what we can expect from the top CMS in the future.

WordPress powers nearly half of the web. What challenges does WordPress face as a CMS in the coming year, and how does it plan to overcome them?

Chomphosy: WordPress in the next year One of the biggest difficulties we face in general is the fact that we are rewriting our entire codebase as we also continue to move forward as a functioning piece of software.

In a lot of cases, you would see a software stop every contribution from their community and rebuild everything while no one else is in it and just kind of use a closed model of re-envisioning how their software would work.

We are five years into this probably ten-year project, and so the next year, as with all of the years in a project like that, is making sure we are still as stable and capable as a CMS as people have come to expect while also still pushing forward with a newer more modern way to manage your content online.

No big deal. Small problems.

I know about Matt [Mullenweg]s Five for the Future initiative, which aims to solve the challenges of supporting WordPress as it grows. How do you see that working? Do you see enough response rates from the community?

Chomphosy: The Five for the Future program initiative has been around since 2014, so quite a while. It wasnt until 2016 or 2017 that we had a more codified program around it where people could pledge their time to specific teams, and those teams would know we have some volunteer work that we can send to people, and we can see the people who are interested in doing that kind of contribution.

It funds the project from a time perspective so that its easy for individual contributors to say what they are interested in, its easier for contributor teams to see who is interested in them. And recently, we also have expanded that program to include whats considered a Five for the Future team.

I think that major corporations in the WordPress ecosystem should give back substantially to the WordPress project, especially if they make a substantial amount of money or revenue using WordPress.

Overall I would say that we have had a good response from both our community of contributors and our economic partners in the ecosystem. I do think weve had a good response, but we can always use more.

The WordPress CMS is used all over the place and is maintained by less than 1% of the people who get a benefit from that and people in corporations who get a benefit from that and so I always want more people to be involved and responding, but we do have good response to it.

Do you foresee any changes like WordPress becoming paid, for example?

Chomphosy: Its hard to predict the future, but I dont see any way for that to happen, no.

Free, open-source software, Im sure you know, but many people get confused about whether that means its free, as in, not any money, or free, as in, provides freedom to people.

We like to remind everyone all the time that its free, as in, freedom to people, but also making the software freely available is incredibly important to WordPress. So I cant see a future where wed be like, just kidding, pay for licenses.'

Whats going to make WordPress continue to stand out/above its peers and competitors? How is WordPress future-proofing?

Chomphosy: I think that the thing that makes WordPress as a project stands out from its competitors is the strength of the community thats around us and, interestingly enough, the thing that makes our community stand out compared to other open-source projects that also have communities is our in-person event series and so not having those for the last two and a half years certainly has been a struggle for us.

And so this flagship event is the first in-person flagship event since we had to cancel WordCamp Asia in 2020, and were very excited to have everyone back together.

There were 800 people at the contributor day, and that is the biggest contributor day at a flagship event that weve ever had. And so, you can see in not only the number of people who are coming to this event but also in the number of people who showed up to learn how to give back to WordPress, the project, the CMS, and the ecosystem. The strength of what we are and how we will sustain ourselves into the future lies in that group of people that just wants to be here and continuing to make it better.

I think thats how we set ourselves apart. And also, from a future-proofing standpoint, in the way that we invest in those contributors, the way that we bring them into the space, and how they can make it better if thats what they want. I hope thats what they want. That is certainly how were future-proofing things.

A little side note from a leadership perspective. Its always important for me to look at how we can make sure the organization outlasts anyone whos leading right now. Outlasts me, outlasts Matt, because everyone is one catastrophic event away from not being able to do what they used to do.

Thats always a very important part of this for me. Im constantly training people who are with us in this work toward WordPress. Im always training them to do what I know how to do because its never appropriate for me to be the only person who knows how to do anything that is vital to WordPresss success.

The CMS market is becoming competitive day by day. Do you see a decline in WordPresss market share, or is it growing?

Chomphosy: There was, in the WordPress community recently, a bit of a discussion about W3Techs market share and usage numbers. There was a small decline. Its publicly available, and we had discussions around it. Theres no point in saying there wasnt a decline there.

However, I dont think that theres anything to be worried about. With W3Techs, as they are working toward deprecating one of its major datasets, it will always change what were seeing there. We cant be sure what theyre doing and not doing; its very closed, very proprietary.

In the grand scheme of things, its basically level at the moment as far as Im concerned there.

There were complaints from users that WordPress, by the introduction of full site editing, now does change too frequently and drastically, and they now have to spend a lot of time/resources to learn it again and fix broken parts of websites, when it used to work for them just great. What will be your message to those users?

Chomphosy: I know that it is frustrating to have to relearn something that you spent so much time learning, but that is the way that we have chosen to do that rework of WordPress as kind of a phased evolution over time, as opposed to a single point of a revolution was so that people could learn gradually over time, based on what they found in small places.

As we make the editing interfaces of the CMS more and more similar, theyll only have to learn they can use the same type of user flow, the same type of interaction pattern across the CMS. And so, the basic understanding of all of the mechanisms should start to translate into the rest of the CMS as well.

Every open-source software builds everything in public, and it is people who are telling us, This is hard to learn. This is hard for me to use.

Its that sort of feedback that helps us to make it better, but it has been for many, many people seeing full site editing right now, a long time since WordPress do such big changes in public, but I wouldnt say its necessarily faster than we expected.

If youre following the Beta and in the plugin, you get a new release in every two weeks, but if youre not following the Beta and the plugin, you get three releases a year, and that is, I think, a pretty fast pace, but tolerable as well if you are keeping track as you go.

So I guess my message is to make sure that you dont just wait until every ten releases to update because then you are going to have a lot that you do to have to learn.

There are classic editor plugins around for those who want to use the old style of WordPress. Do you think you will maintain the plugins for a long time? Do you think you will deprecate them?

Chomphosy: We have been taking that year by year as we see peoples need for it and as we end up with something much more robust in the CMS itself.

I dont see any future where we just remove it from the repo or any of the directories. I dont think were planning on deprecating it and having it be gone forever. But it is always better to try to keep up with things as its coming out slowly, so you are not overwhelmed by all of the things at one go.

How do you decide what features to ship in new versions? What does the process look like?

Chomphosy: Thats all a very public process. Fortunately, we get by with a little help from our friends on that one.

So we have core chats every week, and every major component most major components inside core have public chats where people talk about the tickets theyre working on, the features they are working on, the bugs they cant quite solve, and prioritize based on what is the most impactful for users and what is feasible, based on the timeframe were working on for any given release.

The decision is based on what is ready at that moment, but also certainly but also what the general impact is.

What is one major fix you would like to see WordPress make?

Chomphosy: Our next big need is to focus a lot on the menus and navigation, and that is a very complicated thing. That is hard, even in the best of moments. No one would disagree that spending a lot of time on that and getting a good solid fix that is user tested and approved is the right way to head next.

Almost all WordPress users complain about built-in internal search. Do you have plans to improve it? For example, giving website owners decide which articles to exclude from search or adding customizable search indexing weighing factors?

Chomphosy: The short answer is: Yes, there are thoughts around how to fix it, and there is a lot of research that is being done by contributors.

I dont think that anyone has found a solution that we all agree is as functional as we want it to be while also being as elegant and performant as we need it to be. We have not figured out what the proper solution is to that. But yes, absolutely, it is something the community discusses frequently and does ongoing research on.

Gutenberg has Full Site Editing (FSE), but is said to still be in Beta. Is there an ETA for that label coming off?

Chomphosy: I dont know that there is an ETA for it coming off. It is true that in the WordPress project, we use those terms of it differently, just like we do sequential ordering as opposed to semantic versioning.

Its Beta in that it is going to keep moving and iterating; its not beta in that it is unstable. It will be in Beta at least through the current phase, but not because its generally dangerous to use. Just because it will change frequently.

I think its fantastic that WordPress has a performance team working on improving the core, so it has fast performance. But no matter how fast you make the core, it seems like all it takes is a sloppy theme to undo all the good work the core had put into it. So it seems like the next step is to get theme and plugin developers on board. Is that something on the horizon?

Chomphosy: Themes are particular. Themes are essentially a core issue.

I have not run into many people in the world, many users in the world who feel like their theme was not WordPress. No one has got WordPress, the CMS, and then also a theme, and they think, I had a bad experience theme, Ill switch out that theme.

I shouldnt say no one, but regardless, themes are considered such an inextricable part of WordPress that we have to consider them almost as a part of the core sometimes. And so, do we want themes and plugins to also make some effort around performance? Yes, absolutely. But do we have any rules in place at the moment? Not really.

Themes has been undergoing a bit of a transformation along with the core because we have offered new functionality. And were trying to reshuffle whether youve got functionality or just the visual representations in themes. As that moves forward, probably we will have to move forward with some of the ways we guide all of the contributors.

Thats true for plugins, as well as features in plugins, kind of move with the way core is able to support them, in that it makes sense that we would have to have some sort of refreshed guidelines down the road. But at the moment, no one is discussing them because theyre still trying to figure out how to make everything work well with Gutenberg.

Do you have plans to introduce badges like WordPress Certified? Like Google Certified Partners, but Certified WordPress Developers. Like team developers can get those by passing a test or an interview with the WordPress core team to get those pages, and whenever they are developing, have those badges in place, so everyone knows that those teams have skills like the WordPress core team.

Chomphosy: Its interesting that you ask because questions of certifications are coming up in the community right now. Ive had so many conversations with attendees at this particular WordCamp. Its on everyones mind.

Historically weve never offered any certifications. The logistics of it are hard. The documentation we have is not always easy to keep up to date. There were some logistical hurdles to it; there were some philosophical questions around open source and certifications and what that would mean for how we could help our community stay together with each other through their learning and through improving the CMS.

The conversation has come back up because we have started to provide some training via learn.wordpress.org. Its getting more and more true that you can get a lot of information that you need about how to use the WordPress CMS not only through written documentation but now also through workshops and social learning spaces.

As we are providing more of that, [theres] the question of how we can give some indication that people went through those workshops and went through those training and succeeded at them. So its a new old question back on the table.

The Redirection plugin is installed on over 2 million websites. Clearly, theres a need for that, so is there any chance you will integrate a redirection function similar to the plugin into the core? And if not, why not? Does it bump up against WPs goal of keeping it simple for everyone to use?

Chomphosy: I dont think that better native features and functionality ever make WordPress hard to use. It shouldnt, and if it does, we shouldnt put it in there. But there is currently not a discussion about that.

There is a feature plugin proposal process where people can say that this plugin is basically used everywhere; we would like to propose that we find a way for it to be included in core. No one has brought that up. No one has brought that to the table.

I was talking to the performance working group about that yesterday. Not about that particular plugin, but about the feature plugin approval process. The documentation around that needs some updating, but its certainly a thing we have always done in the WordPress project and would be the first step in including something like that in the core.

We hope youve enjoyed these insights into the current and future plans for WordPress. Remember that the WordPress project continues to improve based on the contributions of its users. Be sure to learn more about the many ways you can contribute to and give back to the WordPress community.

For more on WordPress from WordCamp Porto, dont miss our interview with Ivan Popov of Vipe Studio on Headless WordPress SEO.

Featured Image: monticello/Shutterstock

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The Future Of WordPress With Josepha Haden Chomphosy - Search Engine Journal

Kevin McKenzie and American Ballet Theatre dancers.Photo: Fabrizio Ferri/American Ballet Theatre

Prior to Monday evening, when I attended American Ballet Theatres annual June gala, I had never been to Lincoln Centers Metropolitan Opera House. I recognized the twinkling chandeliers dripping from its ceilings only from Gossip Girl and The Undoing, in which Nicole Kidmans character helps to plan a fundraiser for the precocious Reardon private school. Its no coincidence, then, that the ties between exclusive upper class fetes and the culture of American balletic institutions have remained so tautalmost inextricable from each other, both in pop culture and the real world.

As a longtime dance devotee, thats sometimes what ballet has felt like for people like me and even younger generations: a storied fantasy land, something that people attend in the movies when theyd like to perform societal relevance or bask in the honor of naming themselves a donor to an elite artistic organization. I, on the other hand, did not grow up in the city attending ballet shows or galas. I was lucky to see professional ballet companies whenever they were passing through Los Angelesmainly more Nutcrackers than I can count and an ABT performance of La Bayadre one time. So that group of thin, hoity-toity moms Kidman paraded around the Met always seemed more in step with the heart of balletor at least the institutionalized ballets and not the rinky-dink hometown studios I grew up atthan I ever did. No matter how much I adored ballet, ballet did not seem to love most of America back; it seemed more like a see-and-be-seen for the upper echelon of New York City society.

Yet, this week, Isomeone whos never shied away from demanding ballet to be less white, less abusive, less exclusionaryfound myself seated front and center for American Ballet Theatres grand return to the Met after several seasons had been spoiled by the pandemic. The company opened its summer season with a performance of the classic story ballet Don Quixote, which was staged one last time by the companys longtime artistic director Kevin McKenzie. The former principal ballet dancer was on hand to bid farewell to the company after more than 30 years and pass the reins to Susan Jaffe: ABTs first solo female artistic director in company history. As feminism hits a larger cultural wall in the outside and political sphere, in which its corporate shilling has overwhelmed and nearly erased the true meaning of intersectionality, theres roomurgency, evenfor a feminist awakening in ballet. And perhaps that awakening starts here.

That evening, as I peered into the orchestral pit and fawned over the spirit-like movement of dancers Catherine Hurlin, Aran Bell, Devon Teuscher, Thomas Forster, Hee Seo, Joo Won Ahn, Katherine Williams, Calvin Royal III, Christine Shevchenko, and more from the first row in a house of booming applause, there seemed to be a shift in energy. As if, after all these years of promising change, championing change, fostering change, this new guard might actually pull it off. At long last, it seemed ABT had opened its doors to the next generation in a meaningful, ceremonious manner.

For one, Janet Roll, the companys chief executive and executive director who started in January of this year and the former general manager of Beyoncs Parkwood Entertainment, is the first person of color to lead the company. Getting more diverse leaders into the bureaucratic structures of an 83-year-old ballet company with its roots in the 1500s Italian Renaissance is step one in the remaking and modernizing of ballet, and Roll, a Black woman raised by a Jamaican immigrant mother, seems to have the right chutzpah and vision for the job.

Gabe Stone Shayer in DON QUIXOTE. Photo: Fabrizio Ferri

We want to make sure that we remain culturally relevant so that people understand that ballet is for everyone, Roll told me on the red carpet on Monday. I hope to see the culture of American Ballet Theatre be truly relevant to the world we live in now, but to get to the world we all envision, its going to take timewere not going to reinvent the wheel overnight.

Michaela DePrince, a second soloist at Boston Ballet and a former student of ABTs Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (JKO) school who was in attendance that night, has long been witness to the sluggish pace of change in the art world. She told me she looks forward to a day when Blackness isnt celebrated just once a year during Black History Month. When I asked if, at the very least, she was relieved to no longer have to pancake her pointe shoes (a process by which dancers of color have to paint their shoes with makeup to match their skin tone), she admitted that even though Bloch has gifted her brown pointe shoes, she still runs out. I am Black every single day, and I would love to be able to see more Black and brown dancers wearing skin tone, because I think its just so beautiful when you can see somebody being authentically themselves and not having to fit into that norm of pink classical tights.

In 2015, ABT made history as it anointed Misty Copeland to principal dancer, making her the first Black woman to do so within a major American company and largely drawing praise that ballet might finally be shedding its porcelain skin. The company has since added Calvin Royal III as a principal, Gabe Stone Shayer as a soloist, and Erica Lall and Courtney Lavine as corps de ballet members among a few others, but not much overhauling of the companys diversity makeup has taken place since then. (It should be noted, however, that the company has highlighted and promoted a number of talented Asian American dancers.)

A daughter of Caribbean immigrants, Lall was highlighted before the performance on Monday evening, as she introduced Trustee Susan Fales-Hill, who headed up the nine-month artistic director search for Jaffes role. Lall thanked Fales-Hill for creating the Josephine Premice Fales Awardan award Lall had won twicewhich gives a young dancer of color a full scholarship to ABTs training school. In daring fashion, Fales-Hill then called upon the history of a well-intentioned, but separate and unequal Negro wing of 16 dancers within ABT back in 1940, calling it a wing that was destined to be clipped. That history made it all the more astonishing to see two Black women presenting on stage that night. But shortly after Fales-Hill and Lall left the stage, the curtains gave way to a smattering of beautiful ballet dancers, with only a few people of color to be seen.

The sense I got from Roll and from Aubrey Lynch, ABTs Dean of Faculty and Student Affairs, is that ABT is painfully aware of its shortcomings and is not trying to shy away from them. If you never acknowledge whats wrong, you can never move past it, Roll told me.

Well, they call us trailblazers, and we are. Its very scary in the front, but we are determined to make American Ballet Theatre as diverse with its beliefs, with its economic status, with its race, ethnicityall of those parts that make America beautiful, Lynch added during an interview. And were asking ourselves what it means to be American today, and what will it mean in the future, and what will make it more interesting to watch ballet? Weve got to talk about today, stories about today, people about today, and look like today.

For that exact reason, regardless of how stunning the performance was, the choice to open the season with Don Quixotea fixture in the companys repertoire but notably not a reflection of American cultureremained a puzzling one. Largely white women were adorned in Spanish-style costumes holding fans, and wearing chokers, slicked back buns, and hoop earrings. But Jaffe, who refashioned the ending of Swan Lake when she was at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, told the Washington Post shes ready to dismantle some of the companys more problematic and archaic story plots, including Le Corsaire, which tells the story of a Greek woman sold into slavery and whose hero is also an enslaver, and La Bayadre, which is set in a fictionalized India presented through a white lens. She also plans to institute audience surveys and a listening tour, in which the opinions of those who care about ballet are actually taken into consideration.

But my conversation with Lynch also inspired some hope for the future of ballet and its dancers, no matter how they identify. The company is working with intimacy coordinators to help mitigate some of the more physical interactions between dancers onstage, according to Lynch. The JKO school has embraced nonbinary dancers, giving them the choice to learn roles traditionally meant for men or women and allowing them to get on pointea practice once reserved only for ballerinas. And Lynch told me they were offering up more mental health services than ever before and trying to move away from the eating disorder-friendly world of insecurities once fostered by ballets incessant thinness.

I know that, over time, promises of evolution have come and gone within the realm of ballet. But just as Jaffe transformed a swans tragic ending into a feminist sacrifice motivated by a wish to free her maidens, American Ballet Theatre, too, seems primed to transform into something grandersomething for all of us. It was a magical evening, and I hope, in all earnestness, that all of that magic sticks around.

As Kevin McKenize noted in his farewell remarks, ABT is on the brink of a new era. And we know what happens when ABT enters a new era: It soars.

See the article here:
American Ballet Theatre Wants to Look Like America. They Don't Yet, But They're Trying. - Jezebel

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THE Network Cork Businesswoman of the Year Awards takesplace next week. A total of 31 women have been shortlisted across eight categories. The winners will be announced on May 27 at Fota Island Resort.

Over the next two weeks in WoW!, we chat to some of the finalists. Here, we speak to some of those shortlisted in the Creative Professional, Shining Star Employee, STEM and Solo businesswoman categories.

CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL:

Monika Nowakowska, Lady of the Valley

ACCORDING to her certificates, Monika Nowakowska is a technician, specialising in industrial gas appliances and installations, and is also a trained journalist.

In reality, she is a self-taught dressmaker, designer and textile artist.

And to pay bills, Ive worked in a fair share of shops and restaurants, as an interpreter, and enjoyed a 15-year career similar to that of Mrs. Doyle from Fr Ted! said Monika.

Born in Krakow, Poland, she moved to Ireland in 2004.

Every male in my immediate family was or is an alcoholic. Households were run and held together by women, said Monika.

In her early 20s, she availed of counselling for adult children of alcoholics, before deciding to leave her native country and coming to Cork.

Currently, I live in the Mealagh Valley (outside Bantry) with my 15-year-old son James, a dog, and two cats, she said.

She launched her business, Lady of the Valley, in 2021 and creates everyday clothes as well as special occasion wear.

I believe clothes should make everyone happy and be used as a tool to express individuality.

"As I make everything myself, size and gender does not matter in my workshop what matters is comfort, happiness, fun and style for everyone, she said.

After years of working from home, she is looking forward to opening her sewing workshop in Schull at the end of the month, and the Network Ireland Cork Businesswoman of the Year award nomination is validation of all shes achieved so far, her determination and perseverance.

Cork is full of great talent and entrepreneurship, so being considered for a Business Woman of the Year award is a great honour, said Monika.

It is also a personal achievement that boosts my confidence greatly. If I win, it means that I will be a big step closer to achieving my dream of growing my business to its full potential.

Being part of Network Cork is like finding your tribe. Im only in my second year of membership and yet the support and encouragement I received is incomprehensible. After years of listening to naysayers I know now I can follow my dreams. There are ways to achieve my goals, there are women who stand behind me, sharing their strength, knowledge and expertise to push each other forward to the better and brighter future.

Also shortlisted in this category are:

SHINING STAR EMPLOYEE:

Helen McGonagle, Cork City Council

HELEN McGonagle is a firm believer that music, books and culture should be freely available to everyone.

Her goal as a librarian with the city council is to keep libraries at the heart of communities, providing a warm welcome and support and encouragement to everyone, whether youre borrowing books or music, using a computer, or just relaxing in a safe space.

Originally from Westmeath, Helens been living in Cork for the past 23 years, and is married with four grown-up children.

Her journey to becoming a librarian was a slightly meandering one.

On graduating from UL in 1988 with a BA in European Studies (Law), I began work with a major international law firm in London. In October, 1990, disillusioned with corporate law, I joined classical music magazine, Gramophone. In 1998, we relocated to Cork and, to support the change in our lives, I became as stay-at-home parent.

I joined the Parents Association of my local school and was subsequently elected to the schools Board of Management.

In 2007, I graduated with an MA in Womens Studies from UCC. Encouraged by that, I joined the City Library as a library assistant.

I was granted funding from Cork City Council to study for an MSc in Information Science in 2010, and in 2015, was appointed acting Librarian and my MSc thesis was published as a book.

"In 2017, I was awarded PhD funding to continue my research on gender construction in early 20th century reading material, said Helen.

She returned to work around the time the last promotion embargo was introduced, so she concentrated on broadening her experience, volunteering on music and cultural projects, improving her Irish language skills, and gaining membership of the Library Association of Ireland.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in November, 2017, Helen continued with her PhD research while having treatment and gained promotion shortly after returning to work.

I am a Public and Patient Involvement participant with Breakthrough Cancer Research, using my skills and experience to advocate for cancer research, she said.

I am so grateful that my work as a public servant has been recognised. It highlights the amazing facilities that public libraries are. It also allows me to acknowledge and thank all those cancer researchers who have so immensely improved the prognosis for people like me, and to highlight the need for more research on the causes and treatment for cancer.

Helen said being part of Network Cork is like being wrapped in a warm, comforting embrace of kind and supportive women.

And winning her category prize would be an acknowledgement of many things.

It would underline the varied content available through the libraries and their commitment to providing free, rich and exciting cultural programmes.

"It would show the possibility of being a successful career woman while raising a family and undertaking post-graduate study, and would highlight that career progression following the intrusion of a serious illness is possible.

Also shortlisted in this category are:

STEM:

Hilary Quinn, Proximo Web Design

MAGIC plays a big part in Hilary Quinns life as shes married to a magician, but theres no trickery involved in her own business, which is all about making things visible.

Shes the powerhouse behind Proximo Web Design, which is focused on increasing organic traffic to clients websites using search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques.

Having specialised in web design via St Johns Central College in 2005, Hilary was hired as an in-house web designer for a local travel agent.

I incorporated SEO into these redesigns, and once the work was complete this company became the first client of Proximo Web Design which I established in 2007, she explained.

And what she quickly realised in her web design career her lightbulb moment was that a website is nothing without traffic.

A website without SEO was invisible. I also noticed that when it came to web development services, businesses often neglected front-end aspects like user experience (UX) and had little or no knowledge of SEO. This left many business owners frustrated and under-served, they had invested all this money in a new website, so why wasnt it generating leads or sales? I knew I had the solution, she said.

Since that first client, she has been trusted by some of the most respected brands in Ireland to increase organic traffic to their websites using SEO techniques.

Almost 15 years in business, she is proud to have maintained relationships with long-standing clients who have been with her since the very start.

This alone makes me really proud and happy with what I have built. I have watched small businesses grow as a direct result of our work together on their website. Seeing my clients businesses grow and succeed is incredibly gratifying and motivating.

As well as that, Hilary has had an impact on her industry over the years, taking part in Girls in ICT events, and has been featured by the Women in Tech SEO newsletter. She has also performed SEO workshops for the Bite the Biscuit creative community in Ireland of more than 10,000 members.

This nomination for STEM Businesswoman of the Year means the world to me. I have worked incredibly hard over the years, not just to survive The Great Recession, but to build my business back up, to get a reputation for incredible quality and transformative work that actually results in sales, and to elevate all of these incredible businesses Ive worked with. To get outside recognition of that is really special.

Having this category as part of the Network Cork awards raises the visibility of women in STEM, and that is so powerful, to inspire the next generation of women to join us in what has, for me, been a lifelong passion and fulfilling career.

Also shortlisted in this category are:

SOLO BUSINESSWOMAN:

Melissa Curley, SocialBe Communication

SECONDARY school teacher turned entrepreneur, Melissa Curley describes herself as a passionate educator, but admits she felt confined in the classroom.

The Youghal woman says she has never sought security in a job, but instead chased work that she loved, that continuously challenged and engaged her, and she certainly found that with her business SocialBe Communication.

After spending five years teaching in New Zealand, she returned to Dublin, where she started her first business, a vintage-styled events venture.

She combined that with a postgrad in Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

After six years, she returned to her native Cork and began SocialBe, a professional skills and future of work training company, in 2018.

She was motivated by a desire to empower people through education and upskilling to have impact in their professional lives.

Skills that can be developed should never hold us back from achieving all we want to be in life, said Melissa.

She runs a number of programmes that focus on upskilling in the transversal skills that are essential for todays world of work, as well as bespoke workshops and programmes designed to meet clients specific training needs.

What makes the work so interesting to me is that the training needs of my clients change regularly, in line with the changing world of work.

At the beginning of the pandemic, for example, we mainly delivered resilience training. In 2021, hybrid working workshops were in demand.

Unconscious bias training is a hot topic, and a complex one to deliver.

Remote leadership and authentic leadership programmes are also emerging areas.

As well as delivering resilience training, shes shown a lot of it herself: leaving one business to start another, moving back to Cork where she had left to travel the world 18 years earlier, and starting all over again.

During the pandemic, she also adapted her business model so that it is hybrid, delivering training as effectively online as well as in person. And she further diversified, training as a pilates instructor in early 2021.

Just three years on, she has a business that is thriving, thanks to her hard work, creativity, and determination.

Winning the Network Cork award would show me just how far Ive come, and how much I have achieved.

I loved teaching, but I felt confined by the classroom. I can honestly say that in my three years of building SocialBe, I have never once woken up not looking forward to work.

Also shortlisted in this category are:

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Network Cork Businesswoman of the year finalists celebrate how far they have come... - EchoLive.ie