Welcome to the Kansas reflector Podcast. I'm editor Sherman Smith. On today's show, we'll hear from two special guests about the work they're doing. Wendy toil is the president and CEO of United Way which advances all women's economic and civic leadership to make meaningful change. We also have Jim Earl, the CEO of the National Association of Women Business Owners. Thank you both for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
Let's just start by talking about the organization's we can give me an overview. We'll start with you, Wendy.
Thank you, Sherman. United we, as you mentioned, working to advance all women's economic and civic leadership. And at our very core, we're an evidence based driven organization looking at the barriers for women to advance economically, and for their civic participation. And after we investigate and do qualitative and quantitative research, and we we start to work on a public policy agenda, just advocating for reducing some of those barriers, ranging from pay equity, paid family and medical leave, certainly looking at women entrepreneurs, we know that there's a great interest here in the heartland and looking at what we can do in the occupational licensing space, including child care to is elevated to the very top as an economic issue in the state of Kansas.
A wide range of important issues about about the work that you guys do. Yeah, so
Napa has been around for almost 50 years, we're celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2025. It was the first organization for women entrepreneurs that really put them on the map. Before NABO was around there was no women weren't allowed to join the Chamber of Commerce or anything like that. So the organization really just took on a life of his own to really support when entrepreneurs across the country, we have over 50 chapters, I'm including a virtual chapter. And we really work on the social, economic and political spheres of like trying to get women into power in those spaces. We have three main pillars advocacy, leadership and education. And we focus on trying to make our women business owners resilient. And in that we focus on the four C's of entrepreneurship capital, as it relates to access to capital and financial literacy community really creating a safe space for women business owners to share the different trials and tribulations that they're going through, as well as to celebrate their successes. Congress for our advocacy work and making sure that our legislators are really hearing the work that our business owners are doing in their communities and what they really need to be successful. And the fifth one is a fourth one is competence, and really making sure that our business owners have the opportunities to serve in leadership positions, to do public speaking to get the education, they need to really feel competent and taking their business to that next level.
So you guys announced recently a partnership between these two organizations, Napo as the national footprints in the United We has a big impact in Kansas and Missouri. What's the significance of this partnership, Wendy?
So our partnership really brings together two strong, nonpartisan women's organizations, certainly NABO has an extreme national footprint, and a growing national footprint for United Way. But together, we are focusing on public service and leadership. And our partnership is all about educating and empowering women to effectively serve their local communities. We're really wanting to also for women to build their skills that will benefit and again giving back to their communities but also to growing their businesses. This is a one year program that we're launching that includes some virtual programming focused on relevant policy topics. But also, we have some podcasts that we're going to be doing too. We recently hosted and launched our first webinar together in early May. And we have a second one scheduled on August 10 at 11am Central time, so to your audience, we invite them to join us to be a part of the session on August 10, which will focus on childcare related challenges for women, and specifically business owners as well as the importance of paid family leave. And we do have a registration link that is open and can be found on on United release website, which is united dash we.org backslash events.
I hope our listeners take you up on that invitation. Jen, what do you think about this partnership?
We I mean as when Sarah chair, we're so like minded in the work that we're doing this really this opportunity really gives us the opportunity to expand our reach and to get women more educated in terms of like serving in their local, with their local elected officials and civic leadership. We're working on creating different kinds of opportunities for them to learn more about how to be better leaders in their local communities. And I think that with this partnership, we can make us stronger business owners, which are going to make stronger economies. And I think that that is the biggest thing like how we can really move the needle forward and making our economies thrive and giving the women business owners the tools that they need to be a part of that major success.
These are a lot of challenges that that need to be tackled now, and I think we'll talk a little more about some of them in a moment. But, you know, I'm curious about how things maybe have changed over the years. You know, I've had conversations with, you know, my mom, who was, I think, maybe the only woman who was an engineer building the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Kansas 40 years ago. And the stories that she tells are shocking about what the workplace environment was. Have you seen progress over your careers? Are we making a difference in the social climate?
Well, Joe, Ben Sherman, that, you know, I feel like women have made significant progress. However, the pandemic really highlighted and, you know, put a beacon on the challenges that women are facing, certainly in the workplace, you know, also with the childcare challenge as a result of the pandemic, but also giving women a time to reflect and to really think about, you know, what their role in the workforce looks like. And we certainly as an organization at United we are that is we spent some time doing some town halls around the state of Kansas, last summer hearing from lots of women from all women from all backgrounds in metropolitan and rural communities. But really connecting back to our Navajo partnership, we had a tremendous amount of women during the pandemic that really started to explore the potential of entrepreneurship. And that's another reason why we're we really are proud to partner with Navajo, to bring some resources and really to those women specifically in Kansas that are thinking potentially about starting a new business. There's a tremendous resource with Navajo that they could be a part. So we've definitely for you know, the pandemic moves some positively move some conversations forward, such as flexibility in the workplace, but still highlighted several, several things that, you know, we've made progress, but we've fallen backwards as well.
Thank you, and ditching the pandemic have had the kind of application for you and the work that you did.
Yeah, I mean, we actually, I know that it was a devastating time for everybody. And it was for us too. But it really gave novel The opportunity to shine during that time. And we we had chapter leaders across the country that were trying to run their businesses and run a nonprofit, local organization. And that was just impossible for them to deal with everything they had going on. So we were able to really switch the way that we were doing our work and create more opportunities for our members to connect in a virtual space. And we learned a lot, we started doing surveys early on to say what is it that you guys need? What are you struggling with, and what we're learning is really what's helping us kind of create our path moving forward, we learned that a number of our business owners weren't able to access the first round of PPP money, they didn't have a relationship with their financial institution. Oh, my gosh. So you know what I mean? Like, there are things that we're learning along the way, like they're building their businesses, and we knew a lot of the access to credit capital problems, you know, they were leveraging personal credit and things like that. But what we didn't know was part of the reason why was that they didn't have the right relationship. So when something happened like a catastrophe like COVID, they didn't have a place or a person to go to to say, hey, help me do this, how do I get this money? And that became overly burdensome. So we were able to start working with the legislators to say, hey, look, we're missing a huge part of the population here is missing this these funds, and what do we need to do to make that happen? So the second round that came about, we were able to create set asides, for smaller women, business owners, and that sort of thing. And as Wendy alluded to, as well, there were a number of new businesses that popped up, including women of color, and that was proportionally higher and what we saw. And so being able to create programs, we have a partnership with AARP. And currently, we're going through our third rendition of this program, because it was so successful. It's called the established and Ready to Grow program. And this is a virtual program with education and roundtables that allowed us to reach out to this demographic that was just getting started to say, let's get you started to be successful here, let's give you the right tools and education that you need. Let's get you connected with other like minded women that are doing the same thing in similar parts and in different parts of the country to really help support you propel you forward. And so that was it was really an opportunity for us to look overall at the landscape of women business owners and say, what is really happening here and what resources and tools we need to give to these different demographics and sectors so that we can make sure that they're successful.
Have lawmakers been receptive to this message?
A Yes. In fact, we are getting I mean, they come to us a lot of times first to say hey, what do you think about this and I think we're going to talk about it and a little bit about the paid leave, but like we really been instrumental in like trying To say, This is what our business owners are going through, these are the things that they need. And we've been getting now people are coming to us saying, what are you hearing? What do you need? Where are where it's a business owner and XYZ in a restaurant, perhaps in Los Angeles, can you connect us with her so that we can hear from her. So there's been a lot of that, kind of figuring out through our association, how they can connect with other business owners, and really listen and hear the needs of women business owners to figure out what we need to do, because they everybody realizes, I mean, we, you know, we have like, 80% of the purchasing power, the business owners are like making their communities work with raising their children and, you know, figuring out how they're going to purchase all the things they need to do for their home life and taking care of their parents and, and running businesses as well. It's like the detriment of like women, business owners, not being able to run their businesses is really devastating to the economy. So I mean, I think that they they're aware of that we don't want that to happen.
So Shogun, just to build on that one thing to just add, you know, we know that from business and women business owners as well is that childcare is a challenge, especially if the women business owner has children themselves, but also for their workforce. So one thing that, you know, as a result of childcare really elevating to the very top of our policy and research agenda, we're investigating looking at every state's childcare facility licensing requirements for a couple of reasons. One, we've worked from providers that there are some barriers, specifically for those who have an interest in opening up a childcare facility. We also know this is, you know, a woman and women's entrepreneurship opportunity. We know that this is a women led workforce and a women of color, black workforce as well. And really wanting to understand what we can do as an organization from an advocate advocacy perspective to look at reducing those barriers so that we can get some childcare facilities or in home support opening, and childcare deserts specifically, and we know in rural parts of Kansas, there, there are a lot of childcare deserts. But just to add that to the conversation and build on, you know, as a result of the pandemic,
you know, this was a big issue in the legislature this year in Kansas, and there was a bill that that would have, I think, dramatically loosened the barriers, but I think it wound up not not going through because it loosened to perhaps too much. I think it would allow people as young as 14 to to be looking after other kids. How do you like find a happy medium there where you can make it easier for for more people to provide child care without making it dangerous for children?
Yeah, I think, you know, there are still a lot of, you know, interesting solutions that are surfacing. And again, keeping the safety and health at the forefront of making some of these decisions is certainly what I know, our policymakers are keeping in mind. And certainly, Governor Kelly, what we are seeing is really there is a need for public private partnerships. So we're seeing in some states as a solution, philanthropy corporate, and then government coming together to actually solve the childcare challenge. And I think for the listener, and as you know, well, that this is a long game, this is, you know, a marathon, that's going to take some some time to put together a great strategy. But what we are, what we celebrate is that we created the conversation and that this has become an issue and on on the tops of lines of policymakers in Kansas. So you know, I would say stay tuned. But I know that there are some interesting models that we're all looking at
that you mentioned, the town halls that you conducted last year, and this was an issue that came up frequently. I think I know I listened in on one of them. And it was there was a lot of talk about childcare. And also I think parental leave the pay gap. How How significant are these barriers? Can you put that into perspective for us?
Absolutely. So, you know, I think that the key takeaway on the paid family leave that we really pulled our townhall participants that this is a retention strategy and more. Because this has become a topic of conversation. Certainly during the pandemic, there was the federal mandate, so everyone had the opportunity to take advantage of it. Women in particular are wanting to have a paid family leave policy in the workplace. So we pulled our participants and it was about 90% of the participants said that they have an interest in having a paid family policy and that's essential to their retaining employment. Pay Equity certainly has continued to elevate in the conversation and we know that in the state of Kansas on average, it's about 78 cents to the dollar that men make for the same work. And it's you know, the gap widens even further and more rural parts. The state. So there are these are significant economic barriers to advancing women, not only in the workplace, but certainly that's also why so many women have been thinking about, you know, starting a new business. So the entrepreneurship aspect was a key component of those conversations in the town halls.
I think that's a good segue to Jen, how does this manifest in the business world?
Yeah, the paid leave conversation has been a really big one for us, we are really hoping that Congress can pull together a bipartisan solution that gives our small businesses an opportunity to really create a paid leave system that they can use for themselves and for the work their workforce, it's, it's become a big challenge. Well, it's always been a big challenge. But our smaller businesses can't compete with the larger businesses that are offering these great incentives. And it without, if a person has to leave for paid leave, there's no there's nothing they have to there's nothing to do they have to if they have to pay for it, that's obviously a gigantic burden. And then they they're left with a gap of not having someone to be able to fill in the blank. So it's really, we really need a big solution for that. We they are business owners just can't afford it. And there are some like, I think in our surveys that we did, there were like one and four that said, yeah, we can definitely offer this, I think that they all would really love a solution to figure out how we do this. Because we can't be competitive, there's just no way and we're already having gigantic workforce issues, we can't our business owners are having a really hard time even finding people that are qualified to do the work. And so if it becomes an issue of like, this company is going to give them the paid leave option. And they can it becomes a really big problem. So we're really working on trying to figure out what the best solution is for that. The other thing, too, is like 92% of women business owners from our latest survey are micro businesses. And so we're really trying to work with the government to understand what a micro business is, because right now they're lumped in with small business and a small businesses up to 500 employees, which is very different than a business with under 10. And so those are very different. When they say yes, we're doing these things to help small business. That's the truth. But it's a small business, that's a very large, small business, not a micro business that, you know, it's really trying to do whatever they can, they're working in their business, they're doing everything they can to hold on to their people, and they're trying to be competitive. So we're really working with them to enter chapters across the country to come up with a definition of a micro business 25 or fewer employees and less than a million dollars in annual revenue, to make sure that they're really looking at when they're looking at solutions for small business owners. They're saying, okay, the micro business needs these things, they're going to need access to a different kind of set aside for, you know, being able to build capital, they're going to need different restriction requirements, when it comes to like trying to get a federal contract, what does that look like? Are they able to do that, because right now, there's no competition there for them there. We're just kind of being swept under. So we're really trying to figure out like how to create more opportunities, and really allow these micro businesses to live and succeed.
I imagine that the overwhelming majority of businesses, especially in Kansas, have somewhat fewer than 500 employees. The one of the other things that struck me about this, these conversations, these town halls, the one that I listened to, is I heard over and over and over again, from women who are frustrated with the lack of mentorship that they were receiving, either their their words, women in leadership positions that they could look to, people just weren't willing to provide mentorship, or over and over again, they would turn to somebody for mentorship. And if it was a man who would misinterpret this as like, some sort of advance. I was wondering, you know, how do you how do you address this decision? As a lot of aspects to it, but how can you provide more mentorship better mentorship opportunities for women?
Yes, I think definitely in the workplace, Sherman that, you know, it is that the pandemic really highlighted a lot of issues that men were concerned about, and they know that to retain their workforce childcare was a significant issue. So I do think, you know, positive outcome for both women, women and men in the C suite and, you know, the corporate sector in general, there is more empathy. So, you know, it's, it's an interesting time now that we're having these conversations and I think there is more openness to that mentorship, that ally ship, but now more than ever, you know, to retain the workforce, whether it's your own your own business or in a corporate setting. There are so many issues in addition to childcare that families it meant both men and women are facing for example, eldercare is significant. So being able to take time off for aging family members, and not worrying about your position. So there is you know, definitely, I think more empathy. I think the the timing is right to have more, seeking more mentors and men in particular are being more, you know, empathetic and engaged with their employees. We certainly also see that, you know, we need men to step up and be role models. To so when they have a birth or adoption of a child, that they're modeling that for the other employees and taking the time off that they deserve to be able to bond with their, with their new child. And we see that, you know, by investing in that you have better outcomes for children in general. So it's just overall good for the economy. But I would say just to, you know, sum it up, that the pandemic really, you know, more positively has created a culture to have more, you know, honest conversations, but also that mentorship and Alisha,
sincerely, it is advantageous for businesses to try to provide mentorship to their employees,
absolutely for the retention, but also to, you know, mentor them into other leadership positions within the organization. We certainly saw during the pandemic, that a lot of the middle managers, specifically women that were staying home from children made the choice at that point to step out of the workforce and continue to spend time with their families, that fast track was an interesting for them, so they're their company, a lot of corporations and are rebuilding that pipeline for leadership in the organizations. And, you know, men are certainly part of that conversation to encourage women to participate into, you know, stay in the workplace.
How do we get more men interested in being part of the solution?
You know, just with education, and I think it's, you know, one, you know, it starts with one, and it really starts at the top. And so we have our top leaders that are really engaged in in the conversations and in supporting mentorship and Ally ship, and just supporting women in general and the workplace, then you start to build, you build a culture, but it's, you know, one at a time, and it's not a one size fits all, for any organization or institution.
And what are your thoughts on this?
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I think for us, we've been, I mean, we've obviously had to work really hard. But we've been really lucky to because when we first started as an association, it was just men that we were dealing with, right? And so we have champions that came alongside us that said, Yeah, we believe in you. And we understand the vitality that women business owners have and what you're doing in the communities and how that's making them stronger. And so we were, you know, we always welcome our male counterparts, we have a supporting membership, where they're able to join and become part of the organization to champion or women business owners, we have them join our national committees to work and give their insights, we believe that we're better together. And I would say even with like our corporations, our corporate partners that come and sponsor and help us, they'll send their, you know, their, their male employees, and we just, it's just a really great learning experience in collaboration. I think that the more like kind of what he said, the more people that get involved, the more than men that are getting involved in the conversation are really understanding the importance of, you know, really creating a world that works for all of us together. And I think that it's a good time. It's a really good time for us to continue the forward movement of championing each other and really working together.
So when do you know your organization tracked some legislation that was moving to the Kansas legislature this year? Did Kansas lawmakers do enough to help women?
Well, I think we certainly created a conversation. But there's always more work to do. Sherman, just a, you know, a couple of updates. We were very active in supporting Kansas House Bill 2023, that really would create an opposite of entrepreneurship within the Department of Commerce. Unfortunately, that bill did not move forward, and will likely be tabled until the next session. We also were active, you know, just creating some additional conversations around the childcare space. And we're supportive of Senate Bill 63, which would expand the use of actual campaign contributions for candidates running for elected office to allow to use some of those funds for childcare and other family caregiving services. It had bipartisan support, but unfortunately did not make it to the finish line into the governor's desk. And then yeah, so those are a couple of couple of things that we worked on. We've also been very active in the the heroes Act, which was creating a scholarship opportunity that's in the Kansas budget for any veteran or first responder that was injured in the line of duty and or lost their life. Their family members are eligible for they themselves and or their family members are eligible for in State College tuition reimbursement, which includes also books and room and board. And we were instrumental in you know, launching that initiative and keeping that in the budget, but it was expanded this year to include an additional $700,000. So we're proud of that, when and keeping that moving forward. So those are a couple of updates from our Kansas policy work.
Before we go I wanted to ask you about a piece of legislation issue that that was passed. It's known as the women's Bill of Rights. I don't know that it actually establishes any rights. It's really about keeping transgender women out of public restrooms, domestic violence shelters, other spaces. I'm just curious because this was billed as a women's Bill of Rights. If you had a magic wand and control the legislature, what would your your bill of rights for women look like?
It would really look like Sherman, all the things that Jen and I have talked about today, which would be you know, childcare, paid family leave occupational licensing reform. You know, certainly that paid family leave policy continues to be not only for entrepreneurs that we talked about small businesses, but also you know, for the corporate setting, too, and just a real economic driver for the state of Kansas. If I could wave a magic wand, it would definitely be that but also, you know, making childcare more affordable and accessible.
We're here to thank you both for for joining me. Hopefully we can keep this conversation going. What was the reminder for our listeners, the podcast coming up registration link.
It is united dash we.org backslash events, and we hope everyone will join us in August.
Very good. Thank you, Wendy and Jen for joining us.
Thank you so much for him and when he's so good to see you,