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Ribbon-cutting for Fruitvale training site
Oakland City Council president Ignacio de la Fuente joined 100 community supporters on June 21 to celebrate the opening of a Women's Initiative training site in Oakland’s Fruitvale district. Graduate Connie Rivera, Mixcoatl Arts & Crafts, kicked off the celebration with Aztec dancing accompanied by another dancer and her husband on the drum. Connie invited all to participate in a Friendship dance before turning the celebration over to emcee Paula Welsh, The Welsh Marketing Group.

Connie Rivera, Mixcoatl Arts & Crafts, performs an Aztec dance at the grand opening celebration.

Graduate Guisell Osorio, Sabores del Sur, offered her experience turning something she loved into a living through her class at Women's Initiative. Guisell also committed to helping other women entrepreneurs succeed and pledged a $500 donation to Women's Initiative. Victoria Jones, Clorox Corporation, mentioned the power of investing in Women's Initiative and her experience as a co-chair at the business conference last October. Finally, Ignacio rallied the crowd with his support for small businesses in Oakland and together the leaders cut the ribbon to the new office.

Julie Castro Abrams talks with Marcela Chavez at her salon Skin Time, one of the stops on the business tour.

Throughout the day Women's Initiative conducted walking tours of six businesses in the Fruitvale district that have received support from Women's Initiative.

Every few editions of the Women's Initiative eNewsletter for graduates includes a CEO Counsel column featuring an interview with an outstanding CEO designed to inspire our graduates as they build their businesses. Here is an excerpt from the most recent interview:

Stephanie DiMarco
CEO of Advent Software

Stephanie DiMarco started Advent Software in 1983 along with Steve Strand with the simple ideas of fixing problems for customers. As CEO of Advent, Stephanie has helped the company grow from a start up to a NASDAQ listed company with worldwide operations. Today Advent Software has 850 employees and a market capitalization of more than $900 million. Ms. DiMarco is a pioneer in the technology field. She was named Business Leader of the Year by Haas School of Business in 2000, received the Financial Woman of the Year award in 2003 by the Financial Women's Association and was named one of the top 10 financial technology innovators of the decade by Wall Street & Technology Magazine. Ms. DiMarco shares her insight with you on growing Advent Software from the ground up:

Where did the idea for starting Advent Software come from?
I started Advent Software when I was 23 years old. I was just a couple of years out of college and I was working at a small money management firm where we had a lot of time-consuming, manual processes in place to try and keep track of our investments. With the exposure I’d had to computers in school, I knew that we could build technology to automate some of those manual processes and I persuaded the firm to let me give it a try. When I saw the success we had with it, it struck me that there had to be other firms with a similar problem, so I struck out with my business partner to generalize the product for a bigger audience.

How did you build the business on $90,000?
Actually our initial investment was just $50,000. Later we got another $40,000 to help us through the start up phase. The advantage of not having a lot of capital was that I was very careful about I spend the money. It motivated me to be more efficient because I realized that if we ran out of money, I would have to go back to working for someone else and give up on the dream. I do believe that it is harder today to start a software company like Advent. In 1983 there were not as many companies in the technology field.

For you, what was the key to building a successful business?
I built Advent over a long period of time, so what I really had was patience. I believe that starting a business is an endurance sport. Initially, we didn’t have a lot of clients so we worked on building our client list from scratch. In the first few years of business, we had a hard time convincing people to buy what we had because personal computers were viewed as hobby machines. So, Advent was ahead of the technology curve and it took patience to see our market develop and mature. My advice to business owners is to celebrate your wins and have way to measure your success.

What advice do you have for women entering non-traditional fields?
My advice is to have confidence in your abilities and don’t let anyone intimate you. I learned this well from my grandmother. My grandmother, Cora, got a job as a riveter during the war because the pay was good and she had a family to take care of -- she did not allow herself to be intimidated, even though her employment was not traditionally “women’s work.” Often times people will try to intimidate you and will tell you that your idea won’t work or your business won’t have a big market. I was told Advent would never get off the ground. Imagine if I had listened to them.

I started Advent when the first “portable” computers were introduced. There were called “luggables,” which gives you an idea of how much bigger they were from the laptops we have today! These luggables were about the size of a travel suitcase – basically, a big plastic box on wheels I once flew with my luggable to New York on business and a male passenger very politely asked me if I needed help with my sewing machine. That story just shows how far we’ve come in our attitudes about women, work and technology – though I believe we still have a long way to go.