WOMEN PRESIDENTS' ORGANIZATION.

Bringing Together Successful Entrepreneurs

The Women Presidents' Organization, along with its chapter facilitators, works hard to bring together a diverse group of successful women business owners who share enough to face similar issues but are different enough to make a unique contribution to the group. Each chapter has approximately twenty women who meet to build trust and allow for frank discussion of sensitive information in a highly confidential setting.

Meeting content is determined by the members and varies depending upon their interests and needs between roundtables, case studies, business analysis, expert consultants, burning issue reviews, guest experts, and self-assessments with group feedback. All guest experts are selected to address content defined by the membership and are asked to apply comments to questions submitted by members prior to the meeting. Facilitators are responsible for implementing agendas which are defined by their chapter members. Headquarters selects, recruits and trains the facilitator who has full responsibility for running the local sessions.

Meeting Content

General Information:

Chapters meet monthly in the mornings or evenings with approximately twenty women business owners.

Each meeting is held in a conference room with space available for a light dinner or breakfast (or a comparable setting).

There are twelve regularly scheduled sessions per year and the sessions are approximately three to four hours long.

Chapters often choose to provide roundtable discussions or in depth case studies on businesses represented within the group.

Topics are recommended by participants in the group and agendas are developed with input from the group. The facilitator may choose outstanding local and regional experts on selected subjects, as well as highly visible business owners to discuss their own experiences.

Out of courtesy, members are asked to RSVP for each meeting. If you are unable to attend a meeting, please inform your facilitator prior to the meeting date.

Each session will last approximately three to four hours and include:

Networking with a light dinner or breakfast or other refreshments

Analysis of the participant's businesses using roundtables and case studies. (e.g. update on status of each participant's business, a sales presentation or problem solving, etc.)

Expert advisors who participate in discussions of specific preselected topics

Guest Speakers (on business topics selected by the group with time for questions and answers)

Peer group support

High visibility role models/entrepreneurs

Interactive exercises

Best practices

The facilitator invites all guest experts and plans agendas with chapter recommendations.

Roundtable Format

Founders of fast-growing companies draw upon many sources of knowledge to run their business, from their technical expertise to their interactions with customers. But research has demonstrated that the most invaluable resource to help successful business owners learn and grow is other successful business owners.

As a successful entrepreneur and the inventor of Kitty Litter, Edward Lowe (1920 - 1995) believed deeply in peer learning as a tool for business owners to share experience and grow as leaders. The foundation, whose mission is "to champion the entrepreneurial spirit," has now developed a model to maximize the roundtable experience. That model has been adapted and branded specifically for the needs of the Women Presidents' Organization.

By sharing experiences and gaining support from other entrepreneurs in a confidential roundtable setting, leaders of non-competing businesses benefit from an informal advisory board of smart, thoughtful, dedicated peers. There's a special term for what participants gain in these roundtable discussions: PeerSpectives™.

Participants can enhance their leadership and accelerate their personal and business growth in roundtables. They often develop deep friendships with their peers and treat monthly roundtable meetings-and annual retreats-as a chance to step back from workday pressures to see the big picture. Many of the most successful business owners in America attend peer roundtable meetings. Through these lively, educational sessions, participants give and receive the benefit of their entrepreneurial experience, insight and resources under the direction of a trained facilitator.