Business News

AIB and The Entrepreneurs Academy partner for the Women in Enterprise initiative

By Business & Finance
17 January 2018
joanne-hession-the-entrepreneurs-academy
Joanne Hession, Owner and Founder, The Entrepreneurs Academy

AIB and The Entrepreneurs Academy team up to present the Women in Enterprise Masterclasses and Growth Academy.

This initiative is aimed at women who lead or own their own business and have ambitions to expand their businesses.

A mentoring and education programme, Women in Enterprise aims to empower women and provide a support network for women to share ideas and enhance their businesses. It also helps women to develop personally and professionally through leadership and support networks.

Three facilitators from The Entrepreneurs Academy will lead, per location, the energetic masterclasses and will place participants in a position to creating their own roadmap to success.

As well as this, two Growth Academy Workshop Programmes, both including a six-day full-day workshop, are open to 20 female entrepreneurs who are AIB business account holders. Each group will be facilitated to become its own peer board and will be supported by a network, ‘Board you can’t afford’.

AIB did extensive research with women business owners and commissioned independent research by Behaviour & Attitudes (B&A). This research showed women wished to gain access to tools, skills and tips to help grow their businesses.

Joanne Hession, Founder of The Entrepreneurs Academy, said: “The Entrepreneurs Academy has an exceptional track record creating high impact training and mentoring and we are delighted to partner with on this extraordinary programme. I’ve wanted to run a programme like this for many years and I’m delighted to announce that at last we can. AIB Women in Enterprise programme is comprised of a series of masterclasses and growth and leadership programmes for female entrepreneurs looking to work on their business instead of in their business. There are such hard-working entrepreneurs in this country that deserve to be able to access learning and development of this caliber, this programme will really help them and their businesses grow to the next stage.”

Speaking about the programme, Robert Mulhall, Managing Director, Retail and Commercial Banking, said: “AIB is fully committed to being the bank where existing and future female business owners feel they can and want to do business. We support and encourage female entrepreneurship and women in business every step of the way, with access to educational expertise, mentoring, peer support and funding. We have put this programme in place to do that and to back our customers’ when it comes to starting and growing their own business.”

Four half-day masterclass events are taking place across the country, with the second one taking place The Maryborough Hotel, Cork on Wednesday, 31 January and the third in Donegal on Thursday, 8 February. Both start at 2pm and run until 6pm and are followed by a networking reception from 6–7pm.

Places are limited to just 70 women per event. Further information on AIB Women in Enterprise is available at http://entrepreneursacademy.ie/aibwomeninenterprise/