Fostering the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs to Affect the World

Crowd of women at the 2013 DWEN conferenceAt Dell, we’re not ones for just sitting around too long. So, it’s no surprise that only two days after our Dell Annual Industry Analyst Conference (#DAAC), we’re hosting our Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (#DWEN) conference, co-sponsored by Intel.

While DAAC was focused on sharing what we are doing in our business, DWEN is very much about what others are doing to grow their businesses. More specifically, hundreds of the world’s top female entrepreneurs and business leaders are coming together to share insights and best practices as part of a vibrant entrepreneurial community.

DWEN is not a new community we’ve just started. It’s not a response to recent news regarding the low numbers of women in the tech industry. While we are committed to diversity, recently became first in the IT industry to join Catalyst’s new pilot program with Men Advocating Real Change, and were excited to be ranked #24 on Working Mother Top 100 Companies in 2013, DWEN is about something bigger than ourselves. It’s about fostering the potential of female entrepreneurship to affect the global economy and foster a bright future for us all.

Women entrepreneurs are uniquely resilient Linda Rottenburg, CEO of Endeavor, says in a recent post on TechPageOne:

“Some of the most inspirational entrepreneurs I’ve encountered with Endeavor have been, of course, women. In emerging markets especially, female entrepreneurs face some incredible odds. As I learned firsthand when I set out on my own journey, it requires a special mix of resourcefulness and willpower to keep going, no matter how many times people tell you you’re crazy.”

We began building the DWEN community more than five years ago, and since the inaugural conference in Shanghai, interest in the network and attendance at the yearly event has continued to grow. IT analyst, SMB Group partner and DWEN member Laure McCabe has remarked:

“DWEN’s now established network can serve as a collective resource to advance the role of women in business by fostering entrepreneurship, and in turn, raising income levels and quality of life of families and communities.”

Last year, women entrepreneurs from 13 countries gathered in Istanbul. This year, we bring it home to Austin for the first time. But it remains a worldwide community and a global event, as you can see by the excited tweets of attendees coming in from Australia


and Japan


London


and Germany


While the conference is invitation-only, everyone can follow what’s happening June 1-3 on Twitter via the #DWEN hashtag. And, women entrepreneurs and business leaders are invited to join in the year-round conversation through the Women Powering Business group on LinkedIn.

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.