Thunderbird’s Business Training Program for Women Entrepreneurs to be Piloted by U.S. Small Business Administration
Sept. 23, 2013 — An online training tool for women entrepreneurs co-created by Thunderbird School of Global Management will be piloted at select Small Business Administration (SBA) Women’s Business Centers across the United States through a federal commitment announced today at the Equal Futures Partnership meeting in New York.
The training program, called DreamBuilder: The Women’s Business Creator, is spearheaded by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation with support from Thunderbird, the world’s No. 1-ranked international business school, and Bluedrop Performance Learning, a leader in content delivery.
DreamBuilder consists of a series of online business courses which can be completed at the participant’s own pace. Core business management topics such as business planning, market research, marketing, budgeting, accounting, financial reporting, branding, pricing, customer service, human resources, and goal setting are covered in fun and interactive ways.
The business training tool provides participants the opportunity throughout the program to capture their thoughts and ideas through directive questions that feed their answers into a business plan portal. At the end of the program, the participants will have generated their own actual business plans.
Thunderbird’s social impact initiative, Thunderbird for Good, helped create the course content and manages the program. Thunderbird for Good focuses on educating businesswomen in developing countries and has helped provide business training to more than 75,000 women in 25 countries since 2005.
DreamBuilder’s series of free online courses have been previously launched in Peru to great success. If the DreamBuilder pilot is successful in the SBA’s Women’s Business Centers, the program could end up reaching 100 centers nationwide serving almost 140,000 women.
This year’s Equal Futures Partnership meeting was hosted at the Waldorf Astoria by John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State and Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls.
The Equal Futures Partnership was launched by Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on September 24, 2012 in response to President Obama’s challenge to other heads of state to break down barriers to women’s political and economic participation.
Learn more about DreamBuilder: www.dreambuilder.org.
Virginia Mungovan
Public Relations Specialist
Thunderbird School of Global Management
(602)978-7081
virginia.mungovan@thunderbird.edu
About Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
Freeport-McMoRan is a leading international mining company with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Freeport-McMoRan operates large, long-lived, geographically diverse assets with significant proven and probable reserves of copper, gold, molybdenum, cobalt, oil and gas. Freeport-McMoRan has a dynamic portfolio of operating, expansion and growth projects in the copper industry. Freeport-McMoRan is also the world’s largest producer of molybdenum and a significant gold, oil and gas producer. The company’s portfolio of assets includes the Grasberg minerals district, one of the world’s largest copper and gold mine in terms of recoverable reserves; significant mining operations in the Americas, including the large scale Morenci and Safford minerals districts in North America and the Cerro Verde and El Abra operations in South America; and the Tenke Fungurume minerals district in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Freeport-McMoRan’s portfolio of oil and gas assets include strong oil production facilities in California, a growing production profile in the onshore Eagle Ford trend in Texas, significant production facilities and growth potential in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico and large onshore resources in the Haynesville natural gas trend in Louisiana. In addition, FCX is an industry leader in the emerging ultra-deep gas trend with sizeable potential, located offshore in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in South Louisiana.
About Thunderbird School of Global Management
Thunderbird is the world’s No.1-ranked school of international business with nearly 70 years of experience in developing leaders with the global mindset, business skills and social responsibility necessary to create real, sustainable value for their organizations, communities and the world.
Dedicated to preparing students to be global leaders and committed global citizens, Thunderbird was the first graduate business school to adopt a Professional Oath of Honor. Thunderbird’s global network of alumni numbers 40,000 graduates in 148 nations worldwide. The school is sought out by graduate students, working professionals and companies seeking to gain the skills necessary for success in today’s global economy. For more about Thunderbird, visit http://www.thunderbird.edu.
About Bluedrop Performance Learning
Bluedrop Performance Learning (TSX-V: BPL) is an innovator in workplace training for individuals, corporations, military personnel and the public sector. The company was launched in 2004 and has more than 100 employees in six offices across Canada. Bluedrop is transforming workplace learning by designing and delivering training content that enables individuals to improve their skills and their employers to increase productivity.
CoursePark.com is Bluedrop's cloud-based training delivery platform and contains more than 5,000 third-party online courses from the world's leading publishers and subject matter experts. Launched in 2011, the CoursePark platform is growing quickly, with registered users in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit www.bluedrop.com.
Tags:
