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Women Making a Difference – One Job at a Time.

Does the name Ginny Rommetty ring a bell with you? How about Indra Nooyi, Ellen Kullman or Irene Rosenfeld? Meg Whitman? Ahhhh, now there’s a name more Californian’s are familiar with. But are you familiar with Whitman for her recent run for Governor against Jerry Brown, or for the fact that she is the CEO at Hewlett-Packard?

In fact all of the women named above are counted among the many Presidents and CEO’s of major corporations and are among the 50 most influential women in business today according to a recent CNNMoney/Fortune Magazine report. From venerable IBM to upstart Yahoo, from McDonalds to PepsiCo, DuPont, Sempra Energy and Xerox, women are increasingly breaking through the glass ceiling to lead America’s Fortune 500 corporations.

Now while appearing in the Valley Business Journal’s annual ‘Women in Business’ issue may not be as prestigious as appearing in Fortune Magazine’s compendium of the 50 most influential women in business, local women are increasingly demonstrating their leadership abilities in the corporate suite and many more have taken up the mantle of entrepreneurship to start and run successful businesses of their own.

In fact according to a recent report commissioned by American Express OPEN called ‘The 2013 State of Women-Owned Businesses’, since the recession devastated the market in 2007, only two business segments have provided a net increase in employment. Large, publicly traded companies are responsible for the overwhelming bulk of those jobs (5.9 million) but the second category is women-owned business firms (175,000). In all other publicly held firms, employment has declined by more than half a million jobs since 2007.

The rate of growth in the number of women-owned businesses is one and a half times the national average over the past 16 years. As of this year, it is estimated there are more than 8.6 million women-owned businesses in the United States, generating nearly $1.3 trillion in revenue and employing 7.8 million people. Of firms generating more than $10 million in annual revenue, the number of women-owned firms has grown by nearly 57% since 2002 – fully 47% higher than the 38% increased among all firms of $10 million or more regardless of ownership.

Since 1997, California has been ranked as the state with the highest number of women-owned businesses (1,107,000). Unfortunately, California is conspicuously missing from the top ten states where women-owned businesses have grown in terms of both numbers and economic impact. Given our state’s regulatory and tax attitude, that’s probably not surprising. However, averaging together the past 11 years of growth rankings in number, revenue and employment, Riverside County ranks #4 among the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the country.

In this edition you will meet some of the local women responsible for that statistic as well as the nascent economic recovery we are experiencing. We salute them, their accomplishments and their vitality. We celebrate their success, their struggle and the significant contribution they make to our community. Here’s to the 2013 Valley Business Journal’s ‘Women in Business’ – making a difference one job at a time.