Women in business.

• Position: Industry Outlook

WOMEN-OWNED businesses in Utah are currently undergoing a dramatic growth spurt, and the trend doesn't appear to be slowing. A 2004 study by the Washington, D.C. based Center for Women's Business Research found that Utah leads the nation in the growth of the number of privately-held businesses that are at least half-owned by women--an increase of 34.7 percent from 1997-2004, compared with a national average of 17.4 percent.

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The inaugural Utah Business Women in Business roundtable, held at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, brought together a dynamic group of women leaders from business, education, law and government to discuss the growth of entrepreneurship among women in Utah, the larger cultural contribution of women in the workforce, the current business and legislative climate and other issues that impact opportunity for women in business.

Participants included: Sherron Bienvenu, consultant and Professor Emeritus; Shawna Bona, McKinnon-Mulherin; Betsy Burton, The King's English Bookstore; Caryn Beck-Dudley, Utah State University College of Business; Gladys Gonzales, Mundo Hispano; Kim Jones, Verite Multimedia; Pat Jones, Dan Jones & Associates and the Utah House of Representatives; Louise Knauer, Attorney at Law; Linda Kofford, Associated Representatives; Crystal Maggelet, Crystal Inns; Karianne Marcum, Creative Expressions; Nancy Mitchell, Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce; Pollyanna Pixton, Evolutionary Systems; Connie Saccomanno, The Winner School; Maxine Turner, Cuisine Unlimited; Vicki Varela, Kennecott Land: and Kathryn Wilcox, Kencraft.

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Special thanks to our sponsors for this roundtable, Workforce Services and Grant Thornton LLP, and to our moderator, Jan Hemming, outgoing president of the Utah chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). Thanks also to Cactus & Tropicals for providing floral arrangements for the event.

Let's start by hearing about your organization, the role you play and the most difficult challenges you have encountered in building your business or moving up the ranks.

BONA: I am co-president and co-founder of McKinnon-Mulherin. We're an information design company, which basically means we're writers and artists who understand business. We help clients create proposals, training documentations and presentations that put money in their pockets. In the seven-plus years we've been in business, I think our greatest challenge is managing growth, quality and cash flow in a pretty variable economic climate.

KNAUER: I'm an attorney; I practice with five other people. We've carved out practices and lifestyles that worked for us. I guess the biggest issue for me is not being too much of a soft touch and valuing my work, not feeling as though my job is to help everybody on earth.

BURION: My business is the King's English bookstore. We've been around 27 years. The biggest challenge we have faced by far is the national chains. For about ten years, it looked as though we might not make it. Now, business is better.

WILCOX: I'm the vice president of production at Kencraft, a candy manufacturing company in Alpine. We manufacture a creative, handmade product that's unique in the marketplace. We've been around about 37 years, and I've been there 11 years, and I feel very lucky. I really haven't had challenges moving up into the management level. I've been able to work with some very intelligent, very sincere, very wonderful men who have given me opportunities to prove myself and challenge me.

GONZALES: I am the publisher and owner of the Mundo Hispana newspaper. We've been around for 11 years. Our biggest challenge, I think, has been to convince marketing teams of big companies that there is a huge Hispanic market out, and they need to invest dollars in advertising to reach this market. We have been very successful lately. I think the change of the Census 2000 that proved that there really are Hispanics in Utah has made a big difference for the growth of our newspaper.

BIENVENU: I am a professor emeritus from Emory University in Atlanta, where I taught for 20 years. I also am a visiting professor in the international MBA program in Helsinki, Finland and have had a consulting, training and speaking practice for the past 18 years. My focus is communication, from professional competencies to corporate communication strategy. But my passion and research has always been gender differences in workplace communication.

What I always hoped I could bring to Utah was the concept that your options should not be limited based on your gender. Sometimes I have a good audience for that and sometimes I don't. Since I became Shreveport, Louisiana's first female disk jockey in 1970, I have always taken a job formerly held by a man and had to work twice as hard to prove that I was half as good and often paid half the money.

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DUDLEY: I'm the Dean of the college of Business at Utah State University. Before that, I was a lawyer for a short time, before I moved into academia. I was the first person to have a baby on tenure track. How people viewed that was always interesting, because academic settings are not set up for people to have babies. Really, stereotyping has probably been the major challenge. At a university, you would think they would be much more open, but in fact, gender stereotyping has been a major problem.

TURNER: I own Cuisine Unlimited, a 23-year-old off-premises catering service. We have done many national events, and recently began our first international event, at the Athens Olympics. I started the company 23 years ago on a shoestring and all my wedding gifts--I think I have one piece of silver left. Certainly one of our greatest challenges is that the cost of doing business has no borders anymore; our costs are the same nationally and sometimes now even internationally. However, we live in a very conservative community where budgets are really the bottom line. It's very challenging to maintain profitability when we're challenged on a regular basis by low budgets within this community.

VARELA: I'm vice president of public policy at Kennecott Land, which is building enduring communities on Salt Lake Valley's west bench. We own a parcel of property that's about the size of the City of San Francisco. We are very committed to sustainable development and long-term strategy that will create communities where my children and many of your children will choose to live. I've had lots of different chapters in my life, and I think the biggest challenge for me has been maintaining lifestyle balance, in that I tend to be drawn to work that I get so passionate about that I have to be very careful to manage all the interesting parts of my life carefully.

KIM JONES: I am...