New President and CEO of Aviatra Accelerators
Earlier this year, Jill Morenz was named the new president and CEO of Aviatra Accelerators, a nonprofit that helps female entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Morenz has worked in the nonprofit space in Northern Kentucky for the last nine years while having her own business on the side, so when this opportunity came up, she knew that it was a perfect fit.
What services does Aviatra Accelerators provide?
Aviatra Accelerators offers education, connections and resources to women entrepreneurs to help them start and grow their businesses so they can grow faster and with more confidence. We connect the women entrepreneurs to what I consider to be the three essential types of connections that they need to have a successful business.
We connect them to experts through our educational programs. Our educational programs are taught by experts in their field who share their knowledge on topics like the legal structure of a business, social media marketing, and pricing and budgeting for businesses.
The second type of connection is the connection to funding sources. That includes not only lenders but also investors and customers.
The last type of essential connection is the connection to other women entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely road, and it’s so helpful to have other women who are walking that same road.
What advice would you give to female entrepreneurs who are looking to start a business?
I would say find a community. Find a community of other women entrepreneurs. They are welcome to join our community by coming to our events and signing up for our newsletter. But there’s a lot of support in the Cincinnati region for startups, and growing support for women who are starting a business and have their businesses.
Are there any unique challenges that female entrepreneurs face?
This is slowly changing, but historically women just haven’t been connected to the funding opportunities that men have. You’ve heard the traditional story where a couple of guys go for a golf game and one of them comes home with a check in his pocket from the investor that he played golf with. That’s kind of a stereotypical story, but it actually happens a lot like that because these people have known each other for so long and moved in the same circles. They trust each other already and have all these relationships and connections. It’s just a lot easier to raise funds for business when you have that network, and many women just haven’t been exposed to those types of connections and those types of people that have the funds to invest or to lend.
What are Aviatra Accelerator’s plans for the future?
This year we have a lot going on. We have a boot camp called EXPLORE and that is for early-stage entrepreneurs to validate their ideas and learn how to set up their business for success—we’re going to do several of those this year.
Then we have our signature launch program, which is a nine-module program that culminates in a pitch competition. We also are premiering our SOAR series, which are twice monthly workshops that are relevant to women at any stage of their business.
The other exciting thing this year is our Dayton office is ramping up with programming again. We kind of went dark up there for about a year, but now we have gotten funding from the state of Ohio and so we’re going to be starting our programming there as well.
