Photograph by Robert Scheer
Senior Roxanne Gonzales displays mobiles she and other aspiring business women made at a conference sponsored by National Semiconductor last week.
By KATHERINE PETERSEN
Rita Guerra and five other high school girls created a mini-computer vacuum cleaner from Silicon Valley leftovers as part of An Income of Her Own, a conference held at National Semiconductor in Sunnyvale Nov. 7. Participants worked with pieces of mouse pads, plastic, cardboard and different metal shapes to manufacture their products.
An Income of Her Own, a national nonprofit organization headed by Joline Godfrey, regularly holds conferences designed to interest teenage girls in business. Nearly 100 girls from local high schools participated in group discussions, an entrepreneurial board game and a product-creation project with nearly 30 women executives and business owners.
The conference was a collaborative effort between corporations, schools and community service agencies, including the Girl Scouts of America and the YWCA's Women Entrepreneurs Program. Sponsors included National Semiconductor, Wells Fargo Bank, Cisco Systems and the Silicon Valley chapter of the National Association of Business Owners.
Guerra, a junior at Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, said the conference helped her believe that women can run businesses just as well as men.
"Women can succeed in life, and they can start businesses. It really opened up my eyes. I didn't realize there were so many women who owned their own businesses," Guerra said, adding that she'd like to combine business and social work for her ideal career.
Guerra also felt a spark of hope at seeing successful Latina businesswomen. She said Latina women have been underestimated, and the women business owners she met at the conference were proof that many have succeeded.
"We don't have a lot of Latina women in high places, but we're getting there," Guerra said.
She met the owner of an arts and crafts gallery, as well as the owner of a wrecking yard, whose employees were almost all men.
Donna Dreisbach, owner and president of Management Information for Tomorrow's Business, said the conference gives girls an opportunity to see effective role models who are business owners. Girls learn they can take economic control of their lives, she added.
"There are a large number of young females in our county who lack a day-to-day female role model that is strong and assertive. This is a real opportunity for [the teens] to see a lot of them in one place," Dreisbach said.
The girls most often want to know how they can raise a family and own a business, she added.
Patrice Navarro, a junior at Fremont High School who would like to own a business and raise a family, said she learned she won't have to choose between one or the other.
"The conference made me realize that, as a Latina woman, I can get into my own business. You don't have to do what you're expected to do; you have choices. Most of us want to be independent women, and the conference gave us more ideas and opportunities to think like that," Navarro said.
Navarro's favorite portion of the conference was playing An Income of Her Own's board game. In a combination of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly, partners roll dice and move around a board, building a business.
Each team begins with a bank loan, and they encounter challenges, success and pitfalls as they move around the board. Questions included, "Who has recorded more albums: Barbra Streisand or Aretha Franklin?"
"The questions were hard. We all tried to figure out the answers, and it was a way for us to mingle with some of the people we didn't know," said Navarro, who wants to become either a designer or the head of a large Silicon Valley corporation.
Dreisbach said the most important thing the girls learn is that they can make choices.
"If someone had told me when I was 15 that I could run my own business," she added, "I would have done it a lot sooner."
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, November 13, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.