Two new initiatives are being launched to support women leaders in Waterloo and the region.

During an International Women’s Day market and speaker event on Friday in Waterloo, the Uptown Waterloo Business Improvement Area (BIA) launched a quarterly women’s entrepreneurs collective.

Melissa Durrell is a business owner, former city councillor, current chair of the Uptown BIA and a member of the Waterloo Region Women Communication and Technology Board.

She says the idea behind the collective is to bring together women who work and run businesses in uptown. 

“They’ll now be getting to meet quarterly. We’re hoping that this will start to get more women interested in running businesses. There’ll be some leadership opportunities and hopefully they can move into some of the board positions with our BIA,” she told CBC News in an interview.

Women interested in this initiative can reach out to the BIA or look for information in their newsletter with the first meeting expected in the coming weeks.

‘Our voices could be heard’

The second initiative is a women’s speaking bureau through the Women Communication Technology Waterloo Region, the local chapter of a national organization that aims to help women advance in their careers.

The speakers bureau will help guide women leaders to become speakers, add them to a list that organizations can access and also help them develop things like Ted Talks.

Durrell says she’s “really excited” about the speakers bureau.

“I’ve been on a lot of [panels] in my life where I’m the moderator and I’m moderating three men or what have you and so we just saw there’s a real need in this community to be able to put a list together of incredible female speakers and then put it out to the community so that we can be part of those panels. Our faces can be seen and our voices could be heard in those important spaces,” she said.

Durrell says these initiatives are important because uptown Waterloo and other parts of the region have seen “a significant and growing presence of women-led businesses.”

In uptown Waterloo specifically, Durrell says there are  55 female-owned businesses and another nine where women are either leading the operations or in executive positions. 

“It really shows how central women are to our local economy uptown,” she said.

“Part of what we’re trying to achieve here is bringing these women together to create that sort of neighbourhood vibrancy, but also community as well,” Durrell added.

“I’m really excited about that. It’s going to help us build networks, mentorship pathways and hopefully a gateway for new entrepreneurs, female entrepreneurs, to feel like they’ve got a community to be able to settle in uptown,” she said.