(Burnsville, MN) — May 13th, 2022 — Burnsville resident Felicia Permenter is a registered nurse who worked in the ICU and critical care units in New York City at the beginning of the COVID battle. After that experience and the birth of her third child she decided not to return to hospital work and opened AKN-Wellness. Felicia is now a national board-certified health and wellness coach.
Permenter applied to the Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell to learn how to grow her business but learned far more. “This program is impressive, challenging, and designed for working moms,” Permenter explains. “Many successful women suffer from ‘imposter syndrome,’ this course addressed those fears and set me on a path for success. The instructors are industry specialists and available in real time to answer questions. I have access to coaching, and I am utilizing the tools to attract Angel Investors and am in the process of developing a strategic business plan.”
To help more female entrepreneurs gain the critical business acumen to drive their businesses forward, Bank of America had doubled enrollment opportunity for the Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell. Due to the program’s success, Bank of America will add 50,000 seats, providing a total of 100,000 women entrepreneurs, specifically women entrepreneurs of color, new opportunities and education resources. This is the only Ivy League program offering a certificate in women’s entrepreneurship and at no cost.
This comes at a time with women in the U.S. are starting and growing their own businesses at record rates. According to Bank of America Private Bank research they own an estimated 13 million businesses, employ over nine million people, and generate $1.9 trillion in annual revenues, which is nearly five times the national average.
The Bank of America Institute for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Cornell program expansion is part of the bank’s commitment to advance racial equality and economic opportunity.
