Jamestown  (SEN Heitkamp’s Office) U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, Friday hosted a discussion to highlight successful women-owned small businesses in Jamestown and discuss collaborative strategies to encourage and support women entrepreneurs.

 

During the discussion, Heitkamp heard from successful women small business owners in the area about how they started, maintain, and expand their businesses. They also talked about how the federal government and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) can help women business owners overcome unique challenges.

 

According to the 2017 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, North Dakota continues to rank as one of the top states in the Union for women starting and growing their business. North Dakota now has over 20,000 women-owned businesses and ranks number one in terms of employment vitality which is the employment growth rate of women-owned businesses and the average number of employees working at women-owned businesses. Further, North Dakota ranks fourth in the nation in terms of the number of new women owned businesses as well as their growth in employment and revenues.

 

“North Dakota continues to show that women business owners are paving the way and helping propel our state forward,” said Heitkamp. “We need to make sure these women and future women who want to start small businesses have the tools they need to thrive, and that’s why we’re here today. We talked about how the federal government can better help small businesses get off the ground, whether that is from common-sense regulations, start-up funding, or simply providing the certainty needed to make long-term decisions. Through my work on the Senate Small Business Committee, I’ll keep working to make sure their needs are heard and addressed so they have the right economic tools needed to thrive.”

 

Heitkamp also discussed her work in the U.S. Senate to support rural entrepreneurs through her Startup Entrepreneur Empowerment Delivery (SEED) Act. The SEED Act would expand access to early stage funding for startups in rural states and small cities – which many startups say is their biggest challenge. In addition to helping women-owned businesses financially, Heitkamp also reinforced the need for family-friendly policies like the FAMILY Act that would give working families and entrepreneurs flexibility by creating a federal paid family and medical leave policy. 

 

In March 2017, Heitkamp reintroduced the bipartisan Supporting America’s Innovators Act with U.S. Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) to help encourage investments in small businesses and startups in smaller communities. In the Fargo-Moorhead region, about a third of startups identified accessing early stage funding as the greatest hurdle to growing their business. Heitkamp introduced her SEED Act in 2016 to tackle that problem by investing in promising startups in ten small cities in rural states. In addition, Heitkamp brought then-U.S. Small Business Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet to North Dakota in July 2015 to meet with North Dakota successful women-owned small businesses, and to hold the first U.S. Senate Committee on Small Businesses field hearing in Fargo on how to better support startups in rural areas.

 

In 2014, Heitkamp recommended Kari Warberg Block for a position on the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) that she served on for three years. The NWBC is a federal Council comprised of 15 women from around the country that advise the President, Congress, and the SBA on economic issues and concerns relevant to women business owners nationwide. Warberg Block was also honored as North Dakota’s 2013 Small Business Owner of the Year. Last August, Heitkamp joined Warberg Block in a women’s small business roundtable in Bismarck to discuss methods and policies that would support women entrepreneurs grow their businesses.