The First Ever Women Entrepreneur Program

For its first international initiative targeting women entrepreneurs, BNP Paribas Wealth Management created a program in partnership with the Women Business Mentoring Initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Palo Alto, California – a center of learning has produced more than 20 Nobel Prize Winners.

This past July, a group of 33 women came together from France, Italy, Belgium, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, and the US for a week of plenary and workshop sessions on business growth, business opportunities and leadership. The participants, who were selected based on their respective talents and the international focus of their careers, quickly banded together. Over the course of the week-long program, they not only learned together, but also mutually shared best practices.

Amongst the 17 courses in which the women participated, Larissa Tiedens (Director of the Executive Program in Leadership and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs) kicked off the program with her talk on the innovative process known as design thinking. Professor Maggie Neale also shared her vision of successful negotiation. Among the other activities, the participants visited the Stanford campus, founded in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford in memory of their son. They participated in the inauguration of a new private banking branch in Palo Alto, as well as a talk with the best-selling author and web entrepreneur Clara Shih.

Given the success of this pilot program, it looks as if this was just the first of many future BNP Paribas-Stanford women entrepreneur programs.