I love stumbling on old articles. Recently I found one I wrote back in 2019 for Thrive Global, “The Secret Sauce to Getting More Women to Export.” Reading it again reminded me just how far Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global® (wegg®) has come and, as its founder and President, I should know.

Where it started

In 2008, I started a blog called Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global® because I kept seeing the same hard truth: women-owned businesses were far less likely to trade internationally than businesses owned by men. At the time, the data backed it up.  For example, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor counted 163 million women business owners across 74 economies, yet only about one in five exporting companies was woman-owned. Roughly 30 percent of businesses were women-owned, but just 12 percent of exporters were.

That gap wasn’t about talent or ambition. It was about access, confidence and support. So wegg went from a blog to something more active:  free wegginars® and weggchats, on-the-ground workshops, and tuition-free education aimed at helping women overcome the perception barriers, risk-aversion and isolation that kept them from going global. By 2015, I’d incorporated wegg as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. By 2019, we’d helped more than 1,600 women business owners start and expand internationally.  I was proud of that number then, and I am even more proud of who we currently serve.

Where we are today

Since that 2019 article, wegg has served more than 60,000 women entrepreneurs and business owners worldwide. That’s not a typo.  It’s nearly 40 times the reach we had just a few years ago.

The programming, more than 100 a year, has grown right along with it.  What began as wegginars, on the ground workshops and weggchats is now a full ecosystem:

• • Monthly wegginars
  • The monthly How She Went Global® podcast
  • A monthly wegg Showcase
  • The annual Gail Adinamis wegg Award for Exemplary Global Leadership
  • Club wegg
  • wegg Cohorts, including Daughters of Business Owners (DOBO)
  • wegg Virtual Café
  • The Success On Her Terms 4-part series
  • The wegg Young Professional Board (YPB)
  • On-the-ground events, and more

None of it runs on goodwill alone. We’re backed by more than 10 sponsors and a number of individuals who support us in a substantial way, guided by a 13-member Board and carried out by 8 incredible employees. What started as one woman with a blog is now an organization with real infrastructure built specifically to make sure no woman has to figure out exporting alone, or pay to learn how.

Why this matters more than the numbers

Back in 2019, I wrote that wegg doesn’t just connect women entrepreneurs to each other in the global marketplace.  wegg educates each one on how to actually take her business global, giving her the tools, skills, confidence and inspiration to build a healthier business and a new future for herself, her family and her community. That mission hasn’t changed. What’s changed is our capacity to deliver on it, at scale, for tens of thousands of women instead of hundreds.

The barriers I wrote about six years ago – risk-aversion, lack of mentors, thin margins for continuing education – haven’t disappeared. But more women now have a place to go to knock them down. That’s the return on every wegginar, every podcast episode, every showcase feature, every dollar from every sponsor and donor who believed this was worth funding.

We’re just getting started

To everyone who has helped wegg grow – sponsors, donors, team, board members, mentors, podcast guests, and every woman who showed up to a wegginar or joined Club wegg (cohorts and DOBO), thank you.

Magnificence begins in our own heart, alongside thinking big and acting boldly when it comes to educating women on how to operate in the global marketplace. wegg exists to help you imagine your growth beyond your wildest dreams.

Together, let’s keep dreaming and keep turning those dreams into exports, revenue and real change for women-owned businesses around the world.

Like what wegg is doing?  Donate here.  As the saying goes, charity will never bust you.