San Leandro Women Entrepreneurs Unite to Create Incubator Space

“Truth Is Beauty” by artist Marco Cochrane at San Leandro Tech Campus.

With Truth is Beauty as inspiration and women’s economic empowerment as our goal, the San Leandro Women Entrepreneurs group, Community Impact Lab, GenLead/Belong Lab, and the City of San Leandro are partnering to explore the creation of a Women’s Entrepreneurship Incubator.

Last fall, a group of UC Berkeley students kicked off this project by conducting interviews and focus groups, asking the question, “Is there interest in establishing a women’s tech incubator in San Leandro?” The result was a resounding yes, although interviewees collectively expressed the desire to have space that offers more than a technology focus. Women entrepreneurs in San Leandro that were polled are interested in a space for all kinds of innovative, community driven, entrepreneurial ventures. With San Leandro’s fiber optic loop and software and hardware ecosystems, tech will surely be integrated into this space, but it won’t be a dividing line for who participates. San Leandro already has a strong community of women entrepreneurs: our question to them is now is “How can we best support you to ensure your business continues to grow and thrive?”

The 2017 Coro Fellows. Working with San Leandro is Fellow Caroline Hays, 2nd person from right in back row. Welcome Caroline!

A Coro Fellow, Caroline Hays, is working this month with Debbie Acosta, CIO, to answer this question. The Coro Fellowship is a public affairs leadership development program that places early career professionals across sectors for short term consulting projects. Caroline will take a deeper dive into this project to establish a vision and implementation plan for the incubator.