Happy National Women’s Small Business Month

I love sending cards. I should get a percentage of Hallmark's sales since I am forever buying and sending cards for just about any occasion. But I have noticed there are certain occasions that there's just no card for. You wouldn't find a "Happy you didn't get COVID-19" card or "Congratulations on your divorce," card or "Sorry to hear you got furloughed," card. And interestingly enough, there isn't a card to celebrate this month as National Women's Small Business Month.

Considering what we all just went through globally with COVID-19, it would be nice to recognize both the men and the women who run the small businesses throughout this country and the world, and how they had to use innovation, ingenuity and just plain perseverance to keep their businesses up and running.

Mastercard gets kudos for recognizing women within our communities through its female-founded impact investment platform CNote.

Mastercard and the Mastercard Impact Fund collectively deployed $20 million into the CNote Promise Account, which is a 100% impact cash management solution created to provide funding for underserved communities and help women and minority-owned businesses across the U.S. recover and grow.

What a great example of putting your money where your mouth — or as the case may be, passion is. Where will that $20 million go? It will be deposited into Community Development Financial Institution banks and low-income designated credit unions for distribution.

And let me just toot Mastercard's horn a little longer and give kudos to its support of Grameen America, that helped over 132,000 women with $1.6B in small business loans. During the COVID-19 crisis, Grameen America continued operating virtually and quickly disbursed loan funds digitally to women entrepreneurs they serve across the country and kept their businesses open.

As while I am handing out kudos, Citibank gets to take a bow for promoting Jane Fraser to CEO last month. Fraser became the first female named CEO in the history of Wall Street. On one hand it's exciting to finally seeing a woman make history in the financial industry, but on the other hand, it's pretty frustrating that it took all the way to 2020 to make that happen.

We are coming into a new time, a new era. Maybe it was kicked off by the pandemic or maybe people realized women need to be seen as entrepreneurs, business owners and innovators on a par with their male counterparts. Giving female small business owners recognition and promoting women to CEOs,not just in finance, but in any industry, is a start.

Take a look in your own backyard or bank as the case may be. There are many talented people working with you and around you. What can you do to help foster someone's dream whether it's through mentoring, funding or recognition?

In the meantime, I will be writing to Hallmark to ask them to create a "Congratulations for breaking through the glass ceiling" card for Jane Fraser.