As corporations place a growing emphasis on supplier diversity, it’s more important than ever for women and minority business owners to position themselves for a shot at contracts that offer serious success.
Fortunately, women have a powerful ally in the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and their regional partner organizations like the Women’s Business Enterprise Council (WBEC) South.
Headquartered in New Orleans, WBEC South helps women business owners across Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and the Florida Panhandle obtain certifications needed to do business with corporations large and small. It also opens doors to networks, training, and other resources designed to help women build and sustain their businesses.
Phala Mire, President and CEO of WBEC South, has spent the last eight-plus years serving as champion for the region’s women business owners. This year, WBEC South has plenty to celebrate, including its 30th birthday (with a celebration planned for September). Their coworking space, WB Collective (401 St. Joseph St.) — New Orleans’ first for women — will mark its five-year anniversary in December. And in June 2025, New Orleans will host WBENC’s national conference, convening an impressive nationwide network of women’s business enterprises (WBEs), affiliated attendees and corporations committed to supporting them.
Mire shared her thoughts on why this is an exciting era for WBEs (including those with Super Bowl supplier aspirations), and how WBEC South can help at every stage in the growth journey.
Are the number of WBEs in this region growing?
National statistics indicate not only are we growing, but women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing business segments, and minority women — Latinas and African American women in particular — are the fastest growing within that subcategory.
At WBEC South, we are taking female founders and entrepreneurs all the way from a startup phase to succession, because as a woman grows her business, there comes a point (and sometimes this is the goal) where we are looking at whether they can sell their business successfully and transition out of it or move into a new generation of ownership that also maintains that women-owned construct. After 30 years, we are working with WBEs who have been certified much or all of that time and now are looking at that next step. For some, it looks like retirement; for others it looks like a merger or acquisition.
What are some of the region’s fastest growing sectors for WBEs?
We’ve always been in that food and beverage space, but in our region in particular, there are a tremendous number of women getting into the spirits and adult beverage categories. We have some of the largest female-owned spirits and bitters brands.
Looking at traditional industries, we are doing very well in healthcare (which is a growing industry and buys literally everything), the gaming industry, the automotive industry, and in the energy sectors, whether oil and gas or utilities.
Why should businesses consider getting WBE certified?
Certification is a validation that you are who you say you are. It gives the buyer — who is also reporting their numbers of diverse suppliers and their spend with diverse suppliers to federal agencies and other reporting agencies — an assurance that they are issuing correct numbers… and that these numbers in the contract they are giving are truly for women-owned enterprises. Ours is the top certification for the private sector in terms of dealing with women-owned enterprises. It is a customer mandate — like anything else, if your customer needs it, you’re going to do it. So, getting certified is just a step to being able to satisfy the customer.
On the other side of that, for the WBE, there are so many benefits to being certified. The application process mandates we have a site visit with you, where we learn about your business and confirm that it’s a women-owned enterprise. But once that happens, the doors just immediately open because you’re now within meeting distance of the decision-makers, influencers and buyers with whom you’re looking to connect.
You’re not going to get business just because you’re a certified WBE. It does, however, give you the tools you need in a negotiation with a corporation. After they have determined that you can provide services and they trust you and want to do business with you, then they’re going to ask: ‘Do you have any business certifications?’ In an apples-to-apples comparison, [the certification] may be the deciding factor. It is a competitive advantage for companies looking to do business in the private sector.
Are there obstacles to getting a WBE certification?
I think the biggest obstacle that we hear from some applicants is the paperwork. The application is serious and rigorous and looks at all aspects of your business. For a business in good standing that has been operating or poised to operate immediately from startup, these are all documents you would have anyway. Finding the time to pull together said information… you may have to devote maybe a half day. However, maintaining the certification once you get it is quite simple, and [recertification] only happens once a year. The cost [of certification] is very affordable. Most businesses are coming into our community paying a $350 application fee. On the other side of that are 10 times more opportunities that include free or reduced registration fees. But you will immediately get the value back of your application fee just by participating in an event.
How can WBEs benefit from the Super Bowl coming to New Orleans in 2025?
The Super Bowl goes into spaces with the intention of doing business with local business owners so they can help develop our local economy. In order to do that, however, they want to be assured that the suppliers they are working with fit the categories they are looking for. So, your certification becomes important to big global corporations. When you have these huge sporting events, you need your certification to be part of their supplier base. One of those certifications is the WBE certification from WBEC. When the time comes, you don’t want to have to scramble to get certified quickly and under the wire for a contract opportunity. You want to have it when you’re getting ready to be in that prime negotiating position.
Right now, we are getting a surge of WBE applications because of the Super Bowl and the opportunities that have been presented around local contracting. We’re working very hard to get all of these people certified, and we will get them certified within the [timeframe].
Even though the NFL will come in for the Super Bowl and look for local content, they do have a long and impressive list of suppliers that travel with them from destination to destination. That’s always the goal: that you enter the most secure and sustainable contract relationship that you can. So again, having a national certification — which is what the WBE certification is — opens doors for you everywhere, not just in Louisiana or in our region.
What if a business wants to work with the government?
For government agencies, there is an SBA certification — the Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) certification. WBEC South is one of four organizations nationally that is also able to provide the WOSB certification as part of our WBE application process. So outside of going straight to the SBA (which right now has significant wait times in terms of being able to process your certification), getting certified as a WBE with WBEC South and then getting your WOSB certification at no extra cost and very little extra effort is a two-for-one, a game changer for a lot of women business owners because they are finding two very powerful certifications in one place.
Beyond certification, how does WBEC South help women business owners?
No matter what business stage you’re in, we have programming, advanced management intensives, CEO cohorts… things that make you a better business owner and more competitive in your space. WBEC South and WBENC are not incubator organizations, we are organizations that can help support the growth, development and scaling of your business but also connect you with the buyers, influencers and decision-makers you need to know. Access is everything, and WBEC South provides you with a level of access you simply won’t get at most other organizations.
We also look at supportive financial communities. Having an array of financial tools and options for entrepreneurs is important for access to capital. We have workshops and trainings, but we also have direct one-on-one technical assistance and coaching that is going to help you become more bankable, that’s going to lead you into your best financial match, because like anything else, that is a relationship. We know that if we have strong relationships with financial institutions, we can leverage those to help some of our WBEs get a better foothold when they are looking to access whatever capital option they need.
We are the connectors to everything that is going to help your business grow, whether access to capital, prospective customers or business coaching. We look at ourselves as partners to our women business owners. There are absolutely no ceilings economically to your WBE certification. We have startups with zero revenue in the door; we also have billion-dollar companies that are certified as WBEs. People don’t realize, but these companies are not small and there is no expectation that they be small or remain small … we want them to grow as big as they can possibly be. We know they will leverage as they grow. They will hire more women, will put more women in executive and management positions, and they will have a huge economic impact in the local communities where they operate. The ripple effect is real.
That’s the other point I want to bring up that often gets lost: We like focusing on big sexy targets like the Super Bowl and the Shells, Chevrons, Nissans and Toyotas of the world, and certainly they are within our corporate community, but there are over 1,000 certified WBEs in the WBEC South community and another 1,200 WBEs that are not certified but are just starting out, trying to figure out how they want to engage, so they are affiliated with our organization through one of our business development programs. They have the opportunity to network with each other and over 20,000 WBEs that are certified across the country through all of the regional partner organizations of WBENC.
You have opportunity within this network; it is just a matter of coming in and finding your fit. And we’re going to help you do that. Then we’re going to make sure you’re ready to walk into any meeting anywhere and talk to one or more buyers or decision makers so that they can really look at you, know your value proposition, remember you when the opportunity comes, and then reach back to connect with you. Because business is really all about relationships, and we are all about fostering those relationships.
What led you to this role heading WBEC South?
I started in the nonprofit space immediately out of college [Mire is a Tulane graduate]. The environment was what kept me in the nonprofit space, understanding that you’re working for an organization with a social mission, to help make things better in whatever endeavor that might be. It also led me to working with entrepreneurs and small business owners — I have worked with small and emerging businesses, I have worked specifically in the minority business space, and to come full circle to work in the women-owned business space was a natural progression.
Obviously, I am a woman and a champion of women advancing not only in the workplace but also in spaces like business ownership where sometimes it’s unexpected. I think women have always been entrepreneurs, but most of our efforts have been recognized in the areas of lifestyle businesses — cosmetics, caterers, hairdressers, florists… where we tend to excel. But seeing women in unexpected places, traditionally male-dominated industries like construction, manufacturing and chemicals, it’s amazing to understand there are so many talented experts that just happen to be women operating in these spaces and running businesses. I love being able to help connect these women who are growing their businesses with global corporations who have desire and a mission to find and to contract with diverse suppliers.
