GOOD WORK NETWORK

Our current services of one-on-one coaching and entrepreneurship education are led by a near-20-year veteran of the SBA and a skilled former small business lender. Greg Duffer is our Director of Small Business Serivces and has experience in small business lending, marketing, and government contracting. He graduated in 1998 from Marshall University with his MBA. Additionally, he has a project management certificate from the University of Texas at Arlington, a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and a FAC-C federal contracting certificate.

Tawanna Hardy-Ventress has been in the financial industry for over ten years. Her career started in 1999 as a loan processor in the mortgage industry before becoming a licensed loan originator in the State of Louisiana. Prior to joining Good Work Network, Tawanna worked for nearly a decade as a lending advisor at Liftfund, a provider of loans to small business owners who did not had access to loans from commercial sources. Tawanna has a B.A. in Marketing from Tulane University and sits on the board of El Centro, a nonprofit specializing in providing culturally competent financial literacy programming, business coaching and entrepreneurial training to Latinx individuals and entrepreneurs in south Louisiana.

Hermione Malone serves as Executive Director of Good Work Network, where she has lead an organizational re-imagining to modernize operations, strengthen the skills of the team, and better support the changing needs of growth-phase women and minority entrepreneurs. Prior to her arrival at GWN, Hermione served as Director of Supplier Diversity for Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH. There, she created the corporate supplier diversity strategy, including metrics, policies, and protocols designed to increase Cleveland Clinic purchasing from minority-, women-, and veteran-owned companies, among others, ultimately attaining more than $100M in annual spend with diverse companies. Hermione has also worked as a professional journalist for numerous U.S.-based newspapers, including The Boston Globe. She is a German Marshall Memorial Fellow (2016) and holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from Case Western Reserve University, a B.S. in Journalism from Florida A&M University, and a Diversity Management Certificate from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Good Work Network is proud to partner with the U.S. Small Business Administration, SCORE, the New Orleans Business Alliance, the Louisiana Alliance for Economic Inclusion, and Interise in delivering a constellation of education, coaching, mentoring, and access to opportunity to our clients. Not only has GWN successfully delivered business development services to thousands of women and minority entrepreneurs for over 19 years, it has done so while managing millions of dollars in private, state, local and federal funding cumulatively. We have strong internal controls, and efficient platforms for tracking and monitoring outcomes.

In 2019, we invested in an evidence-based online platform for small business advising and education, with the ability to be used virtually to support clients across Louisiana and beyond. The curriculum for our 5-month intensive cohort, Level Up! is used in over 70 communities across the country and is proven to help firms grow. September 2020 saw the launch of our 3rd cohort.
Our supplementary educational programming focuses on building financial acumen – so that entrepreneurs can make more informed decisions about how to grow their business, and become more bankable. Access to capital is a known barrier, but utilizing that capital wisely is as much of an imperative.
We began a year-long focus on expanding services across the state of Louisiana last year and as a result have expanded our provision of services using technology - including an overhaul of our client database, adoption of a web-based business coaching platform, and organizational subscription to an online meeting platform. Thankfully that ground work was laid prior to COVID-19, facilitating our rapid response. Our technology allowed us to seamlessly continue supporting entrepreneurs virtually through one-on-one advising and expanding our webinar offerings, laying the groundwork for further expansion to regional markets in 2021 and beyond.
We saw a 181% increase in participation in our capacity-building trainings from January through August of 2020 compared to the same time last year. As a result, we have made most of our trainings available on-demand via on our new online learning library.
2020 also saw us launch our women's CEO roundtable, The GatHERing, focused on growing women-owned businesses. By fall 2020, we anticipate launching our new member portal that will feature access to mentors, visibility to procurement professionals, specialized educational content, and more. Lastly, this fall will see the launch of a special projects fund, designed to provide funding to help our clients build capacity and/or re-imagine their business in the wake of the COVID-19 economic disaster. JPMorgan Chase was our first contributor to the fund we aim to continue growing.