Palm Desert, California –  The Coachella Valley Women’s Business Center recently hosted a graduation ceremony for the graduates of their, “It’s Your Time: An Entrepreneurial Training Series for Women”.

This intensive educational program, which includes training, counseling, mentoring, and networking, is designed to assist female entrepreneurs in launching or growing a business. With close to 500 participants over the last ten years, it has been the guiding force behind many of the valley’s successful women-owned businesses.

This current cohort of women, whose business ideas are as diverse and varied as are the women themselves, spent nearly four months becoming educated in many facets of business start-up or growth, wrote business plans, and worked together to become a strong unit of individuals whose goal was the success of all involved.

Prize packages were awarded to the women who authored what were judged to be the top three business plans which included Sonia Stewart, of Daughters of Madison, Karen Bell, of Hippy Sisters Soap Company, LLC, and Emily Wagner, of Grow-More. Donations for prize packages were collected from throughout the community and totaled nearly $15,000.

According to Kim Scanlan, Interim Project Director, “Our goal is to empower women through entrepreneurship, and this program has demonstrated through the years what a positive force entrepreneurship can be in women’s lives.”

The Coachella Valley Women’s Business Center provides business counseling, training, and mentoring designed for women business owners and is a program of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at Cal University State San Bernardino (CSUSB) Jack Brown College of Business and Public Administration. The center is located at 77806 Flora Road, Suite A in Palm Desert and is open from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday-Friday.

IECE administers the CVWBC program in collaboration with the U.S. Small Business Administration and is inland Southern California’s leading organization dedicated to supporting and promoting entrepreneurship.

CSUSB, set in the foothills of the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in inland Southern California. CSUSB serves more than 20,000 students each year and graduates about 4,000 students annually. CSUSB is listed among the best colleges and universities in the western United States, according to The Princeton Review, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report and Money Magazine.