Michigan has no shortage of resources for people starting a business, but it has almost nothing for women who have already built one.
That’s the gap the Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship was designed to fill, and after two cohorts, the results are making the case louder than any program description could.Â
What It Is
The fellowship is a nine-month program for second-stage, women-owned businesses in Michigan. They go through expert-led sessions, one-on-one coaching, matched mentorship, and a curriculum built around the 10-Year Shift, a framework that pushes participants out of reactive decision-making and into a decade-long lens for their businesses. We built it after surveying women entrepreneurs across the state about what they actually needed. It’s designed for owners already generating revenue and managing teams.
What the Data Shows
The inaugural cohort graduated at the Small Business Association of Michigan‘s Annual Meeting in 2025. By then, we could already see the impact.Â
Participants had implemented strategies from the program directly into their businesses. Not someday plans, but changes they’d already put in place. Fellows logged into the resource hub nearly 300 times and downloaded materials more than 150 times after the program ended. For a group of business owners whose time is their most constrained resource, sustained engagement like that means those resources were actually useful.
The cohort itself set a high bar. They are established business owners, some running companies for decades, who evaluated the program the same way they evaluate any investment of their time: carefully, skeptically, and with a clear eye on return. Their consistent attendance and continued engagement after graduation is the kind of validation that can’t be manufactured.
As one of the first cohort graduates, Jane Mitchell, Owner & CEO of Jungle Jane Promotions, put it, “If you’re serious about taking your business to the next level, you’ve always gotta be learning. So this was an opportunity that I just don’t see how you can turn down. You just have to figure out the time. If you’re interested, you’ll figure out the time.”
What Happens in the Room
The numbers capture business impact, but they don’t capture what several members of the 2025-26 cohort keep coming back to.
Many of these women had mentors or advisors, and some had been in plenty of professional development programs before. What they hadn’t had, in most cases, was a room built entirely around people who looked like them, operated like them, and were carrying the same specific weight of running a company as a woman. That turned out to matter more than anyone anticipated.
Sabrina Bachwich, co-founder of Grassroots Midwest and a member of the second cohort, mentioned this dynamic: “I have been lucky to have a lot of mentors in my business career, but a lot of those have been men. Being in a room full of just women reminds me that none of the things I’m experiencing are things I’m alone in.”
Mary Barton, founder of Equitable Accounting Solutions, described her experience this way: “What I really like about the fellowship is that it feels like a really safe space. I got so much value out of being able to open up about our challenges as women-owned businesses and get support from one another.”
Catherine Ripley, founder of Symplicity Communications, blocked her calendar for every single session: “You’re not alone, because you shouldn’t do this alone. It takes a village to run a business, to navigate life personally and professionally.”
That’s the program’s real output, not just the strategies implemented or the materials downloaded, but the shift from isolated to connected, from carrying it alone to having a group of people who actually understand what you’re carrying.
The Next Cohort
Applications are open now. If you’re past the startup phase, generating revenue, managing a team, and ready for what comes next, this was built for you.
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