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How Women Business Owners Are Using Artificial Intelligence Written by Lesa Seibert, NAWBO National Board Secretary, member of NAWBO Kentucky and CEO of Mightily The intersection of artificial intelligence and public policy has been at the forefront this past year since President Biden issued an executive order on AI that provides entrepreneurs with access to technical assistance and resources, among other things. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer followed up the executive order with a series of AI Insight Forums to discuss the intersection of AI and innovation, workforce and intellectual property issues. As the governance of AI continues to take shape in the U.S. and around the globe, it is essential that policymakers take into account its benefits to women business owners. getty Business Intelligence Platforms: Best Analytics & BI Platforms AI is emerging as a powerful tool to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs. From enabling informed decisions to streamlining business operations, AI is proving to be a game-changer for women entrepreneurs in terms of running and growing their businesses. Indeed, a survey by Constant Contact found 91 percent of respondents said AI has made their companies more successful, and more than a quarter (28%) of those respondents expected it to save them at least $5,000 over the next year. Women business owners have historically faced a unique set of challenges, including limited access to capital, markets and opportunity. For example, a survey commissioned by NAWBO in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks found almost half of respondents said extra funding would have the greatest impact on their business today, if they could get it. But AI has the potential to disrupt these barriers and open up new pathways to success. Women business owners can use AI-powered tools to save time and money, an invaluable commodity when juggling a business and family life. AI can streamline and automate basic tasks such as inventory management, invoicing, social media, financial management, and marketing, leaving women business owners with more resources to focus on growing their businesses. Tools like Notion allow women business owners to centralize all their work in one place, manage projects and optimize processes. Others like Planful help women business owners run certain financial aspects of their business, from finance and accounting to sales and marketing. One of NAWBO’s top priorities is ensuring that women business owners both have access to and are knowledgeable about tools to grow successful businesses, including AI. During our 2024 NAWBO Days event in Washington, DC in June, we asked NAWBO members to raise their hands if they were using AI, and nearly every hand in the room went up. This tells us it’s no longer a matter of will they use AI, but how will they use it, and how can we ensure that they can continue to leverage it for their businesses as AI continues to evolve? Visual Business Intelligence – Big vs Women are already using AI to streamline and enhance productivity in their daily operations. While AI presents an opportunity to reduce the hiring squeeze, there is also the risk of worker displacement. AI must be implemented alongside workforce training/reskilling to ensure that workers can remain competitive in the labor market. NAWBO members have consistently ranked recruiting and hiring skilled workers as a top challenge they face. AI platforms are also helping women business owners make informed business decisions with data-driven insights. AI is capable of quickly analyzing large sets of data and identifying patterns that a human might miss. Women business owners can use this capability to optimize inventory, price products, or identify customer preferences—all without the need for deep technical expertise. Additionally, women business owners are utilizing AI platforms to navigate global markets. Language translation, cultural insights and market analysis provided by AI are helping women business owners tap into international opportunities that were once difficult to access. For example, research has shown eBay’s machine translation service to have increased exports on the platform by 10.9 percent. Importantly, the International Trade Commission has found small businesses that export have higher total revenue growth and outperform those that do not. The dismantling of traditional barriers, alongside the adoption of entrepreneur-supportive practices such as open-source programming, has carved out fresh opportunities for female entrepreneurs. Open-source programming is provided at no cost by a range of organizations including corporations, nonprofit entities and governmental bodies. This approach empowers women entrepreneurs to develop innovative products, add value and address contemporary challenges through their distinct viewpoints. For instance, the female-led startup Evidently AI, hailing from San Francisco, is at the forefront of this movement, creating an open-source tool designed to assess, identify and rectify problems within machine learning models. Business Intelligence Reporting: A Complete Guide Qlik In conclusion, AI is playing a pivotal role in empowering women business owners by enhancing decision-making, offering resourceful solutions and unlocking new possibilities. It is incumbent upon policymakers to nurture this trajectory by extending training, resources and bolstering the support ecosystem for women embarking on the path of AI integration in business. Photo courtesy of Karianne Munstedt Lesa Seibert is the 2024-2025 NAWBO National Board Secretary and CEO of Mightily. Mightily, founded in 2013 and based in Louisville, Kentucky, is one of the region’s preeminent digital-first branding and advertising agencies and provides full-service support to local, regional and global brands in the areas of web development and technology, branding and creative services and media buying, strategy and ongoing management. She is a speaker on the topics of branding, marketing, business strategy and economic development. 7 Best-Performing AI Stocks for August 2024 AI stocks have seen tremendous growth in 2024. NVIDIA in particular has hogged much of the spotlight for its massive spike in value, briefly overtaking Apple and Microsoft in June 2024 to become the world’s most valuable company. However, in recent weeks, there’s been some speculation that the hype around AI may be overblown, or that geopolitical issues could stymie semiconductor development that’s critical to AI’s success. Indeed, NVIDIA’s time at the top was short-lived, and by late …