{"id":409600,"date":"2026-09-24T20:26:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409600\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T20:26:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:26:11","slug":"from-idea-to-income-jacksonville-women-equipped-to-turn-ideas-into-income-free-press-of-jacksonville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409600\/","title":{"rendered":"From Idea to Income: Jacksonville Women Equipped to Turn Ideas Into Income \u2013 Free Press of Jacksonville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/jwbcgraduates-678x381.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"jwbcgraduates\"\/><br \/>\nShown are the JWBC graduates proudly displaying their Entrepreneur Certificates<\/p>\n<p>For 38 Jacksonville-area women, the road to business ownership just became a little clearer \u2013 and potentially more profitable.<\/p>\n<p>The Jacksonville Women\u2019s Business Center (JWBC) celebrated the largest graduating class in its 22-year history during its 2026 Leadership Award Ceremony at the Open Innovation Center, recognizing entrepreneurs who completed intensive training designed to return business ideas into suitable enterprises.<\/p>\n<p>The record class was helped by a first-time $25,000 grant from the Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, which allowed 15 participants to complete the full Entrepreneur Certificate program. Recipients were competitively selected and received education, counseling, technical support, and other business development resources.<\/p>\n<p>The certificate program takes entrepreneurs beyond simply having an idea. Participants received training in the fundamentals that can determine whether a young company survives \u2013 including finance, legal issues, marketing, leadership and customer develepment.<\/p>\n<p>The center also recognized participants in the Athena Powerlink program, a competitive initiative that pairs women business owners with a panel of professional advisers for a year. The goal is to help establish entrepreneurs overcome obstacles, strengthen operations and scale their companies.<\/p>\n<p>JWBC says it has served more than 600 business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs and helped connect women entrepreneurs with a combined $500,000 in capital for their businesses. The Jacksonville Women\u2019s Business Center is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration and is officially recognized as an SBA resource partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shown are the JWBC graduates proudly displaying their Entrepreneur Certificates For 38 Jacksonville-area women, the road to business&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-409600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}