Women@Work

Monday, November 22, 2021

Women@Work

by Shreyoshi Ghosh

Jenna Vitosh
Creating a space where women could gather . . . encourage and empower one another in business, learn and grow together

Creating a space where women could gather . . . encourage and empower one another in business, learn and grow together

Nebraska has been witnessing a transition in micro, small and medium businesses, many of them owned by women. Heartland Webzine highlighted several of these success stories. But Lincoln's Jenna Vitosh found something missing when she and her former partner discovered that many women were working from coffee shops and kitchen tables. And that was the germination of Arrive Coworking - a community working space for women entrepreneurs and much more.

"Women entrepreneurs are very lonely; it's a very isolating career to try and start your own business. They feel alone and they don't feel like they have a support network to lean on" says Jenna.

From her experience of working with women's networking groups that were supportive of her businesses, Jenna decided to create an actual space where women could go to get encouragement and find the knowledge and education necessary to start and grow their businesses.

Jenna partnered with Eva Prettyman, owner of Lincoln Home and Design, whom she met in a networking group for female entrepreneurs. Together they developed the branding and interiors for the office space with a focus on the specific needs of women entrepreneurs. They finally opened Arrive Coworking in August 2019 and as she had hoped, the response was overwhelming. But then 2020 happened.

"The demographic that I serve has a lot of women who have children at home and were homebound during the period with schools shut down, and not many places to go."
After a lull in the summer of 2020, the pace picked up as schools reopened in the fall, and Arrive Coworking acquired 55 new members. Just a year later, Jenna is now shifting to a new location to be able to accommodate more women entrepreneurs.

"It's definitely been an overwhelming and humbling response, to say the least."

However, Arrive Coworking is not intended as just a shared working space. Jenna had the ambition of transforming the women's business scene in Lincoln by connecting success stories with startups and inspiring growth. She was unapologetic about the fact that Nebraska does not perform impressively in the USA when it comes to women entrepreneurs. The challenges are multifaceted and diverse; Jenna set her eyes on addressing each one of them starting with funding and mentoring.

"If you look at the metrics for the availability of facilities like funding, child care, societal support, Nebraska ranks at the lower end and while this could be depressing, it also creates an opportunity for new solution-based business models like ours, offering women the tools they need," she explains.

In 2021, Jenna launched a non-profit sister company of Arrive Coworking--- 'Arrive Business Fund' ---to offer annual grants to women's startups. Her much-loved home state, Nebraska, was lagging behind in supporting women-owned startups and she made the resolution to change it with the Arrive Business Fund. Jenna is working with private donors, other established women entrepreneurs, and her own significant contributions to sustain the fund. She also took the opportunity of raising funds at the 'Give to Lincoln Day' in May of this year.

"We wrote the first check this fall to our first grant winner to help her grow her business."

Jenna is seeking collaborations from like-minded people who are passionate about growing women's startups. Furthermore, she is trying to bring the challenges at the forefront of public discourse in Lincoln and the rest of the state to sensitize banks, investors, funding organizations, and policymakers to support women-owned businesses.

"Women historically have lower credit scores or no credit score, especially if they're married to the breadwinning spouse and so we need to be more creative when they start a business; it can't just be based on a credit score," Jenna said.

She mentioned how women can seek microfinancing from funds such as the Alice's Integrity Loan Fund, started by former Cornhusker Bank CEO Alice Ditman, the first woman bank president in Lincoln and Omaha.

Funding is not all that her latest venture offers. Arrive Business Fund provides business coaching to grant winners and Jenna is hoping for more business experts to join the initiative. She is also working towards developing an incubation process including subsidized incubator space. Technical support is another aspect Arrive Coworking is exploring, including helping women entrepreneurs develop business websites, run digital marketing campaigns, social media branding, online accounting, tax consultancy, and resource training. Jenna focuses on creating shared resources to reduce the overall costs women entrepreneurs would have otherwise incurred.

Talking about her next goal, Jenna aims to expand the community working space into a hub that can mentor new entrepreneurs.

"I would love to have women that are already successful attorneys or CPAs who can help women answer their queries and find paths to financial independence."

Jenna hopes to bring together successful women business entrepreneurs and develop business models based on their businesses to incubate startups. It would cover seeking funding opportunities, marketing, and advertising models, business support service activities, and beyond.

"More women can get together and answer those questions for each other and help each other, that way everybody's businesses get better," she says.

For evolving the business beyond known boundaries, Jenna is keeping her windows open for more avenues of supporting ideas to develop.

"It is a lonely environment for us, all women entrepreneurs, we are changing that---a family outside the home, you know you can lean on for your business needs."

Additional Images

  • Arrive Coworking on Facebook
    Working Space at Arrive Coworking
  • Arrive Coworking on Facebook
    Working Space at Arrive Coworking
  • Jenna Vitosh
    Working Space at Arrive Coworking

Subscribe to Heartland Webzine

You can subscribe to Heartland Webzine using the button below.

Subscribe Now

Follow Heartland Webzine on Social

LinkedIn Icon Facebook Icon Instagram Icon