Texas Women in Business Timeline

This was the original “nuts and bolts” meeting looking at what would need to be done to create a group. There were only about 5-7 who attended this meeting.

The 2nd board meeting as spent completing the organization, including choosing the initial officers and board positions. In this meeting, the purposes, mission statement, and objectives were defined. Who would think that an organization blueprint could be created in 2 meetings? Don’t think that any of us knew how much work this would be…..ignorance is bliss.

Happy hour at Chinatown. The board decided that before we officially formed TWIB that we needed to see if there was really an interest. So, we held a happy hour in their bar area that held about 60 people. We had about 150 ladies show up so we were both inside and out. We hoped that the fire marshal would not show up. The comment after the event was, guess we are going to really do this.

This was the first Executive Board meeting. The Executive Board consisted of all officers. We hoped to do enough work in this meeting to streamline the board meetings. Going forward, the Executive Board met prior to the Board meeting each month.

TWIB August Happy Hour! This was our first official happy hour and the first opportunity to sell TWIB memberships. It was held at one of the Nyle Maxwell car dealerships. We had over 200 ladies attend. During Aug, we sold the first 50 memberships. Most were sold that night. We were amazed.

TWIB’s first luncheon held at Chez Zee. We had about 120 businesswomen. Chez Zee could only hold 100. We moved to several locations before settling at Shoreline in downtown Austin. During this time, the luncheons had about 100-160 avg attendance. This was due entirely to the hard work of the entire board. Building TWIB took everyone’s best efforts. It was like a 2nd job.

About 5 of the board members met with the Governor’s Commission for Women executive director at their request. The governor had charged the Commission with supporting women over 50 in the workforce. They asked TWIB for ideas and help in completing this mission. Also, we needed to get a proposal to them to review before Christmas. We proposed a conference that addressed career development, re-inventing yourself, entering the workforce at a later point in live, etc. All of this needed to be delivered as cheaply as possible. TWIB rec’d the approval for the conference around the end of Jan, 2011.

This was the first general meeting for everybody involved with the Beyond 50 Conference. The various committees met almost weekly to get everything accomplished. The conference was scheduled for May 25, 2011.  2011 There were multiple other committees meeting during the entire year. Ambassadors met monthly since they greeted at all events. All other committees met regularly, too. This was a working group. It took everybody to build this.

The Beyond 50 Conference. We had room for about 250 all day attendees. The auditorium held about 400 people. We had most of the Governor’s Commission for Women attending, along with other interested dignitaries. Anita Perry, TX First Lady, gave the keynote address. This is when we introduced speed-networking to our group. This has become a regular event for our conferences. The Gov. Commission for Women asked us to do this again in 2012. This time we were to include women leaving the military. We changed the name to NEXT from Beyond 50.

Began TWIB Lubbock with the initial meeting in April.