WEPAN Wins Stage One of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced WEPAN as a Stage One winner for the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC). WEPAN will receive a $50,000 cash prize forits impactful and inclusive approach to nurturing a collaborative national innovation ecosystem to advance small business research and development (R&D) from ideas to the market. 

By fostering connections between entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, philanthropies, corporations, investors, andother shared resources, GAFC 2024 catalyzes strategic ecosystem partnerships to build community and organizational capacity for the successful launch, growth, and scale of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)-based entrepreneurs.

WEPAN's award-winning model will cultivate inclusive STEM innovation ecosystems through holistic entrepreneurship education and support for a diversity of women in STEM; systemic change programming for those who control access to innovation ecosystem resources; and effective network development activities across the innovation ecosystem.

 Two Stages

SBA welcomed Stage One submissions from a broad range of organizations with a collaborative vision to nurture a national ecosystem for equitable access to entrepreneurship. Winners of Stage One were selected through a multi-tier review panel process with experts in entrepreneurship, business, innovation, and strategic planning both inside and out of the federal government.

Stage Two offers an additional $50,000 to $150,000 in cash prizes for Growth Accelerator Partnerships. To learn more about Stage Two opportunities and to access the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition Guidelines, please visit https://www.americasseedfund.us/accelerators

From inequity and climate change, to supporting national defenseand community-driven economic prosperity, the real opportunity is now to build up innovation ecosystems and WEPAN is eager to deepen its collaborative impact in sustainability and biotechnology.

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About WEPAN:

WEPAN is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1990. It is the nation’s first network dedicated to advancing cultures of inclusion and diversity in engineering higher education and workplaces. WEPAN connects people, research and practice. It offers power initiatives, projects and professional development that equips advocates with the tools to create sustainable, systems-level changes that allow ALL in engineering to thrive. To learn more, visit www.wepan.org.

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