Photo courtesy of The City of Boston Mayor’s Office

Mayor Marty Walsh with members of the iFundWomen team, a partnership that was launched at the last WE BOS Week

Calling all Boston women entrepreneurs starting out, scaling up, or still planning!

Whether you’ve launched your business or have just an inkling of a vision, you’ll want to clear your calendar for the fourth annual WE BOS Week, Oct. 15–19. The five-day event hosted by Women Entrepreneurs Boston will be packed with workshops, discussions, coaching sessions, and gatherings designed to help women entrepreneurs expand their networks and zero in on funding, launching, pitching, and scaling their businesses.

More than 1,000 participants had already RSVP’d for events by mid-September, even with only a fraction of the full event list posted at that time, according to Tania Del Rio, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement, which oversees the WE BOS initiative in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development.

Over the three years since WE BOS Week launched in 2015, Del Rio notes, “We’ve had 4,000 women participate. We want to keep that going and expand it.”

The official kickoff for WE BOS Week 2018 is a special Mass Innovation Nights event with welcoming remarks by Mayor Marty Walsh at District Hall on Monday, Oct. 15. #MIN15, as it’s dubbed on social media, will showcase products from female-founded companies with a focus on digital health products and medical devices.

This year, more events will take place in the city’s neighborhoods, Del Rio tells Exhale, such as networking and social events in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. She also emphasizes the week’s overarching themes of women entrepreneurs supporting each other and “women funding women,” which is the focus of the closing breakfast on Friday, Oct. 19.

Photo courtesy of The City of Boston Mayor’s Office

Andrea Silbert of the Eos Foundation kicking off the Women & Venture Capital Conversation with the mayor at WE BOS Week 2017

Other funding-focused sessions include a crowdfunding deep-dive presented by iFundWomen coaches and “office hours” with representatives from Golden Seeds, an angel investment firm that focuses on women-led businesses.

At a Boston City Hall open house session, participants can sip coffee, network, and chat with representatives from a variety of city departments that help business start-ups launch, grow, and become certified as women-owned businesses.

Learn how to turn your passion into a business in a session featuring Rica Elysée, founder of BeautyLynk and Emily Lagasse, founder of Fedwell, and gather with the WE BOS crowd at The Alley co-working space in Cambridge on Oct. 16 for a screening of the film Miss Representation, which shines a light on how mainstream media and culture perpetuate the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.

For more information and event schedules, visit the WE BOS Week website. Check out #WEBOSWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for the latest updates.

Getting the Most Out of WE BOS Week
With three or four sessions offered each day, WE BOS Week could easily become frazzling, even for extroverts. Del Rio offers some tips for staying focused and making the most of the week.