IFEL Announces Partnership With National Minority Supplier Development Council

The Institute For Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL) today announced a partnership with the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) Emerging Young Entrepreneurs (EYE) Cohort Program, launched by NMSDC on April 12 for the eighth consecutive year. IFEL has enhanced the EYE program with a methodology called Success Circles, originally created as part of the Women of Color Connecting (WOCCON) initiative which focuses on leveraging the power of relationship capital to help more women of color entrepreneurs to grow, scale, and create wealth from their businesses. Entrepreneurs and founders accepted into Women of Color Connecting are matched with a circle of experts – the Success Circle - who render capacity-building assistance to get the entrepreneurs on a grow-scale-exit trajectory. With a team of experts centered around the entrepreneur, the highly effective Success Circle model is also a component of the Small Businesses Need Us program (SBNU), launched by IFEL in 2020 to help small businesses recover from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reflecting the IFEL-inspired enhancement, the EYE program now includes EYE Success Circles and employs the capacity-building methodology which centers the entrepreneur among a group of experts focused on using their collective talents and connections to help the entrepreneurs build their businesses.

The Success Circles model will help deepen relationships between EYE Cohorts and EYE Corporate Partners. Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership CEO Jill Johnson stated, “We are very excited to extend the impact of our Success Circles methodology to the businesses participating in the EYE program. NMSDC is a wonderful organization with strong corporate relationships. This model leverages the power of those relationships to create capacity-building and growth opportunities for the participating EYE businesses. Our work together has the potential to be transformative and can serve as a model for increasing supplier diversity impact.” Jade Melvin, NMSDC program manager and content creator for the newly rebranded EYE program, enthusiastically stated, “We are partnering with the Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership to implement 1the Success Circles component and are excited about the opportunities to enhance programming for the growth and success of the entrepreneurs.”

EYE Success Circles will launch in June, engaging NMSDC EYE program corporate members as volunteers to provide direct capacity-building support to cohort businesses. More information on the NMSDC Emerging Young Entrepreneurs Cohort Program is available on the website, https://www.nmsdceyeprogram.org/, and by contacting EYE Program Manager Jade Melvin at 203-218-7329 or jade.melvin@nmsdc.org.

For more information about licensing the IFEL Success Circles model, contact Jill Johnson at jill@weareifel.org. ABOUT NMSDC The NMSDC advances business opportunities for certified minority business enterprises (MBEs) and connects them to corporate members. One of the country’s leading corporate membership organizations, NMSDC was chartered in 1972 to provide increased procurement and business opportunities for minority businesses of all sizes. The NMSDC network includes a national office in New York and 23 affiliate regional councils across the country. The network also includes five international partner organizations located in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China, and South Africa.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP

Founded in 2002, the Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL) is an independent, not‐for‐profit organization that supports economic development through entrepreneurship. We are experts in creating and implementing small business programming in support of larger economic development objectives. Our mission is to eradicate the systemic barriers that prevent entrepreneurs of color from being able to access the knowledge, networks, and capital required for business success. Visit us at https://www.weareifel.or