The Building of the Veteran Women's Enterprise Center (VWEC) Dallas, Texas: Part 1.
THE BUILDING OF THE VETERAN WOMEN'S ENTERPRISE CENTER: Part 1.
VWEC is remembering our journey then and now. We have always pondered what to use as our official anniversary date? Is it January when we signed our MOU with HVSD; is it our Groundbreaking on June 12th; or our soft opening featuring the VWEC’s first annual conference? We’re still pondering those options, so we work to make each date as special as possible. This is the VWEC's fifth year of existence; and as challenging as it continues to be, we are grateful to be able to celebrate our clients' successes, we’re thankful for our sponsors and partners that make our work possible, and we’re still passionate about the journey forward!
These actually were not our first renderings with the Dallas VA. It took months of research, and creative sessions to get to this final design, which ended up truly being a perfect space for our CEO Suite of Services designed for Women Veteran Entrepreneurs. There is nothing like watching your dream become a reality, and our design concept is almost exactly what we have today. This was no quick process, it took nearly 18 months of negotiations on the selection of furniture, flooring, wallpaper, paints, etc. It took months of believing, regardless of all the setbacks, and contract changes, we could make this happen and we did!
The Introduction:
I remember being a part of HCC's Veteran Entrepreneur Program, while developing this concept for a business center for Veteran Women after coordinating an entrepreneur workshop for our first Dallas Roll Call. During this period, I had the opportunity to share my vision with Charlyn Johns, Founder, Battle Buddy Info, and she introduced me to Ken Watterson, Executive Director for the Homeless Veteran Services of Dallas (HVSD). Ken also manages for the Dallas VA the building complex called the Veteran Resource Center (VRC). Charlyn shared that Ken had expressed an interested in developing a women veteran program. In late November 2016, I met with Ken and his team sharing my concept focused on a group of women veterans often overlooked, but definitely in need of support: women veteran entrepreneurs.
During the tour, Ken Watterson originally offered one of the larger spaces as an office for the program, and I remember responding without thinking "No, I have a plan for the whole space." You could have heard a feather drop; and no one said another word. We just finished the tour and Ken said he would get back to me. A couple of weeks passed, and I hadn't heard from Ken, so I reached out to Charlyn to thank her for the intro, but told her I felt Ken wasn’t interested. Charlyn being a woman of faith, told me to be patience because Ken was actually on vacation. About a week later just before the holidays in December 2016, Ken finally reached out to say they liked my concept, and wanted me to develop the Veteran Women's Enterprise Center at the VRC. I was immediately given the space, and began planning for the building of the VWEC.
HVSD took us under their wings, and allowed us to function under their 501c3 doing business as the Women Veteran's Enterprise Center Initiative, (this is why you may see some older references to our name and logo as the Women Veteran Enterprise Center), while we awaited our 501c3 paperwork to be approved with our official/current name Veteran Women's Enterprise Center (VWEC).
We signed our MOU with the Homeless Veteran Services of Dallas, January 2017, and held our official Groundbreaking on June 12th in honor of Women Veterans Day, which was signed into Texas law by Governor Abbott on June 9, 2017.
Were you here?
We invite you to share your expereince on our social media!
Over 200 veteran women, sponsors, partners, and community leaders attended our full day event, and many traveled from across the state of Texas to support the development of this one-of-a-kind brick and mortar facility for women veteran entrepreneurs.
In September 2017, the VWEC received our 501c3 status, and started our own banking relationship with our first major sponsor Legacy Texas Bank, (now Prosperity Bank) who presented us with a check for $15k at our Groundbreaking.
All we had were the renderings below and a vision of what this space could be. The VWEC is not just a coworking space, it’s really more of an incubator focused on identifying a unique, collaborative community of entrepreneurs that support the collective growth of the group. It's important that internally we create an ecosystem that allows for, and progressively supports, collaborative contracting, and B2B revenue generations. This vision is still to be realized, but will never be compromised!