Women in entrepreneurship and innovation face different obstacles than their male counterparts. Part of this year’s NEXT Innovation Conference will address strategies to combat these obstacles.

NEXT is a one day conference held in Syracuse each fall. It features the latest trends in business and technology with a focus on manufacturing excellence, law and commercialization, and innovations in biotech and unmanned air systems (UAS). 

Added to the conference for 2019, a women’s innovation workshop.

“We’re the lead adopters of technology, women are, and we make up over 50% of the global population. We need to support women innovation and women entrepreneurship,” Kathi Durdon, Executive Director of CNY Biotech Accelerator, said. “This year we decided to include a “Women In Innovation” panel. It’s giving them a platform to discuss not only women who are working to build a company, it’s also those investors to understand the obstacles and why they should invest in women.”

The panel includes women entrepreneurs and leaders of women-led companies. For example, Kate Cartini, CMO at Chloe Capital, an all women founded venture capital company, who fund women. The workshop will also include two examples of women led founded companies in New York state.

Carly Signor, Program Coordinator at New York Science & Technology at Syracuse University College of Law Center said the conference as a whole brings together four state-funded programs in the Central New York area.

“There’s the New York State Science Technology Law Center where we focus on a lot of intellectual properties for small businesses and startups and then there’s the CNY Biotech Accelerator, which is involved in med tech, FUSE Hub which handles manufacturaing and then the Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering, also as SU, the CASE center, which they’re focusing a lot now on drones and UAS systems.”

All these resources together under one roof shows Central New Yorkers how great the startup culture is here.

The NEXT Innovation Conference is happening Friday, November 8th, at the Nicholas J Pirro Convention Center from 9am to 5pm. Registration is $55 or $25 if you are a student. The Women in Innovation Workshop will start at 1:25pm and wrap up at 2:10pm.

For more information visit http://www.next-syr.com/.