Small Business Majority is enacting a comprehensive state policy agenda to ensure entrepreneurship is recognized as the lifeforce of a thriving and inclusive economy in California. Our state’s 4.2 million small businesses employ 7.4 million people, which amounts to nearly half of the private workforce, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Small Business Majority’s Illinois policy agenda outlines policies that advance and promote equitable pathways for entrepreneurship while ensuring small businesses are key to a thriving and inclusive economy. The state’s 1.2 million small businesses employ 2.5 million people (about 45% of the private workforce), with firms of fewer than 20 employees creating the largest net job gains. Yet, Illinois small businesses continue to face setbacks stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Only a couple of months away from receiving an engineering degree, Alexa Alfaro decided to go out on a limb and pitched a business idea to her family. She’d spent the better part of her life learning about her Filipino heritage with her father, and cooking was the main ingredient for her to do just that. That’s when she launched Meat on the Street, Milwaukee’s first Filipino food truck in 2014.
Small Business Majority’s policy agenda ensures that small business is at the center of a thriving and inclusive economy in Wisconsin and advances policies that promote equitable pathways for entrepreneurship. The state’s 461,000 small businesses employed 1.3 million people in 2021, and small businesses have historically driven job growth . Yet, small businesses in Wisconsin continue to face setbacks from the COVID-19 crisis and struggle to access critical financing and resources.
Small Business Majority’s Illinois policy agenda ensures that small business is at the center of a thriving and inclusive economy and advance policies that promote equitable pathways for entrepreneurship, with a particular emphasis on addressing systemic racism and sexism that impede economic inclusion and harm businesses owned by people of color, women and other underserved owners. The state’s 1.2 million small businesses employ 2.5 million people (about 45% of the private workforce), with firms less than 20 employees creating the largest net job gains.
After more than 45 years of business, Dante Hamilton, owner of Internet Webpages Newspaper Inc., has found himself in a resource renaissance thanks to the newly prevalent online tools that have been available since the beginning of the pandemic.
Janna Rodriguez has always been an active leader in her community—when she was 16, she began volunteering for political campaigns, from her local school board, all the way to presidential elections. In 2018, her entrepreneurial spirit led her to establish the Innovative Daycare Corp. in Long Island, New York. Her mission is to ensure that minority children in her community have the resources and privileges that children in other communities experience.
Entrepreneurs continue to navigate a number of challenges operating their businesses, more than two years since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Small Business Majority and Start Small Think Big surveyed small business owners and managers in their networks to understand their current business conditions, how they are faring amid rising inflation, and what they need to maintain and grow their businesses over the next six months to a year.
When Ramon Alvarez was 9 years old, his family moved to a small ranch just outside of Fresno, California. He worked to help his family make a living until he left for school. While working to pay his way through college, he fell in love with retail.
After years of gaining experience at corporations like Home Depot, where he oversaw the opening of stores across the U.S. and in South America, he fulfilled his dream of opening a business of his own with his wife.
Vanessa Avalos noticed a need for bilingual education for young children in her community, and she immediately decided to execute on it. She launched Luna y Cielo, a play café and Spanish learning center to aid Latino and Hispanic mothers in raising bilingual, bicultural and biliterate children.
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