The Center for Women & Enterprise Holds 11th Annual Auction & Dinner
Event Honors Helen Greiner of iRobot, Sandy Lish of The Castle Group and Grace Richardson of Ms. Grace’s Homeschool
Boston, MA, March 13, 2006 – The Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) hosted its 11th annual auction at the Seaport Hotel on Saturday, March 18. This event, emceed by Channel 7 News Anchor Frances Rivera, is the organization’s major fundraising initiative, bringing together more than 400 friends and supporters to celebrate the women that CWE serves. The event also honored three incredible individuals whose support has made a profound impact on the effectiveness and reach of the organization.
This year’s honorees included Helen Greiner, chairman of iRobot Corp., which designs behavior-based, artificially intelligent robots including the Roomba® Vacuuming Robots; and Sandy Lish, principal and founder of The Castle Group, Inc., an award-winning public relations and events management agency. Both received the CWE Award for their invaluable support in helping women realize their dreams of business ownership and improve their lives. Andrea Silbert, co-founder of CWE and candidate for lieutenant governor, was on hand to present the CWE Award to Lish.
Grace Richardson, the director and founder of Ms. Grace’s Homeschool, was also honored with the Andrea Silbert Rising Star Award. This award exemplifies the CWE “success story,” an individual who has overcome significant personal obstacles to achieve her dream of economic self-sufficiency. Richardson started her life as a foster child, graduating from high school with two scholarships only to drop out to raise her younger brothers and sisters. Working with CWE, Richardson overcame these hurdles, becoming a successful entrepreneur and strong advocate for other private childcare providers.
“Our annual auction brings together the friends and supporters of the CWE for a night of celebration and tribute,” said Donna Mullen Good, CEO of CWE. “From a trip to the Welsh countryside to lunch with Adam Vinatieri and Dave Ortiz, this event auctions off an array of items that reflect the caliber of the individuals being honored.”
Over the past 10 years, CWE has helped more than 10,000 women (and men) start and grow businesses, creating more than 14,000 new jobs in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and generating more than $400 million in wages for its clients and their employees. Last year’s auction raised more than $450,000.
For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit www.cweonline.org/auction.
About the Center for Women & Enterprise
Founded in 1995, the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) is the largest regional entrepreneurial training organization in Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island. CWE’s mission is to empower women to become economically self-sufficient and prosperous through entrepreneurship. CWE offers education, training, technical assistance, women’s business enterprise certification and access to both debt and equity capital to entrepreneurs at every stage of business development. CWE draws its clients from a wide variety of racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, spanning the range from women living in public housing who may want to start home-based or small retail businesses to women running fast growth, multi-million dollar technology businesses. As a non-profit, charitable organization, CWE provides its services on a sliding-scale basis in order to serve all women, regardless of their ability to pay. Since its founding in 1995, CWE has served more than 10,000 entrepreneurs.
