Center Reaches Out to Asian, Latin Women

Latin and Asian women looking to start or grow a business will find resources at a new center opening Friday in El Monte.

The San Gabriel Valley Women’s Business Center will offer entrepreneurship classes in Chinese and Spanish in an effort to reach out to the fast-growing ethnic women’s market there. The El Monte center is the newest office of Long Beach-based Women’s Enterprise Development Corp., and it was funded in part by a grant from the Small Business Administration. WEDC is one of the area’s oldest nonprofit organizations dedicated to cultivating female-owned businesses.

“Latinas and Asians are transforming the San Gabriel Valley,” said Philip Borden, executive director of WEDC. “We want to serve this rapidly growing client base.”

In polyglot Los Angeles, that means employing instructors and administrators who speak the language of the entrepreneurs around them. Jinbin Wang Bacon, project director for the El Monte center, is fluent in Mandarin, and program manager Circe Cox speaks Spanish.

The San Gabriel Valley facility is the latest of more than 80 Women’s Business Centers nationwide to receive SBA funding in recent years. The agency provides a maximum of $150,000 a year in matching funds for up to five years, after which the centers “graduate” from federal funding.

The San Gabriel Valley Women’s Business Center is at 10505 Valley Blvd., Suite 600, El Monte. For more information, call (626) 401-1190 or (562) 983-3747.