Yesterday Friday we all discovered the winners of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards (see this previous post for details), five women entrepreneurs (see picture), one from each region of the globe (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America). When Bernard Fornas, President and CEO of Cartier International, announced the winners, he said that they took 7 hours discussing to make the decision. Not only me, but I guess a lot of people in the WF wondered: what criteria did they take into account for the evaluation?

Today I spoke to Freja Day, from Cartier International, and she told me that the evaluation is very rigorous. The three main criteria are: creativity (the degree of innovation of the overall business concept and idea); sustainability (financial impact of the business, indicating its long-term success); impact (community impact of the business, in terms of job-creation and impact on the immediate or broader environment).

The jury is composed of outstanding individuals of the business world, the non-profit sector and the academic field. There are five jury panels, one per continent, representing a variety of profiles, countries and cultures. The jury members all voted for the projects of the finalists.

Freja also said that the social impact of the project is very important, especially in emerging countries. The analysis of the business plans, showing the sustainability of the projects in the next three, five or ten years, counted a lot as well.

The Award is a long-term project and is going to be repeated. So, women entrepreneurs of the world, prepare your business plans for next year’s Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards!

The ceremony of the first Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards took place tonight Friday. The Awards are an international business plan competition for women entrepreneurs. It’s a collaboration of the Women’s Forum and Cartier with the support of McKinsey and INSEAD. There were 14 finalists, and the 2007 winners, who received the award from Aude de Thuin, founder of the Forum, and Bernard Fornas, CEO of Cartier International, are:

Africa: Lucie Avoaka, Santa Maria Medical Center, Ivory Coast (healthcare provider in the underprivileged region of Abobo, Cote d’Ivoire).

Asia: Nandini Pandhi and Yasmina McCarthy, Green Mango, India/Philippines (mobile phone-based virtual marketplace for low-income entrepreneurs and their customers in developing countries).

Europe: Bettina Götzenberger, LOmasLEGAL, Spain (low-cost legal services available from high-street stores, over the phone, and via the internet).

Latin America: Antonia Sanin, The Globe, Colombia (day-care center for children aged 3 to 6 that offers educational products and services developed from the experiences learned at center — workshops, manuals, blog…).

North America: Angel Chang, Angel Chang LLC, USA (luxury apparel with “performance” elements and functional designs: special stain-proof, wrinkle-free and odor-free material, color-changing silkscreen prints, 3-D optical illusion prints, fiber optics…)

Here they are, clockwise from top left, Nandini Pandhi, Angel Chang, Bettina Götzenberger, Antonia Sanin and Lucie Avoaka:

If you spend a few minutes with Antonia and Claudia, you will not want to leave them until you have heard the whole story! Not because they are from Colombia and Mexico and their story telling puts you under spell in the best Latin American fashion. Not only, at least. It’s because they are two very inspiring women and I want to share how their stories touched me.

Antonia Sanin and Claudia Garza are finalists of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards — the winners will be announced tonight. Being finalists has helped them a lot by giving them the confidence to pursue their dreams. Not that self-doubt has stopped them on their way to become innovative entrepreneurs so far!

They have developed two absolutely new business ideas which respond to a big need in Latin America, if not everywhere else: giving every child and young person the opportunity to take out the best of themselves. Is there a mission more important than that, I was thinking as I was listening to them.

Claudia Garza is an inspiring teacher who has worked for a number of years giving vocational guidance to kids and their families in her town in northern Mexico. Dropping out of universities is a huge problem in Mexico, with up to 400 million dollars wasted every year in students who never graduate. But it’s an even bigger problem for the student’s self-esteem and for the whole family which invested in the wrong career. Claudia turned this into a business. She developed a testing model to help kids decide their future independently from pressures from their parents or society. She boasts an impressive record of success and is now planning to franchise her company into other parts of the country.

Antonia Sanin has started an educational business which organises workshops for young children in Bogota. The idea is to show the world to children who may never get to travel out of Colombia. “I enjoyed seeing the world when I was small and kids should also get out of their little bubbles”, she says. It’s pure global fun, by the sound of it. After three months of setting up her business, she is also working on developing interactive multi-media tools for children and teaching aids for parents.

It’s a spell. Since meeting them I have not stopped thinking about my own dreams and how I can go about realising them… If Claudia and Antonia make the same impact on the children and young persons they will encounter in their businesses, Mexico and Colombia will be better places! And perhaps the grown-ups who meet them on the way like me will become better persons also…

The expectations are high for the finalists of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards 2007, a joint project by Cartier and the Women’s Forum, with the support of McKinsey & Company and INSEAD. Yesterday Thursday, the fourteen women entrepreneurs gathered to show their start-up projects in the Women’s Forum. There will be five winners of the Prize, one from each region (Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America). The five winners will receive The Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards Trophy, US$ 20 000 each, coaching support for one year and media visibility. I could talk to some of the finalists about what they expected from the Award (which is to be announced tonight). All of them agrees that it is already great to be among the finalists.

Lucie Cissé, an entrepreneur from the Ivory Coast, said that it is already an honor to be there. If she wins the Prize for her project of a healthcare provider in the underprivileged region of Abobo, she thinks that it will help her develop the project and it will also be good for Africa. The Argentinian entrepreneurs Marisa Otamendi and Carola Pradas are also very excited to be finalists. They said that the Cartier Award helped them make their dream come true, a customer service consulting and outsourcing for e-businesses in Argentina. The Cartier Award helped them develop their idea, write their business plan and organize their work. They argue that their project can benefit women, as it will allow them to work from home. If she wins, Bettina Götzenberger, from Spain, will be happy to benefit from the consulting and coaching that come with the Prize.

Among the European women entrepreneurs, Jenny Carenco, who quit a job in a consulting firm to open her own business, a new generation of baby food jars and frozen baby food, thinks that the products and services that the finalist women entrepreneurs propose make a real sense. Besides, she believes that the credibility of the structure of Cartier’s Award will certainly help them obtain funding for their businesses. Katalin Berenyi, a French entrepreneur, remembered that there are not many women entrepreneurs in France. According to her, the level of the projects of the finalists is very high and they are all very interesting. Her business is an anti-fatigue cosmetics range based on traditional Korean herbal science. If she is one of the winners, she believes her company will obtain a great visibility. Antonia Sanin, who created a day-care center for children aged 3 to 6 in Colombia, considers that the Cartier Women’s Initiative has already given her a lot. It helped her formally write her idea and consolidate her working team.

Indeed, Freja Day, from Cartier International, explains that Cartier has been a sponsor of the Women’s Forum since its creation in 2005. She reminds that women are the driving force of the economy. They wanted to create something concrete for women, a long-term initiative that could help women open and develop their own businesses. Cartier has a long history (founded in 1847) and, as Freja says,”women are the heart of what we do”.

Scenes from the Women’s Forum 2007. A break at the main bar:

Discovering the “Rising Talents“:

At the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award booth (a joint project by Cartier, McKinsey and Insead aimed at encouraging female startup entrepreneurs), getting ready for tonight’s presentation of the finalists:

Say it with flowers: