Nancy Chorpenning

Nancy Chorpenning has made it her mission to help women. The self-described “corporate outcast” and entrepreneur seeks to not only support trailblazers pursuing their own career path, but to advise them on how to avoid the pitfalls that can come with starting your own business.

“We are seeing a huge increase in women entrepreneurship and I think that there are very often not a lot of very visible models for people to be inspired by,” Nancy said.

After discovering her local Women’s Business Center was need of funding to continue providing this type of support, Nancy felt compelled to raise money for what she recognized as a vital service to the entrepreneurial community in Atlanta.

She decided to bring Dream, Girl to her community as a way to not only support the Center, but to also showcase female entrepreneur stories and bring women together.

“I wanted to have more folks get the opportunity to see what I had been kind of watching all along as the film was being developed,” Nancy said. “Transitioning to starting my own business was really tough and I just realized that I made a whole lot of mistakes and I would love to help women to not make those mistakes.”

No stranger to a challenge, Nancy had some specific goals in mind for the screening.

“I told everyone I wanted 200 people there. And they were like that’s not going to be very easy and I said I didn’t say it was going to easy, I said that’s what I want.”

Nancy built out and promoted her event, sharing it with her online community as well as her local NAWBO chapter (the National Association of Women Business Owners).

Through tireless promotion and a steadfast adherence to her vision, Nancy not only magnetized the sold out audience she envisioned but she also raised $5000 through her event, which she donated to the Women’s Business Center.

“It was such an uplifting experience, just to see this community of Atlanta women entrepreneurs - that is our common bond and that really broke down other barriers.”

After starting her career as a founder, Nancy made it her priority to utilize mentorship as a way to help women thrive in the entrepreneurial and startup spaces. After making what she describes as life-changing career decisions in the past without the guidance of a mentor, Nancy knows all too well how isolating and challenging the entrepreneurial journey can be, especially for women.

“I’ve been working with women entrepreneurs to try to change the really dismal statistics about small business startups,” Nancy said. “More than half of businesses fail in their first year and 66% fail by the second year and it’s just not necessary.”

In response to these discouraging numbers, Nancy founded C-Suite Advisors, a business-advisory company based in Atlanta that specializes in working with female entrepreneurs to help them grow and scale their businesses.

Atlanta is lucky to have such an incredible woman in their community.