A network of support

More than 100 women come together for annual SCORE business conference

Asense of community and inspiration filled the air at the Scottish Rite Center last week as more than 100 women poured in for the fifth annual SCORE Women In Business conference.

It was a familiar feeling for Solange Serquis. The 52-year-old entrepreneur, a landscape architect for Serquis & Associates and co-owner of Cafecito restaurant in the Baca Railyard, is a repeat attendee of the conference, presented by SCORE Santa Fe & Northern New Mexico, a local chapter of a national all-volunteer nonprofit that offers mentoring and resources to small-business owners.

The conference and its host organization have become a source of inspiration and support for Serquis in her journey as a woman in business. Serquis came to Santa Fe from Argentina in 2001, became a landscape architect in 2009, designed Cafecito’s building in 2017 and started the restaurant in 2019. Serquis turned to SCORE for resources, guidance and education in the early stages of her many business ventures.

“The truth is, we’ve turned to [SCORE] many times because that’s what happens when you’re an entrepreneur. You get to points where you’re like, ‘I need help,’ and then you carve time, and then you go to try to educate yourself in certain aspects,” Serquis said. “The lady I mentored under at SCORE, she had a lot of experience on hospitality, and I was always so in awe about any answer she had.”

Serquis said she has integrated much of what she learned about hospitality from SCORE into Cafecito, which she said is now welcoming people from across New Mexico. She hopes the Women In Business conference, which began in 2019, becomes a statewide event because it addresses many challenges she and other businesswomen

face, including balancing creativity with business, trying to do it all and connecting with community and available resources.

“We still need to keep learning and keep sharing … at the point where we all can be more permeable and be in the moment,” Serquis said, adding that she enjoys seeing the mentorship and intermingling between businesswomen of different backgrounds and generations at the conference. “I think that it empowers everybody.”

That spirit of empowerment resonated at Thursday’s conference, which featured three speakers, five interactive workshops and networking with other businesswomen of various backgrounds. This year’s theme was “Building Bridges: Bringing Together Women In Business.” The intent of the theme, chapter chair Cheryl Ancell said, was to increase awareness of the opportunities, collaboration, friendships, partnerships and insights that can come from meeting new people.

“The purpose of the conference is to just bring women together to network, meet other women, … share in successes and challenges, and talk through how we can all work together and support each other,” Ancell said.

With more than 130 registering for

the conference this year, the event welcomed seasoned businesswomen with backgrounds in film, skin care, banking and finance, mental and physical wellness, food and baking, consulting, government and media. They were joined by budding young businesswomen like Amy Garcia, 18, and 17-year-olds Stephani Gonzalez and Savannah Trujillo, who were encouraged to attend by teachers at Monte del Sol Charter School, where they are seniors.

Garcia is already involved in the business world through her mom, who owns Ana Luisa Event Rentals, which supplied the coffee mugs, tablecloths and utensils for the SCORE event. All three students agreed business could be a likely career path for them.

“I think just being here around women who are so empowered and so free and so independent, kind of gives us another perspective of what it is we want to do and what we want to pursue as a career,” Gonzalez said.

The conference featured a dialogue between author and business coach Victoria Price, author and cross-cultural communication expert Deborah Taffa, and TEDx Talk speaker and Edlinguist Solutions founder LaNysha Adams.

Price, who served as the moderator, opened the conversation by telling attendees, “We’re not here to talk at you; we’re here to talk to each other.”

Price, Taffa and Adams filled the two-hour conversation not with tips about business, but with insights on how to pursue a career while facing past traumas and health obstacles, being a mom and navigating an inadequate support system, and how to find one’s confidence and voice in a culture or work environment that doesn’t always value what you have to say.

The attendees were later split into five small groups for workshops led by Taffa, Adams and Price, as well as former Secret Service agent and speaker Mary Beth Janke, and author, public speaking coach and The Life Monologue Project founder Pamela Thompson. Workshops covered topics of core beliefs, peer power and collective wisdom, freedom in the field, building powerful networks and resilience.

After Janke guided her group through some deep-breathing exercises, the concept of cognitive behavioral theory and developing resilience through mastering positive self-talk and thoughts, she shared with The New Mexican how she hopes the workshop will help the women in their work lives going forward.

“Similar to my background of being in a male-dominated field, I think business can be that way and feel that way. … So I think building your resilience can help you get through a lot of the hurdles, a lot of the judgment, a lot of the criticism, a lot of the challenges,” Janke said.

Janke, who is a clinical psychology expert, said she has noticed a huge uptick of clients expressing a lack of motivation to go into the office for work because of a lack of communication and connection. She said that highlights the importance of being able to network at conferences like SCORE Women In Business and taking that inspiration to communicate into their work environments.

Serquis of Cafecito agreed, adding that one of her biggest takeaways from the conference was to be optimistic and to uphold the potential of vulnerability and community.

“Maybe that’s our job, to be contagious with that,” Serquis said.