The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center, based at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will hold two online events featuring women who have excelled in research, business, and innovation in celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8.

During each event, four distinguished speakers will share lessons learned and advice for leading companies. They will discuss management and growth strategies, commercialization opportunities, startup mistakes and how to avoid them, key skills for entrepreneurial success, and more.

The first accelHERate for Women event will be held online from noon to 1:30 p.m. March 8. The speakers include Misti Staley, CEO of Staley House and inventor of the FreeArm tube feeding assistant; Portia Carr, CEO of Infinity Therapy and a speech language pathologist; and Latanyua Robinson, president of Latrobe.

Also on the panel is Dr. Nancy Rusch, a partner at PinPoint Testing and professor and chair in the UAMS Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Additionally, Rusch leads the UAMS Translational Research Institute Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program.

The accelHERate (NEA) event will take place from 4-5:30 p.m. in partnership with the Arkansas State University ASBTDC.  The speakers include Dr. Jenn Conner, faculty member at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine-Arkansas; Dr. Maureen Dolan, president of Nature West, a biotech company that exploits the chemical biodiversity of plants as “factories” for producing compounds with applications in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical/dietary supplement, cosmeceutical, research reagent, and agrochemical markets.

Additional panelists include Allyson Lewis, founder and CEO of the 7 Minute Life, a time management company, and Sharon Davis, who founded Strategic Technologies Corporation in 1993 and Strategic Continuity Services in 2005.

The sessions are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the ASBTDC at 1-800-862-2040.