Clinton Global Initiative Announces New Program to Train Thousands of Women Entrepreneurs

Senator Hillary Clinton Highlights Importance of Supporting Women-Owned Businesses

From left to right, Kellie Kreiser, Executive Director of Thunderbird for Good; Senator Hillary Clinton; Emad Rizkalla, founder and CEO of Bluedrop; and Tracy Bame, President of the Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation (Photo: Business Wire)

CHICAGO--()--A new online business training program for women entrepreneurs across America was featured today by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI) meeting in Chicago. American DreamBuilder: The Women’s Business Creator, is being created by Bluedrop Performance Learning, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX) and Thunderbird School of Global Management and will provide thousands of women with the online business training to create and grow their own businesses.

American DreamBuilder is an expansion of a program originally developed to help women in mining communities in Chile and Peru. American DreamBuilder is a 12-course program for women who own small or medium-sized businesses and need additional training and support to increase their income, job creation and success. With the support of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., American Dreambuilder will be available free to aspiring women entrepreneurs and will launch in the coming months.

CGI America brings together 1,000 high-level participants, including business, government, foundation, and NGO leaders, to develop solutions to spur job creation and economic growth in the United States. According to a 2009 study by the Center for Women’s Business Research, women-owned firms have an economic impact of $3 trillion annually that translates into the creation and/or maintenance of more than 23 million jobs - 16 percent of all U.S. jobs.

Data from that same study also illustrated the need for new thinking and programming to support women who seek to grow their businesses. There are few solid programs that actually generate information and knowledge and engage entrepreneurs – especially women and minorities – to grow their businesses.

“When DreamBuilder launched in Chile and Peru, it was rewarding to hear about the opportunities and empowerment the program gave women who just needed to believe in themselves,” said Emad Rizkalla, founder and CEO of Bluedrop. “With our partners, we are pleased to bring this benefit to aspiring women entrepreneurs across the US. The program is a perfect fit for our CoursePark platform,” Rizkalla added.

“We are so pleased to be able to increase our commitment to women by developing American DreamBuilder,” said Tracy Bame, President of the Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation and Director of Social Responsibility & Community Development for Freeport-McMoRan. “Using a technology solution to serve entrepreneurial development needs allows us to reach women more easily. By removing some of the barriers to education, like cost and inflexible class times, we hope that any woman who aspires to be a more successful entrepreneur and wants to take this program has the opportunity.”

“American DreamBuilder will give women the skills they need to take their dreams to a new level. It will be designed to not only build business knowledge, but the confidence to put that knowledge into action,” said Kellie Kreiser, Executive Director of Thunderbird for Good.

Today’s featured participants also included Ali Velshi, Host of Al Jazeera America; Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer of the United States, The White House; Bill Simon, President and CEO, Walmart U.S., Walmart Stores, Inc.; Annise D. Parker, Mayor of the City of Houston; and Jessica Jackley, Venture Partner with the Collaborative Fund.

About American DreamBuilder: The Women’s Business Creator
American DreamBuilder consists of 12 online courses that can be completed at the participant’s own pace, on any computer with Internet access, at any time. Core business management topics such as business planning, market research, marketing, budgeting, accounting, financial reporting, branding, pricing, customer service, human resources, and goal setting are covered in an interactive format.

Throughout the program, participants are given opportunities to capture their thoughts and ideas through directive questions that feed their answers into a business plan tool. At the end of the program, the participants can use the tool to generate their own actual business plans.

A video about American DreamBuilder can be viewed at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thunderbirdschool/9019108167/

About Bluedrop Performance Learning
Bluedrop Performance Learning (TSX-V: BPL) is an innovator in workplace training. The company was launched in 2004 and has more than 100 employees in six offices across Canada. CoursePark.com is Bluedrop’s cloud-based eLearning platform that contains over 5,000 third-party online courses from the world’s leading publishers and subject matter experts. Bluedrop is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and the American DreamBuilder project team. For more information, visit www.bluedrop.com.

About Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
Freeport-McMoRan is a leading international mining company with headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. Freeport-McMoRan operates large, long-lived, geographically diverse assets with significant proven and probable reserves of copper, gold and molybdenum. Freeport-McMoRan has a dynamic portfolio of operating, expansion and growth projects in the copper industry and is the world’s largest producer of molybdenum. The company’s portfolio of assets includes the Grasberg minerals district, one of the world’s largest copper and gold mine in terms of recoverable reserves; significant mining operations in the Americas, including the large scale Morenci and Safford minerals districts in North America and the Cerro Verde and El Abra operations in South America; and the Tenke Fungurume minerals district in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

About Thunderbird School of Global Management
Thunderbird is the world’s No. 1-ranked school of international business, with nearly 70 years of experience in equipping global leaders with the business skills and global mindset necessary to create sustainable prosperity worldwide. For more about Thunderbird, visit www.thunderbird.edu.

Media contact:

Libby Carew
Bluedrop Performance Learning
libbycarew@bluedrop.com
709.725.7627

Contacts

Bluedrop Performance Learning
Libby Carew, 709-725-7627
libbycarew@bluedrop.com

Contacts

Bluedrop Performance Learning
Libby Carew, 709-725-7627
libbycarew@bluedrop.com