February 2, 2015- Penni Nafus, the Executive Director of the Women’s Center for Entrepreneurship Corp. located in Chatham, retired last week after 15 years with the Center. She leaves following a tenure that saw great strides in the delivery of training and educational services to New Jersey women entrepreneurs. In the year that Penni joined the Center in 1999, it served 368 New Jersey women business owners and she leaves at a time when services have reached over 5,000 per year.
One of her most notable accomplishments was when the WCEC was selected as the the 2009 National Women’s Business Center of the Year (from among the 105 Centers throughout the country). The ceremony was held in Washington, DC, part of which was an invitation to the White House with President Obama meeting the winners of the U. S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Week Awards.
Penni came to the Women’s Business Center in 1999 (then NJAWBO’s Women’s Business Center) after she and husband sold their 22 year old distributorship for Zamboni Ice Resurfacer Machines. The business began in their unheated garage and grew to enjoy multi-million dollars in sales that included international clients.
Said Penni about her joining WCEC following her time as a successful entrepreneur, “Learning the lessons of business ownership from start-up to sale prepared me well to work with the WCEC clients as I understood exactly how frightened they are, what the primary concerns are and, learning from our mistakes, I was able to guide them through the maze that is new business start-up. ”
Penni has received warm wishes from around the New Jersey small business and entrepreneurial communities as the moves to her next challenge, and possibly some time in the sun.
