Every comprehensive business starts with a comprehensive and well thought out business plan. A business plan helps you clearly define your business idea, set goals, analyze your market, develop strategies, project financial viability, and attract potential investors, essentially providing a roadmap to guide your business towards success.

The WIT WBO 2025 event series is a highly interactive and hands-on experience that will help you build your very own business plan. Each session will focus on developing a particular section of your business plan until it is complete. You will be given a framework to help you develop your content for each event and will be able to get feedback from successful entrepreneurs. 

This first session introduced the series, describing the content and cadence of each event and level or participant involvement and discussed how to develop a meaningful and forward looking mission and vision. In this 2nd event we will lead a facilitated discussion where you can share your mission and vision statements and get feedback from experts and peers. Next, we will outline how you conduct a competitive analysis to understand market size and growth potential, and market segmentation. We will also describe how to identify your target market and competitors, and how to assess how your product/service stands up to your competitors. 

The agenda for this event is outlined outline below:

• 6:00-6:05 PM Welcome and Introduction to WIT/WBO
• 6:05-6:50 PM Mission and Vision Discussion
• 6:50-7:25 PM Competitive Analysis
• 7:25-7:30 PM Assignment

Registration Fees
FREE for WIT Members
$25 Non-members

Speakers

Bernard Ferret
Senior Business Counselor, Mason Small Business Development Center

Bernard Ferret is a Senior Business Advisor at the Mason SBDC (hosted by GMU’s Mason Enterprise Center in Fairfax City). Since 2012, he has advised hundreds of clients and led many workshops. Bernard is a retired software engineer and serial entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience in the Telecommunications and Internet industries. He developed extensive executive management skills working with his own startups and large IT companies. His accomplishments include selling large software projects, raising venture capital, and closing a successful acquisition. Bernard’s areas of expertise include marketing strategy, financial management, corporate organization (for-profit and non-profit), and venture capital. He holds an MS in Physics from the University of Provence, France, and an MBA from the College of William & Mary School of Business, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Kara Dickey
Co-Founder and CEO, SmartCom Solutions, Inc., and Chair, Women Business Owners Committee

For over two decades Kara has helped SmartCom Solutions’ clients gain a competitive advantage through technical innovations and reduce costs through efficiencies and modernization. Kara brings a breadth and depth of experience in employing automation to solve organizations’ mission critical business needs. These efforts typically required full scale business process reengineering, as well as custom application development. Kara has extensive experience managing and participating in all phases of the system development lifecycle. Kara has diverse application and industry experience including Mortgage Origination, Mortgage Services, Mortgage Securitization, Mutual Fund Processing, Financial Management and Accounting, Supply Chain Management, and Claims Processing. In her capacity as Chief Executive Officer, Kara is also responsible for setting the direction of the company, business development, marketing, and obtaining/managing resources. Kara holds a B.S. in Decision Sciences (computer science concentration) from George University and an MBA (finance concentration) from Marymount University.

Anu Jekal
Co-Founder and President, Data Surge LLC, Vice-Chair, Women Business Owners Committee

Anu Jekal is the Co-Founder and President of Data Surge, a 8(a) woman owned small business, specializing in end-to-end data, AI/ML and MLOps pipelines at big data scale. Anu is leading the company’s strategic direction, overseeing all aspects of operations and implementing its long and short-term goals.

Anu has lead multiple teams in her past experience and with more than 15 years of experience in the big data, AI/ML and engineering industry, she has a proven track record of managing, developing and implementing complex enterprise software applications. Anu holds a Masters degree specializing in Wireless Networking and Communications from George Mason University.

Anu believes strongly in a people-first culture where employees are encouraged to share ideas and participate in setting the culture and organization policies. Anu mentors young women as part of the Women in Big Data organization and supports the Women in Technology’s (WIT) mission in empowering women from classroom to the boardroom.