Empowerment, encouragement goals of new Ponte Vedra women’s networking group

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In the spirit of female empowerment, a group of Ponte Vedra women has joined together to form a networking and entrepreneurial group to encourage and support local women in business.

Led by founding members Monica Moore, the founder of Fertile Health, LLC, and Elizabeth Paul, adjunct professor of International Health at the University of Florida, the group meets weekly to network, share insights and provide general support. Currently, the group consists of 16 members.

“It’s such a great resource for pulling together like-minded women and supporting each other,” Paul said of the group.

“We have a bigwig who’s at Web.com, people who are in mortgages and somebody who’s a partner in a finance business,” Moore added. “One of the women in the group, she owns Cabana Life, and she introduced me to this group of attorneys who’ve now also joined our group.”

Having previously been members of a larger women’s networking group, both Moore and Paul said they were turned off by the inability to connect with other members on a more personal level at the meetings. The solution, they decided, was to create their own, smaller group.

 “We’re constantly bouncing ideas off of each other, so it just made sense to create a network of people,” Moore said.

For Paul, the unique demographics of the Greater Jacksonville area made the idea of a local group all the more appealing.

“Living in Ponte Vedra is not like living in New York City where you can meet at Starbucks, or at someone’s office after work, and it’s just so easy to get together,” she explained. “Here, it’s a little more challenging.”

As for membership requirements, while the main purpose of the group is to provide support to women in business, it is not exclusive to working women.

“We actually have someone in the group who isn’t currently actively working,” Moore said. “She calls herself the ‘CEO of her family,’ and she just comes to be energized and inspired.”

Each meeting, Moore said, starts off on a positive note, with each member sharing one good aspect of her week. Members then speak about challenges they faced, and then others provide helpful feedback. The location of each meeting varies by week.

“We decided that for January, everyone is going to state their goals for 2018, so that we’re holding each other accountable,” Moore said. “Then everybody has to pick a book, a TED Talk, podcast or an article that they were inspired by. And you don’t have to bring it, you just need to name it.”

The goal, she explained, is to compile a list of resources for members to reference.

But while the entrepreneurial insight is great, Paul said, for her, the best part of the group is its collaborative atmosphere, and “just having a group of supportive, strong, motivated women who are always there for you.”

For more information about this women’s networking group, contact Monica Moore at monica@fertilehealthexpert.com.