We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heather Wentler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Heather, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
One of Doyenne’s Guiding Principles is “Entrepreneurship happens within a life, not the other way around”. This principle comes from the constant narrative that is pushed on entrepreneurs that in order to be successful you need to solely focus on your venture and check everything else at the door before walking in.
This isn’t realistic, and it’s also one of the primary reasons we continue to see women – especially historically marginalized women – not achieve the same level of success as our male counterparts. Society tells women we have to be perfect, and if you don’t measure up to those ridiculous and unachievable metrics then you’re constantly going to be told “come back when you check this box”.
Yes, there are women who break the proverbial glass ceiling but think of the level of privilege they have to access first and at what price, or sacrifice, they have to pay to themselves to get there. Many of the women that I work with who have successfully launched, scaled, and exited their ventures will say how they had to become someone else in order to succeed and gain access into necessary spaces to be able to achieve their dreams.
I use my platform to do my best at changing these standards and stereotypes. You can work a 40 hour work week and still make six or seven figure salaries and lead successful ventures. All of the programming I lead and coaching I do comes from a framework of you being the center of the work, the goals and space are created to welcome you as all of your identities and roles you hold, with entrepreneur only being one of those and remembering that each of us are multifacited and our lived experiences are our superpowers.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Heather Wentler is an advocate for underrepresented individuals and believes they are strong, independent individuals capable of success. Professional trained as an educator, Heather pivoted into entrepreneurship as the Founder of Fractal, Madison SOUP, and is currently the Executive Director and Co-founder of Doyenne. She serves on various organizing committees, advisory boards, board of directors, and has membership of organizations committed to advancing recognition and possibilities for women, girls, and non-binary folxs.
Heather graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2009 with a BA in Elementary Education. Since a young girl Heather always wanted to be an educator. During college she began teaching preschool and Pre-K at day cares with high free and reduced tuition clients. The experience taught Heather about the inequities in education for BIPOC children, low-income families, english language learners, and the hurdles they face when trying to access high quality education. Once graduated, Heather started teaching in the Madison Metropolitan School District, primarily teaching math and science in middle schools.
In 2011 Heather started looking for a new career path where she could still utilize all of her educator foundation but in a different capacity and approach. The traditional classroom was becoming increasingly stifling and she was looking for an alternative way to teach students that was outside the traditional curriculum and making learning more hands on and based on life experiences. As Heather thought about going back to college or seeking a different career within education administration, someone asked Heather if she had ever thought of entrepreneurship as her next career path. As someone who proclaims to have never taken a business class Heather didn’t know if she was qualified to start a business or the background needed to start a business. It was one of Heather’s early mentors who reminded her that those reasons were exactly why she should proceed into starting a business, she had zero experience but tons of passion and support from other entrepreneurs to help her succeed.
Founded in 2011, Fractal was Heather’s first step into entrepreneurship. Fractal provides STEAM enrichment programming for school-aged participants through participant-guided learning activities to connect the teaching from school to real-life experiences. Fractal launched as a summer program working in conjuncture with local community organizations and other established programming. Since then Fractal now hosts evening, weekend and week-long camps throughout the year for ages 6-13. Over 2000 participants to attended programming to date. Fractal also hosts professional development for educators to introduce new technology and teaching techniques to foster learning across curriculums and an increase of engagement amongst all levels and learning styles within a classroom
In the summer of 2011 Heather discovered the Sunday Soup Network and their idea of hosting locally organized events to create micro-grants for projects within communities. Madison SOUP held quarterly events for community members to pool their dollars together to support a local program, project, entrepreneurial endeavor or non-profit to move them forward. Presenters submit their proposals to be considered to present at the event, then selected presenters give a 5 minute pitch during the event to tell who they are, what they do and how the dollars awarded would impact them. After presentations, and a locally sponsored dinner of soup, salad, bread and drink, everyone votes on the presenter they believe deserves the micro-grant the most and the presenter with the greatest number of votes receives the micro-grant. All awarded presenters are required to attend the next event to give an update of how they used the funds and what accomplishments they’ve made since being awarded the micro-grant.
By the spring of 2012 Heather had become more engaged in the Madison entrepreneurial ecosystem and was becoming increasingly frustrated with the experience she was having while attending events. Most events left her feeling like 1 of 10 women in the room. It was about this time that Heather co-founded Doyenne the excited journey of what’s brought her to today began. Heather’s experience of other entrepreneurial events in Madison was exactly why she was excited about co-founding Doyenne and the opportunity to connect with other women entrepreneurs, collaborate on creating a better community for everyone, encouraging and empowering others to live their dreams, and finding a network of women who are in each other’s corner no matter what.
Heather continues to serve as the Executive Director & Co-founder of Doyenne still. The work the organization focuses on is creating virtual communities where entrepreneurs who are founding and leading early-stage, scalable startups led by women and historically marginalized gender/s entrepreneurs. In the 10+ years since Doyenne launched we’ve worked with close to 4,000 individuals and are seen as a leading entrepreneur support organization in our headquartering state of Wisconsin.
Doyenne focuses on mobilizing an entrepreneurial ecosystem by providing support through 3 key areas: 1. Professional Development for Entrepreneurs – workshops and resources focusing on strategic level planning and thinking hitting your goals and milestones within the venture, 2. Funding the Ventures – both through opportunities within Doyenne as well as pipeline partnerships to get dollars into the hands of entrepreneurs, 3. Transform the Narrative – the current way entrepreneurial ecosystems doesn’t support the majority of entrepreneurs. We leverage our network, communities, and government officials to advocate and implement change within these broken systems.
When you come to Doyenne you’re treated as a person and are taken seriously, We don’t expect you to have all the answers, or even know the questions to ask before you start working with us. Your lived experiences are your superpowers and we work with you to harness those powers into reaching your goals both professionally and personally.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
My network. As an introvert, and a woman who has experienced sexual harassment as part of my job, I’m not big on putting myself out there or attending networking events to “work a room”. Before I show up in a new space I want to make sure I will feel safe, and my professional and personal contacts have shown up and supported me through these experiences. Having these people help literally open doors for me, make introductions, make space for me at the table, and put their reputations on the line to support my advancements is how I have been able to achieve the level of success I’ve gotten to.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My Doyenne Co-founder, Amy, and I met because of my husband, Chris. Both of them had been on an organizing committee for a local event for entrepreneurs. When this event was taking place I was not looking to show up to another event, on the weekend, that was 90% attended by men, who I was going to have to justify why I belonged there in the first place. At the first night of the weekend-long event Amy had called out the exact reasons I didn’t show up to Chris as to why more women weren’t in attendance. Chris came home and asked if I would come the next day to just meet Amy since we seemed to be of the same mindset when it came to what was going on within our local entrepreneurial ecosystem (and across all entrepreneurial ecosystems across the nation, if not the globe).
Amy used to tell the next part of the story this way and it’s probably dead accurate…So in comes Heather, in her yoga pants and sweatshirt, not looking approachable to talk with or wanting to be there at all. Chris then looks to me and says “Amy this is Heather. Heather this is Amy” and walks away.
I remember both Amy and myself looking at each other with WTH, Chris?! facial expressions. We spent the rest of the event talking to the 10 women at the event, strategizing how our personal experiences as well as those we were hearing from others can be addressed and change towards gender equality could begin to happen within our ecosystem.
At the end of the event, we both decided we didn’t know what came next. We both had fledgling careers that we loved and weren’t looking to add another thing to our plates. We spent about six months “dating” to get to know each other, lay out our professional goals and personal responsibilities, as well as understand how we communicate and function as people.
We spent 8 years working together before Amy was tragically physically taken from this world in a helicopter accident while on a family vacation during Christmas 2019.
Over the 8 years of working together our relationship changed, grew, and also had many challenging times as we and the organization changed and grew. We spent just as much time together as we did with our families, we were part of each other’s families, and our relationship and friendship reflected this. We had to learn new strategies and tricks to best support each other through the challenging times and not let those within the organization see or feel it – we didn’t always accomplish this, but we’re only human.
Amy is still with me today. I hear her words in my mind all the time both at work and at home. I miss her, but also wouldn’t be where I’m at or have continued on the journey of leading Doyenne without the friendship and business partnership we had.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.doyennegroup.org
- Instagram: @DoyenneGroup or @hmwentler
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoyenneGroupInc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/doyenne-group-inc/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-wentler-4b387b30/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiP0l-BErR6DLYGZx-Rvdkw