The 2014-15 Speaker's Series is off to an excellent start, providing a great reason to be up early on Friday mornings.

Sara Mitchell engaged us on the Woman's Fund of Central Ohio (http://www.womensfundcentralohio.org/), an organization that "transforms the lives of women and girls by mobilizing the collective power and passion of all women working together, [creating] gender equality and influence through our research and collaborations, [promoting] social change by growing women’s philanthropy, and [making] grants to programs that raise awareness and educate on issues affecting women and girls." You can learn more about the Women's Fund in this video of Sara's presentation.

Andre Porter, Director of Ohio's Department of Commerce, told us about how the department is organized, what it does, and how it has started a new customer service initiative that incentivizes compliance with regulation.  The department no longer wants to operate as a "gotcha!" agency. Instead, while it will still rigorously enforce commerce as needed, it will give small financial breaks to the many companies and operators that are consistently in compliance, spending more time and charging a bit more for those that need help coming into compliance. You can learn more about the department in this video of Andre's presentation.