Eva Garland Consulting Wins SBA Growth Accelerator Fund Competition Stage Two Award

RALEIGH, N.C. - Oct. 1, 2024 - PRLog -- The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has awarded Eva Garland Consulting (EGC) a second $50,000 prize for Stage Two of the Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC). This award follows EGC's success in Stage One of the GAFC earlier this year and further recognizes the firm as a leader in building an inclusive, national innovation ecosystem for entrepreneurs.

EGC will use the GAFC award to launch the "WINS" (Women In NSF SBIR) mentoring program, aimed at supporting women pursuing National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.

Since the NSF SBIR/STTR program's inception in 1983, less than 20% of awardees have been women. The WINS program seeks to change this by leveraging EGC's expertise in promoting diversity among grant recipients. Participants selected into the WINS program will receive EGC's best-selling book, Winning SBIR/STTR Grants: A Ten-Week Plan for Preparing Your NSF Phase I Application, and personalized guidance from EGC's Ph.D.-level Scientific Grant Experts. Additionally, each participant will be paired with a successful female NSF SBIR/STTR awardee for one-on-one mentoring.

The WINS program will be further enhanced through collaboration with two leading organizations that support female entrepreneurs: Health Wildcatters, which developed the WISH (Women in Science & Healthcare) Network, and First Flight Venture Center, which offers numerous resources for women, including the Propeller Pre-Accelerator program—an entrepreneurial design thinking course that helps founders evaluate the feasibility of their ideas.

The GAFC award builds on EGC's past successes in promoting entrepreneurial diversity, particularly through its leadership of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Applicant Assistance Program (AAP), the first known initiative to statistically broaden the proportion of women and other underrepresented groups in both applicant and awardee pools for NIH's SBIR/STTR program.

EGC's CEO, Dr. Eva Garland, commented, "We are thrilled to have the opportunity to help women entrepreneurs gain access to NSF SBIR/STTR grants, which provide vital seed funding for the early development of their innovative technologies. This Stage Two award builds on the success of our Stage One pilot and will further strengthen our partnerships within the innovation ecosystem. We're especially excited to collaborate with Health Wildcatters and First Flight Venture Center, both of whom are recognized leaders in supporting female entrepreneurs."

Applications for the WINS program will open in mid-October 2024.

About Eva Garland Consulting: Eva Garland Consulting was founded in 2013 to help scientists and entrepreneurs advance development of their innovative technologies. The firm excels in crafting and implementing strategies for securing non-dilutive funding and offers comprehensive accounting services to high-growth technology companies. To date, EGC has assisted clients in obtaining and managing more than $2 billion in grants and contracts, fueling some of the most innovative research and development efforts both in the US and worldwide.