As president of Funds for Learning, Cathy Cruzan leads her the consultancy in assisting schools and libraries navigate the E-rate program, a critical source of discounts on Internet services. She has a broad portfolio at the company, overseeing their various business efforts.

With this experience, she was an ideal mentor for the Peace Through Business program, where she was embraced the role of guiding rising business leaders from Rwanda in how to find success and grow their business. In this podcast she discusses the heartbreak of those whose families were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Yet lasting bonds were formed over the shared experiences and challenges these women shared with those everywhere who enter business.

Alyssa Weathers-Murphy knows the dread of an unfulfilling corporate job. One day, it was finally time to put her considerable skills and passion to use on her own business, striking out to launch her own marketing agency. Nearly a year later, Siren Media is growing fast with an all-female team of close-knit creatives who help small businesses tell their stories and build success.

Her team offers graphic and web design, social media content, search engine marketing, and other key services to a diverse client base. A third-generation small business owner, Weathers-Murphy shares her journey and strategies for how women can self-advocate and support others in their networks.

After Ginger Sloan had her first daughter, she was determined to work from home. On a whim, she answered a radio ad to become a medical transcriptionist, quickly finishing coursework and embarking on a new career.

She grew a solo operation into Encore Medical Services, with a team of transcriptionists providing medical clients with rapid turnaround for their transcription needs. She’s learned the ups and downs of being a woman in the business world, gaining diligence in who to connect with for growing a business. Sloan shares these tips and more with businesswomen from Rwanda and Afghanistan through the Peace Through Business program. She cherishes these experiences and has much to share how she’s connected with these women through their shared experiences.

Hair Salon owner Jan Hill spent years building a successful business and helping her employees achieve success. However, after contracting an illness that resulted in the loss of using her hands, she couldn’t do hairdresser work any longer.

While she could still run the business, Hill wanted to channel energy elsewhere. She was connected to the Peace Through Business program, and encountered the life-changing experience of mentoring women from Rwanda.

She’s worked on helping women gain business strategy skills, but more importantly she learned as much about their resilience and the connections that can occur across cultures.

Sonu Ratra embodies the immigrant dream of coming to America and seeking success. She arrived from her native India with a pair of suitcases and just the money in her pockets as she and her husband came to chase new opportunities in the 90s in California’s Silicon Valley.

Ratra recounts the journey that culminated in her founding of Akraya, a leader in IT consulting and digital enterprise staffing. Her company’s Women Back to Work program also helps companies tap into the overlooked talent pool of women returning to work after an absence. Ratra details her considerable effort at supporting women in business, including the Peace Through Business initiative.

Business success isn’t built on just hoping for the right outcome. That’s why consultant Angelika Coughlan is always telling her clients to burn that bridge of hope. Entrepreneurs must do the hard work of understanding who their customers are and what they care about.

One of her most satisfying experiences with that message is extending it to women business owners in Rwanda with the Peace Through Business program. Through this mentorship she’s been inspired by how they take on challenging circumstances and reach new heights for the companies they’re building.

Through her company The Success Catalyst, she’s always offering that spark of inspiration to her clients, pushing them to focus on what leads to success.

Mary Ruppert-Stroescu believes clothing can play a role in improving health outcomes. A longtime fashion designer, she is passionate about the potential for EKG and other types of monitoring systems to be embedded in clothing, delivering better information to patients and doctors.

She designed and manufactured her own clothing and owned a small boutique in Paris for years, part of her lifelong passion for fashion and design. She brings that experience to the Peace Through Business program, mentoring women in industry strategy and helping them build up marketing skills. The women from Rwanda and Afghanistan inject new ideas to her work, regularly inspiring her with their strengths.

As editor and publisher of Enterprising Women Magazine, Monica Smiley knows the challenges women face in business. Yet what she’s seen here in the U.S. pales to the experiences of female entrepreneurs in Afghanistan and Rwanda. Their resilience and ability to succeed, however, leaves her continually inspired.

Through her work with the Peace Through Business program, she’s helped mentor women through the unique challenges they face in their home country. In Afghanistan, women must still deal with the Taliban and major barriers to entry. In Rwanda, women are embracing technology and playing a pivotal role in rebuilding the country, though gender stereotypes remain. Learn more about these moving stories and how these women are ‘holding up the sky.’

The Peace Through Business program provides women from Rwanda and Afghanistan with the essential skills they need to unleash their entrepreneurial potential. Karel Ford directs the mentorship side with the initiative, pairing up U.S.-based business leaders with women who are launching and building businesses, often in challenging and sometimes dangerous, circumstances.

Ford describes how the women who enter the program thrive, building stronger partnerships with their American counterparts and expanding their networks in their home countries. Graduates have embraced challenges such as helping women arrested for selling their goods on the street by taking them under their wing to build legitimate businesses. She is continually inspired by how they are transforming their world.

Karel Ford wants to see women worldwide have the freedom and skills to start their own businesses. This is why she heads the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women, where she and her team mentor women in Rwanda and Afghanistan giving them valuable entrepreneurship skills to help them find success in their home country.

Women in the program learn critical skills to launch their business, nurture its growth, and work within their political systems to achieve lasting change. Ford describes the lifelong bonds formed through mentorship training and seeing the women build up their careers and communities, driving a female-powered future.