By Jazmin Goodwin
Rita Goodroe, a 41-year-old ‘solopreneur’ commutes one hour and 18 minutes at least once a week from her home in Cedarville, Virginia to a coworking space in Washington, D.C. Located on Wisconsin Avenue, named Hera Hub. ‘Solopreneurs’ are entrepreneurs who work alone and have full responsibility for the running of the business.
At Hera Hub, a spa-themed coworking space which has over 90 members, Goodroe works, mentors and collaborates with other professional women as the founder of a global network platform, Women’s Business Garden.
What makes the commute worth it and the coworking space so unique? It’s female-focused.
Amidst the rise of coworking spaces, a new trend has emerged of female-focused places catering to the demands by many women of collaboration, community and conversation.
Coworking spaces are shared workplaces that contain individuals not employed by the same company or organization. According to a report by deskmag.com, 1.7 million members will work in coworking spaces by the end of 2018.
“Collaboration and community has always been at the forefront of my core values as a woman and professional navigating through multiple environments,” said Goodroe, a former business attorney of 13 years.
Goodroe has been a member of Hera Hub for just little over a year. While looking for a change of pace in her work life and environment as a self employed person, she was driven to try out coworking spaces.
“I missed the ability to be able to go down the hall and just bounce an idea off somebody. When you’re by yourself, you don’t have that, so I sought out coworking spaces,” said Goodroe.
On a Thursday afternoon, Goodroe along with other women entrepreneur members joined together in one of Hera Hub’s open conference rooms to bounce ideas off each other and discuss social media techniques taught by a female business coach.
“Members don’t come here because they don’t want to not work with men, it’s more of I enjoy working with women. I get real value from the relationships that I have with other professional women. There’s a lot of shared experiences we have, that we don’t have with men,” said Julia Westfall, founder and CEO of Hera Hub DC.
According to the United States Department of Labor Women’s Bureau, 57 percentage of women participate in the workforce and more than 39 percent of women work in occupations where women make up at least three-quarters of the workforce.
Westfall sees Hera Hub as an integral part of the ecosystem and the day-to- day reinforcement of how to figure out what to do next, who can be held accountable and how to find and provide connections that will make the desired outcome possible — a common theme that women members have found uniquely at Hera Hub.
“When you have a space that you can in a productive way get feedback and resources and support from other women who have gone through that problem and navigated it successfully, that is the real win that happens here,” said Goodroe.
She continued, “Whereas if I was at a different coworking space that was coed, I might not bring up some of the problems because then it will either trigger a whole discussion of everything I don’t want to get into necessarily or finding out they haven’t gone through that.”
The growth of female coworking spaces is part of an overall trend of an expansion in the sector.
“From 2010 through 2017, we’ve seen 23 percent average annual growth in the sector overall, which is absolutely staggering considering that in a typical year we see about one percent of growth in the overall office tenant base,” said Scott Homa, director of U.S. office research at Jones Lang LaSalle, a global commercial real estate and investment management company.
One of the coworking space giants, WeWork is the single, largest stakeholder in the coworking industry since its founding in 2008. Since then, the company has built 221 offices worldwide and has raised an overall valuation of $20 billion.
“Coworking spaces like WeWork and UberOffices they’re all great coworking spaces, but what I found is no one is coworking. The people who are there are not necessarily coworking with each other,” said Goodroe.
“At Hera Hub, we are. It’s very collaborative. I think that’s what’s missing from a lot of coworking spaces — collaboration between other members of the coworking space,” she continued.
Currently, more than 11 million women-owned businesses exist in the United States today — representing 39 percent of all firms.
Nine percent of high-growth tech startups have female founders, indicating that most conventional coworking spaces that exist tend to be male-dominated, according to the National Association of Women Business Owners.
“There is a lot of momentum around women in the workplace and curating communities that are really hospitable for women,” said Homa.
Thirty six-year-old, Washington, D.C. interior designer, Kerra Michelle Huerta founded her own female-focused coworking space, BUREAU out of necessity.
“I had been looking for a space for a long time. I tried coffee shops and I couldn’t focus really well and was never comfortable. I tried large coworking spaces like WeWork and it also didn’t feel right to me,” said Huerta.
“D.C. has historically been a man’s town. It’s historically been a power town and political town – not very many people know there is a thriving creative scene in D.C. and women are vastly under recognized for their work here,” said Huerta.
Huerta’s mission for creating BUREAU was to provide a sanctuary for women to network, collaborate and share ideas.
“By creating a space that is especially geared towards women, creatives, artists and entrepreneurs I really tried to create a haven of sorts for women who are in my same boat, by creating a space that is safe for all of us to come together where we can feel comfortable opening our minds up to one another and asking for help with projects,” said Huerta.
Currently, there are 11 WeWork offices that permeate D.C. outnumbering the total of female-focused coworking spaces available in the city.
“I’ve worked at one of the larger coworking spaces in D.C. where they have a bar and pool table. It’s great for after hours but not really conducive to a work environment, said Huerta.
“There are a lot of women who don’t feel comfortable in that environment for many reasons. A lot of women have had bad sexual experiences and assault experiences in a bar type of setting,” she continued.
Experiences like these are what have pushed Huerta to find news ways to create an inclusive space for women through private events, monthly gatherings and “WERQshops” for members and the community to come together.
“To be in that environment and trying to get work done or having a meeting with a client and having a bunch of 25 year-old guys playing pool and drinking beer in the same room was unsettling and I didn’t feel comfortable in that space,” said Huerta.
“I knew I couldn’t be the only person that felt this way about coworking spaces and I was certainly not the only creative female entrepreneur in D.C. who needed a particular type of space.”
Other female-focused collaborative spaces in D.C. are The Lemon Collective, Alley Powered by Verizon, RISE Collaborative Workspace, SheWorks Collective, The Riveter and The Lemon Collective.
According to a study conducted by the U.S. Senate on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, women are in constant search of capital, resources, support and new business opportunities.
With over 30 plus female coworking spaces across the country and expansions internationally, shared workspaces that cater to women are taking charge in fulfilling these needs and becoming an easily accessible option for women to take advantage of to get the results and community they’ve been searching for.
“We’re all do different things and have different things happening to us, but fundamentally we experience some of the same things out there whether we’re women owning a business or working for a company. We don’t take advantage of each other, we support each other. The rule is that it’s still difficult for women to operate in the world of entrepreneurship,” said Goodroe.
Women currently own 30 percent of small businesses, but only receive 4.4 percent of total dollars in conventional small business loans made and only seven percent of venture capital funds, according to Fundera.
In a place like this you can open up and say, “has anyone else encountered this?” You’ll hear “it’s not just you or yes that’s happened and here is a resource to bypass that.”
Female-focused coworking spaces like Hera Hub and BUREAU highlight just how much women desire a collaborative working community.
“Women are more willing to help each other,” said Huerta. She accredits the collaboration and community to the environment these spaces provide that allow women to reveal their full self personally and professionally in the workplace and work together.
“What sets female coworking spaces a part is the real commitment to help other women succeed and really wanting to collaborate in cowork,” said Goodroe.
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