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Natalie Madeira Cofield
Biden-Harris Presidential Appointee leading the Office of Women’s Business Ownership at the U.S. Small Business Administration
Natalie Madeira Cofield
Biden-Harris Presidential Appointee leading the Office of Women’s Business Ownership at the U.S. Small Business Administration
Biography
Natalie has provided some of the nation's most prominent CEOs of billion-dollar organizations, executives of global brands, senior advisors to the White House, mayors of leading national cities, and community activists and leaders with inspiration, insight and advice.
She was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2019 and selected among 137 cover-story business leaders and entrepreneurs from across the nation for her response to COVID-19 in Entrepreneur Magazine’s July/August 2020 edition cover. She has also been named as among the Women Who Mean Business and one of the 100 Most Powerful Washingtonians by the Washington Business Journal.
An honors tech graduate (where she was mentored by CIOs of two of America's leading Fortune 500 companies) Natalie has leveraged her experience coding to build a career centered on empowering businesses, entrepreneurs, women and underrepresented communities.
From Google to the National League of Cities, Natalie's speeches, courses, and advisory services have helped to shape programs and efforts of some of the most regarded global brands, educational and government institutions.
A sought-after expert, Natalie's work has been featured on and by CNN, NYTimes, Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Black Enterprise, Essence, and EBONY, among others.
In 2019, Cofield was named the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the District of Columbia providing entrepreneurship advice to creative economy businesses within the District of Columbia.
Once inspired by reading the business plans of her mother when she was 11, Natalie is the founder and former CEO of Walker's Legacy, a digital platform to empower women through entrepreneurship, and its adjoined nonprofit arm, the Walker's Legacy Foundation, which was established to empower income limited women through financial literacy and economic security.
An avid philanthropist, Cofield founded and funded the $25,000 funded Enterprise Women of Color scholarship at the Howard University School of Business.
Today, Cofield serves as a Presidential Appointee within the Biden-Harris Administration leading the Office of Women’s Business Ownership at the U.S. Small Business Administration as Assistant Administrator and is responsible for funding more than 135 Women’s Business Centers across the nation.
Speech Topics
Diversity
Companies who do not take the time to understand the power of diversity and how to harness through their labor force and customer base will struggle through growth over the next decade and beyond. Through this featured speaking engagement we will discuss how value propositions of gender, ethnic and age diversity, among other areas, that have demonstrated positive implications for business performance and operations.
Meeting the New Unicorns: Understanding Challenges & Opportunities for Minority Women Entrepreneurs
African American women represent 56.9% of all Black-owned businesses in the US. They also saw a 322% increase in total number of firms from 2007 to 2012. Latina firms saw a 186% growth during this same time period. Making them the fastest growing entrepreneurial segments in the nation. Who are these new ‘unicorns’? What industries are they building businesses in? What opportunities and challenges do they face? This keynote aims to shed light on an oft under-tapped but high potential segment of entrepreneurs: minority women.
Building Business Teams
Just like any team, whether sports, family or work, understanding roles and the implications of new additions is critical to running a functioning and well oiled machine. Do you know who you need next? What skill-sets or personality traits they will need to be successful in their role and to the growing business? In this session we will explore the critical roles every entrepreneur or small business owner needs on their team, how to get them with finite resources and when and how to stop doing everything yourself.
Anxiety & Achievement: Overcoming Fear, Doubt & Anxiousness to Reach Your Fullest Potential
Do you think about what success could look like and become paralyzed by feelings of doubt, anxiousness and worry? Do you say to yourself, “I wish I could do … but I don’t have what it takes to be successful”? Does your lack of self-belief keep you from achieving your dreams? In this session we will explore how anxiety, fear and self-doubt keep us from reaching our fullest potential - even for what appear to be the highest of achievers, and how to overcome to achieve success.
Gaining Perspective: Strategies to Best Achieve Work-Life Balance
Do you think about what success could look like and become paralyzed by feelings of doubt, anxiousness and worry? Do you say to yourself, “I wish I could do … but I don’t have what it takes to be successful”? Does your lack of self-belief keep you from achieving your dreams? In this session we will explore how anxiety, fear and self-doubt keep us from reaching our fullest potential - even for what appear to be the highest of achievers - and how to overcome to achieve success.
Failing Forward: Learn How to Overcome Adversity on the Road to Success
You are what you think and inevitably what you speak, so what exactly are you saying about yourself and your possibilities? Building a positive mindset is not just for a spiritual or yoga retreat, it’s also necessary in business and entrepreneurship. If you say you will be successful, you will act to your best ability, in accordance with your thoughts, and that’s a major step toward becoming successful. In this session we will explore how to manage your inner-thoughts of self-defeatism, how to speak positively about your goals and others and how to manifest your success one positive thought at a time.
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