Women's Entrepreneurship Research Alliance

The Women's Entrepreneurship Research Alliance (WERA) seeks to better understand and support the success of women entrepreneurs. We partner with institutions and organisations to deliver research-based programs that empower women to have the same participation and success rates in entrepreneurial activity as their male peers.

Our research examines the social and cultural determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour, as well as evaluating entrepreneurship training and development programs. We explore a range of areas including:

• women entrepreneurs in developing and transitional economies
• career trajectories of women entrepreneurs
• Indigenous women entrepreneurs
• women entrepreneurs and sustainability
• identity, resilience and movitation of women entrepreneurs
• women entrepreneurs and access to capital
• women in start-up teams
• gender dynamics of co-founder teams.

WERA brings together expertise from researchers and industry leaders to find solutions to critical issues in business.

Dr Andrea North-Samardzic is a senior lecturer in the Department of Management at Deakin Business School and the director of WERA. Andrea has been in academia for over 17 years, teaching at universities in Australia and overseas, consistently receiving excellent student evaluations. She is currently the director of the Master of Business Administration (MBA).

Dr Rakesh Pati is a senior lecturer in management and Deputy Director of WERA at Deakin. Rakesh's current research and teaching interests are in the areas of strategy and entrepreneurship. He holds extensive experience in research, teaching, industry collaborations and consulting in Australia and internationally.

We work with not-for-profit, philanthropic, government and industry partners to trial and evaluate entrepreneurship training and development programs to increase the rates of women becoming entrepreneurs and successfully scaling their enterprises.