Jessica Rivelli: National Women's History Month Spotlight

by Melanie Griffin March 18, 2020

Now, more than ever, we need to come together in support of each other. So, in honor of National Women's History Month, we're highlighting female Trail Blazers who pour into their communities like none other. Today, Jessica Rivelli instantly comes to mind!

Jessica is the Founder & Chief Networking Guru of Working Women of Tampa Bay (“WWTB”), the fastest growing women’s networking group in Florida that aims to motivate, educate, and inspire women. WWTB holds workshops on all things business, mentoring, and anything additional needed to help professional women grow personally and professionally, including events, networking opportunities, and so much more. Through these activities, WWTB gives women meaningful opportunities to network with other inspiring professionals and entrepreneurs and deepen personal and professional relationships with like-minded hard-working women.

Building on WWTB’s success, in 2016, Jessica expanded WWTB’s impact by creating the WWTB Foundation. The Foundation provides mentoring resources to female entrepreneurs and executives through its Meaningful Mentoring Program. It also provides “seed money” grants to women-owned start-up businesses, including through its Power of 100 Project, through which 100 women, including Spread Your Sunshine’s Founder, pledged $100 to fund “seed money grants” for ten women-owned small businesses in ten months.

Beyond its outstanding regularly planned philanthropy, the WWTB Foundation has proven itself a fearless leader for women-owned businesses in the wake of the Coronavirus. Detailing just a few of the many ways that this organization is making a huge impact, for her birthday this month, Jessica is raising $2,500 to fund grants for women-owned businesses negatively impacted by Coronavirus (see the March 16^th 6:08 PM post on her personal FB page to help her raise the last $258 needed to complete the campaign). Jessica also organized a campaign to raise $5,000 to buy $5,000 worth of gift certificates from women-owned businesses to be raffled at future events to help female entrepreneurs thrive during this difficult time (donate through paypal.me/wwfoundation). She has further organized a series of Zoom webinars that can be attended for a $5.00 donation to the Foundation with the dual purpose of: (1) providing business owners with helpful information needed during this time; and (2) raising additional funds to help women small business owners recover from COVID19.

With all that she does to tirelessly promote and support professional women and their businesses, it is no wonder that this year, Jessica was selected as the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida’s 2020 Woman of Promise. She has also been honored as a TBBJBusinessWoman of the Year Finalist (2014), Tampa Bay Metro Inspiring Woman in Business (2016, 2018), Tampa Bay Business and Professional Women Tampa Bay Woman of the Year (2018), Influencer for the St. Pete Catalyst (2019), and Edge Magazine "Celebrating Women" Honoree (2019).

For all of these reasons and so many more, we couldn’t let Women’s History Month pass without inspiring the Spread Your Sunshine community by sharing Jessica’s story. Keep shining brightly, Jessica; you are a true leader and gift to the women of this community and well beyond.