When TAP CEO Jane Veron started The Acceleration Project (TAP), she wasn’t planning to launch a nonprofit. She was responding to what she saw around her. In her new Bizwomen feature, “In Her Own Words: Former Bain exec Jane Veron leverages corporate strategy to aid small businesses,” Jane explains how that realization turned into TAP.

“I did not set out to build a nonprofit,” she writes. Her years at Bain & Company and American Express showed her what the right guidance at the right time can do for a business, and her conversations with local owners showed her how rarely that support reaches them. At the same time, she noticed experienced women who had paused their careers and were looking for a purposeful way back to work. TAP, which she co-founded in 2012, was built to serve both groups.

Jane also describes the hard parts of building TAP, including limited resources and the pressure of the COVID years, when the organization expanded emergency and virtual support for owners facing urgent decisions. She credits her time as a Scarsdale trustee, deputy mayor and mayor with deepening her conviction that healthy communities depend on strong small businesses.

Today, TAP has engaged more than 11,900 entrepreneurs, and an independent analysis by The Bridgespan Group found that every $1 invested in TAP generates $10 in economic and community value.

Read the full feature on Bizwomen. To see more of TAP’s recent media coverage, check out our Fast Company feature, and for more of Jane’s perspective, subscribe to her Substack.