My first stop was the office of WESST Corp in Taos. Women's Economic Self-Sufficiency Team Corporation develops women and minority-owned businesses in New Mexico. WESST Corp. served as a CSO and also helped organize the teams that were part of the New Mexico cluster. Dawn Redpath is the director, and she shared some of her observations about the whole process. "I recruited team leaders and tried to inspire them to get their teams to training. One team realized they could not work it into their schedule. The Penasco team did not show up for anything. They dropped out and I recruited a holistic medicine group. This group had a lot of ego problems and our steering committee decided they could not continue to support them to fill in for their attendance. One trainer asked the groups to draw a picture of their project. An old artist got up and talked about his career, his work, and completely ignored the whole group effort. It was very challenging to get people to commit to an unchosen project with a lot of people they did not know. Had the project been chosen beforehand, it would have been a more visible goal for the members."

Redpath felt there were problems with continuity and cultural differences about time management and attendance. The steering committee met weekly for many months, and she and her colleague Claire Zurawski both felt there should have been a stipend or some sort of payment for the people who put in so much time. They looked at the amount of money for individual trainers and thought some of that should have gone to the teams. One trainer even felt the $3000 per day was too high and would have worked for a lower fee. The problems over money and the organizational hurdles did not prevent Redpath and Zurawski from feeling that the whole project was extremely worthwhile. In New Mexico the ability to meet and work with a varied group of people was very useful. Having made those friendships and connections was very useful in a small town, she noted. Before the MIRA project Zurawski had tried to raise money for technological improvements but had not succeeded. Being able to upgrade the equipment in their office and improving the WESST Corp. web pages helped them a great deal. Both of them mentioned the extra work that one of the trainers, Frank Odasz, did at no charge. He continues to work with them on possible sources of grants for new projects. Redpath also attended some training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had some very useful encounters as well as frustrating ones. Shortly after our meeting she was heading for another week in Massachusetts with other MIRA people.