Eleven years ago Monica Smiley found there weren’t many resources for women entrepreneurs to network or learn from each other. So she changed that.

Proud to be a journalist by trade, Smiley met her husband, John Dancer, while working for a photography organization in her home state of Michigan after graduating from Bradley University in Illinois. After several years with the company, they decided to start their own business.

The pair launched and ran a magazine in the health and fitness sector, among other projects, but after 14 years publishing for that industry, Smiley realized she wanted something more fulfilling. “I decided the next thing I did I wanted to be something I was really passionate about, something I really enjoyed,” she said.

That thing was helping women start and run their own businesses, and she realized no publications existed solely for women entrepreneurs. In her research, she found Enterprising Women, a defunct magazine that still had a live, albeit abandoned, website. Smiley set out to contact the publisher to learn more. “I called the number and nobody answered, of course,” she said.

But all was not lost. “The fax machine was still active. I wrote a letter. … It went to this woman’s guest bedroom — landed on the floor probably,” but it did get her in touch with the previous publishers, who were happy to see Smiley eager to revive the magazine.

Enterprising Women was reborn in 2000, and has since grown to 200,000 readers in 48 countries. A digital edition launched in 2008 to allow for international expansion. “We really feel like women entrepreneurs in the United States have an obligation to share best practices with women entrepreneurs in other parts of the world, and that is not coming out of any type of arrogance like we are better than them,” Smiley said.

Rather, it’s to share stories and advice with those who don’t have the social benefits offered by the U.S. “We have all these organizations to support women entrepreneurship. We have the magazine; we have legislation in our favor; we have women’s business centers; we have banks that are starting to realize they need to open the doors to lend more capital to women,” she emphasized, citing a contact who owns a steel manufacturing company in Romania and still can’t get credit without her husband co-signing a loan.

Smiley and her family moved to North Carolina in 1995 and landed in Cary “sort of by accident.” After selecting the state because of its location midway between family in Michigan and Florida, and its pleasant four seasons, they visited Asheville, Charlotte, Wilmington and areas in between. They desired to live in Chapel Hill, but couldn’t find housing that fit their needs, so they settled in Cary. And it stuck.

The experience wasn’t all pleasant, though. “Every weather calamity that you could think of occurred that year. In October we had the most rainfall in a hundred years in Cary. We had the worst ice storm in January, and then we had Hurricane Fran in September. Our family in Michigan was calling and saying, ‘I thought you moved to North Carolina for the weather.’ And we said, ‘If we still love it despite all of that, we’ve come to the right place.’”

From her executive suite complex on Kildaire Farm Road and her favorite home office, Smiley keeps herself busy with her family, three rescue dogs and a slew of editorial tasks for the magazine. In addition to writing and planning the editorial calendar, she coordinates with an advisory board of more than 130 women (and a few men) whose names read like a who’s who list of women entrepreneurs themselves.

In 2003, she created the Enterprising Women of the Year Awards to shine the spotlight on outstanding women entrepreneurs from throughout North America. More than 500 women have been recognized through this awards program, which also includes the Enterprising Women Hall of Fame for women who have given a lifetime to building successful businesses. She is also active in the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women’s Peace Through Business program, mentoring women business owners from Afghanistan and Rwanda, and hosting them in her home for the past three years.

Other women business owners had come to her suggesting she create a vehicle for them to use their businesses for good. So in March, she launched the Enterprising Women Foundation with a goal of raising $1 million in its first year to promote philanthropy among women entrepreneurs and provide programs to spur the growth of women’s entrepreneurship in the United States and around the world.

That wasn’t the first time she had been approached as a leader in the entrepreneurial sector. In 2003, the founder of the Global Summit of Women, an international gathering of top women entrepreneurs, contacted her specifically requesting she attend the event as her guest. “It will be life-changing,” she promised.

She traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco, and recalls being moved by women’s community spirit, evidenced best at a lunch table. Despite speaking different languages, “Within about 10 minutes, everyone at the table had shared info about their business, their family, their children, their grandchildren; they’d opened up their billfolds and passed photos around,” she recalled. “There was an immediate connection, and it didn’t matter where they were from.”

Since then, she has attended the Global Summit as a delegate in Germany, Chile, China and Turkey. Her experiences there, and throughout her work with Enterprising Women, have left her with respect for the bond all women share: “Women all over the world have so much in common. If women were in positions of power all over the world, there would be world peace.”