social entrepreneurship | Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

Mar 24 2017

Ladies First Profile: The Story Behind 2B

This story is part of a blog series for the launch of Ladies First, the Dingman Center’s commitment to increase the number of women involved in entrepreneurship at UMD.

By: Nina Silverstein

I began every year of my teaching tenure in Baltimore by asking my students what they wanted to be when they grew up. My kindergarten and first grade students were eager to announce that they were going to be a teacher or a police officer or a football player. A select few said they wanted to be doctors or firefighters. I noticed that when I called my students “Dr. Demetira” or “Police Officer Denard”, their interest and engagement in their schoolwork peaked. Additionally, when my school held a career day, I again saw the level of engagement in school peak. It was as if the students saw the possibilities of future endeavors appear before them and helped them realize why school was important to achieving that.

2B colors.png That was when the idea for 2B emerged. 2B is a mission-driven clothing company aimed at expanding children’s horizons and helping them to envision themselves as a variety of different occupations when they grow up. 2B seeks to help students learn about different careers by providing books and clothing centered around each occupation, which helps to provide reasoning for why school is an important factor to their future success. We aim to make the connection between hard work in school and future attainment of their dreams. In order to ensure that all children benefit from envisioning their dreams, 2B will be donated to under-resourced schools so that every child, regardless of background, has the same access to opportunity and the same ability to envision themselves as anything they want to be when they grow up.

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Tagged Education, female entrepreneur, female founder, MBA, social entrepreneurship

Nov 16 2016

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social entrepreneurship, student entrepreneur

Smith MBA Candidate Launches a Global Renewable Energy Startup

adegbiteb-18aug15-1 In celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week, we are taking at look at some of the global impact movers and shakers within our Terp network. Meet Babafemi Adegbite (or Femi as he’s known within Van Munching Hall) MBA ’17 who is launching a global social enterprise startup. The mission of his startup, ReEmpower, is to help alleviate global energy poverty through renewables while also empowering the communities it serves. More than 1 billion people worldwide, even those above the poverty line, lack access to energy which affects their ability to get clean water, medical care and education.

Growing up in Nigeria, Femi saw the effects of energy instability firsthand. Living in a world where women give birth in hospitals without power and children do their homework by dim candlelight, he saw a desperate need to solve this problem. While he was an undergraduate student, impact investing took off and Femi found inspiration from Jacqueline Novogratz’s book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World. Femi looked at the issue he wanted to tackle and worked backwards to guide his career toward that goal. He started working for Solar City, the number one solar installer in the United States. After four years of familiarizing himself with the solar industry, Femi decided to pursue an MBA so that he could start his own company.

Over the next year, Femi will be working to launch ReEmpower in Nigeria. Currently he is focused on customer acquisition, project development and of course the most challenging part—financing. Within the first few years, ReEmpower will focus on setting up solar power micro grids. Customers would range from government entities to individuals who will be able to pay-as-you-go based on income levels. Femi’s long-term goals for ReEmpower are to expand into other renewables and to enter new markets outside Nigeria.

Tagged energy, renewable energy, social entrepreneurship, solar power

Nov 08 2016

Bootstrapped Season 2 Opens with Social Venture MISFIT Juicery

From their dorm room at Georgetown University to the exclusive Chobani Food Incubator in New York City, the co-founders of MISFIT Juicery, Ann Yang and Phil Wong, are growing their food startup into a recognizable brand with a mission. MISFIT fights food waste by using discarded “ugly” fruits and vegetables to make their attractive and delicious line of cold-pressed juices.

To close out our Ladies First launch, co-hosts Elana Fine and Joe Bailey interviewed female founder Ann Yang and her co-founder Phil Wong about their journey as rising social entrepreneurs on the second season premiere of our Bootstrapped podcast. Listen below and subscribe on iTunes.

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Tagged Bootstrapped, food startup, social entrepreneurship, social venture, startup

Oct 27 2016

Announcing Ladies First: a community of changemakers, creators, and pioneers at UMD

Here at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship we believe that the skills taught by the process of launching a new venture are useful for everyone. Whether a student is interested in launching a traditional business, a social venture, being an “intrapreneur” with an existing organization, or is just passionate about solving a particular problem, our courses and programs are designed to help.

But the truth is that the entrepreneurship world is not as diverse as it should be, because not everyone who could be an entrepreneur thinks it’s a viable option for them. Those who take the entrepreneurial plunge, particularly in high-growth fields like technology, are lionized in our culture. But when we think of those entrepreneurs, we almost exclusively think of men, often without realizing it. When you search online for images of “famous entrepreneurs”, you see multiple pictures of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, along with others like Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. Out of the first 33 images, only 3 are of women. Popular culture often overlooks female founders, and the statistics behind gender and entrepreneurship are troubling: while women launched 41% of new businesses on average for the last two decades, that number is falling. It’s even worse in the tech world: in Silicon Valley, only 3% of technology companies are started by women. Currently, our classes and programs reflect that gender imbalance.

We’re committed to changing that. The Dingman Center is proud to launch the Ladies First initiative to increase the number of women involved in entrepreneurship at University of Maryland. Instead of simply increasing marketing efforts to women on our campus, we’re going to help women solve the problems they care about. In many instances, those problems are ones facing our society: climate change, hunger, poverty and inequality, and launching social ventures is one way for them to take action on solving those problems. Entrepreneurship research supports this focus, as women are 17% more likely than men to start a social venture rather than a purely economic one.

In its inaugural year, the Ladies First initiative will:

Adapt our courses and programs to be inclusive to social entrepreneurs
Expand what it means to be an entrepreneur on our campus

In order to achieve those goals, we must tell stories about diverse entrepreneurs, so that when someone says the term “entrepreneur” we think of Sarah Kauss, founder of S’well, or a classmate who has started a venture, instead of only famous male entrepreneurs. Ladies First launches this week with a series of events, communication pieces, and a visual campaign promoting what female founders look like at the University of Maryland. Additional programming will be offered throughout the school year as we strive to increase the number of women opting in to entrepreneurship on our campus.

Stay tuned for more blog posts in this Ladies First series, and learn more about the initiative on our website.

Tagged female entrepreneur, gender equality, social entrepreneurship