Tag: Entrepreneurship

Hands Across the Water: Re-inventing Bonds

Post author By LiisBeth Curator
Post date November 9, 2015
No Comments on Hands Across the Water: Re-inventing Bonds

Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts launched the Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Institute (GWEI). Working to connect African and Atlanta-based women entrepreneurs in agribusiness, technology, manufacturing and media/entertainment, the inaugural event, years in the making ran from November 1 – 4th.

Participants traveled from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Zambia to join with local participants from the City of Atlanta to take part in intense, high-level training sessions covering topics such as marketing strategies, building and managing wealth and social responsibility.

Dean Dr. Jacqueline Royster is the Dean of the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts in Atlanta. She believes that once women feel the power that they hold, they will know they can use it. She addressed the need for a focus on collaboration, not competition, among women from around the world when it comes to business practices:

“We are in many ways more alike than different. We have to spend the time getting to know personally who we all are and how we can connect and what kinds of things we can do together,” she said. “So that it is a deliberate choice to do what we do so that it is an intentional act to do what we do.”

The fact that women share so many commonalities to their approach to business and entrepreneurship makes this initiative so important. Managing director of the GWEI, DeShawn Jenkins talked about the power of women working together to overcome the similar obstacles they face in entrepreneurship:

“We were learning that women overcoming fear, women taking challenges, women really working together and to have that transatlantic opportunity is something that we really understood,” Jenkins said. “As we climb, we pull up. And so as we are working together and realizing that not only we can do that in our own city, but we can do that in various countries and continents.”

With the success and excitement from this year’s event, Jenkins said that they are already planning the next steps for GWEI.

“There’s been two challenges, one to take it to Ghana and the next to take it to South Africa,” she said

That said the city of Atlanta has been a good incubator for the initiative. According to Metro Atlanta Chamber, Atlanta is ranked in the top ten metro areas for entrepreneurial activity, and women-owned businesses have grown by 63 percent from 2002 to 2014.

Original source: The Atlanta Blackstar

Tags Curated, Entrepreneurship, start ups, women entrepreneurs, WomenInBusiness

Our Voices

Its Time To Redefine Entrepreneurship

Post author By LiisBeth Curator
Post date November 2, 2015
No Comments on Its Time To Redefine Entrepreneurship

It is no secret that most women face difficult barriers as entrepreneurs. Gender inequality remains and alongside pay inequality, the language and narrative around entrepreneurship is a dominantly masculine one. Even today most major business management curriculum and mainstream media narratives seem to displace our entrepreneurial heroines. We are used to honoring the superstars like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, but have you heard of Ursula Burns or Sara Kirke? If the answer is no, we are not surprised. On a whole the language of enterprise still remains skewed toward the celebration of mainly masculine traits.

In an article for the Stanford Press University Blog, Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliot, co-authors of Feminine Capital: Unlocking the Power of Women Entrepreneurs, discuss the current state of entrepreneurship and talk about the anticipated arrival of the feminist entrepreneur. Someone who’s unique experience as a woman will be powerful in creating wealth and social change. Their idea is that by leveraging this distinctly feminine capital, entrepreneurial feminists are breaking new ground in creating wealth and social change.

Barbara Orser and Catherine Elliot have also recently published a new book, Feminine Capital: Unlocking the Power of Women Entrepreneurs, a read we highly, highly recommend.

Tags Curated, Entrepreneurship, Feminism, feminist entrepreneurship, Petra Kassun Mutch, renascent entrepreneur, start up, women entrepreneur, women's enterprise

Activism & Action Our Voices

Introducing LiisBeth: The Source For Feminist Entrepreneurs

Post author By PK Mutch
Post date September 8, 2015
No Comments on Introducing LiisBeth: The Source For Feminist Entrepreneurs

jj-steeves-liisbeth-power-of-the-feminine — Illustration by JJ Steeves

Dear friends,

You have heard me talk about this initiative for months now. Finally, the LiisBeth team and I are pleased to be able to launch our beta version to a select group of friends and colleagues–which includes you!

So what is LiisBeth? A community supported indie, hyper-niche, micro-multi-national, online magazine and platform for feminist entrepreneurs. Our secret sauce? A unique voice. Plus a commitment to developing and funding original, authentic and evocative works (field notes) to surface socially progressive stories, thought-leadership and perspectives on entrepreneurship-a combination you won’t find in mainstream and even a lot of today’s online media.

Many of you know that my own experiences as a social entrepreneur have led me to become extremely passionate about the role venture creation and growth can play in driving social change. However, my work in Toronto’s start up space over the past three years has led me, along with many others, to the observation that our collective obsession with unicorns, disruptive, extreme growth-but cheap to fund (aka digital) ventures is problematic–at least if we believe a society’s true gains via entrepreneurship depends on fostering diversity in its expression, supporting boot-strapped and natural growth ventures that benefit local communities and the planet, and ensuring it is an inclusive, equal opportunity and bias-free space. Sadly, based on today’s statistics and research, we know that it is not.

Fortunately, there is growing list of concerned voices and organizations looking for ways to address this. And we felt the need to join them–with a complementary solution to what is already underway. And this is how LiisBeth was born.

Helping the entrepreneur eco-system achieve its full change-making potential by widening the lens is what LiisBeth is all about. Our mission is to tell untold stories that challenge stereotypes and biases, help disseminate feminist entrepreneurship related research, and create a community of entrepreneurs and supporters who embrace feminist values of equality, social justice and social transformation — to evolve entrepreneurship-and the policies and eco-systems which support it- for the benefit of all.

So, explore the LiisBeth site. Check out the several original “only found here” stories generously contributed by supporters of the concept. Tell us what you like, dislike or want to see in the future. And consider being a contributor. I am sure you also have a story to tell.

Tags Entrepreneurship, Feminism, feminist economy, feminist entrepreneur

CONTRIBUTORS

ABOUT

support us