It’s week seven of the new business accelerator program initiated by the Women in Entrepreneurship Institute (WEI) at DePaul. Eleven women business founders in the program’s inaugural cohort have gathered on this Friday morning in May to learn how to launch or grow their businesses. Their teachers and mentors are successful Chicago women entrepreneurs—including DePaul alumni—who support WEI, a newly established institute at the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center (CEC) on DePaul’s Loop Campus.

WEI Director Abigail Ingram (LAS MA ’15, JD ’18) begins the workshop session with the same question she asks each week of the nine-week program:

“What are your weekly wins?”

One by one, the women share their business achievements from the past week. Ingram writes each win on a whiteboard:

“Barnes & Noble is carrying my book.”
“We received three large orders!”
“I have a new logo.”
“I learned how to code my app.”

As the list grows longer, the women nod in approval and applaud.

These small weekly victories are part of a bigger battle that the WEI is waging—a battle to close the gender gap in entrepreneurship.

Seeking Equal Access

We started realizing that equal access to opportunity for women to start businesses was nearly nonexistent in the United States.”

The breadth of the entrepreneur gender gap is what led the Driehaus College of Business to establish WEI last year.

“We noticed that attrition for women going through [CEC] programming was high and found out that this is not unusual,” says Ingram, who was then the associate director of the CEC.

Ingram and CEC Executive Director Bruce Leech asked the center’s student intern to research this phenomenon and its causes. The data that emerged were disheartening.

“We discovered that women get only 2% of venture capital and only about 3% of angel investment, and for women of color, the investment is 0.2%, almost none,” Ingram says. “We started realizing that equal access to opportunity for women to start businesses was nearly nonexistent in the United States.”

In addition to gender disparity, the research indicated that women entrepreneurs often lack the training and confidence to bring their business ideas to fruition, and have limited access to mentor networks and other resources that could help them overcome barriers to success.

Ingram and Leech shared the findings with CEC board members, including Joan Hannant, founder and CEO of the Soma Institute, an alternative health and wellness training and staffing solutions company. In the data, Hannant recognized her own struggle to establish her venture 20 years ago.

“When I started my business and encountered issues with banks, landlords and even potential employees, I thought the problem was me,” Hannant says. “I never thought that the problem might be systematic discrimination. I don’t want any future female founders to go through what I experienced as I launched my business.”

Convinced that more could be done to empower women entrepreneurs, Hannant, Leech and Ingram approached Dean Misty Johanson with a bold idea. Their vision was to create an institute at DePaul that offers the nation’s most comprehensive array of programming for women entrepreneurs. The institute would encompass academic programs and workshops, faculty-led research, start-up incubation and funding, and public policy advocacy to support the success and sustainability of women-owned businesses.

Johanson embraced the idea and secured initial resources to invest in developing it. “It’s an innovative effort that provides another way for our college to address the needs of Chicago business professionals while also supporting DePaul’s mission to be a force for positive change in our community.”

Without an endowment to sustain the institute, however, Hannant says the initiative faced a challenge: “Can we find enough women founders who would all contribute a certain amount of money so that we could launch this?

Hannant, Leech and Ingram tapped into their business networks to identify potential allies for WEI. By the fall of 2018, they successfully recruited what became known as the Founding 40, a powerful committee of leading Chicago women business owners, leaders and influencers who pledged to support the launch of the institute.

Like Hannant, many of the Founding 40 were inspired to support WEI because they wanted to help other women overcome the obstacles they had faced as entrepreneurs.

Ambitious Goals

Ingram, an attorney and entrepreneur who founded a music management business, was appointed WEI director. She immediately got to work with the Founding 40 to prioritize the institute’s wide-ranging and ambitious goals.

“We decided to start with an accelerator program because it’s the best way to see immediate results in helping women scale their businesses,” she says.

WEI committee members and Ingram designed the accelerator curriculum to be taught by women entrepreneurs from their expertise and experiences. The program’s weekly half-day workshop classes cover practical aspects of launching and growing a business, from business models, market research and brand strategies to legal and financial management, capitalization and fundraising. The program also provides tools for start-up founders to enhance their leadership, executive presence and team-building capabilities. To supplement this learning, each participant is linked with one or more women entrepreneurs on WEI’s committee who provide one-on-one advice and resource connections. Committee members’ financial support allowed WEI to launch the program free of charge last May.

With the curriculum in place, WEI invited women entrepreneurs, including DePaul students and alumni, to apply. The response was enthusiastic: 198 applicants responded. After identifying and interviewing 16 finalists, WEI chose 11 women entrepreneurs who are founders or co-founders of nine companies for the program’s first cohort.

From Idea to Product

It is really impressive how in just nine weeks I was able to go from an idea to a real product and business

The women selected for the inaugural cohort lead a wide range of businesses, from food manufacturing to phone apps. While some are founders of established ventures seeking to grow their businesses, others, including Soumaya Yacoub, entered the program with only an idea.

A Harvard University-educated bioengineer, Yacoub was inspired to become an entrepreneur by her past experience as a babysitter caring for fussy babies. Her business idea was to combine a phone app that produces vibrations and sounds, including recordings of a mother’s voice, with a portable mat to calm crying babies. She approached a manufacturing incubator with the idea, but without a business plan or connections, she encountered little interest. Her experience in the accelerator program was different.

“This program was so helpful because not only do they show you how to go from an idea to the launch of your business and how to market and grow a business, but they also provide you with all the resources and connections that you need,” she says.

Those resources included introductions to contacts at an idea realization lab and a manufacturing incubator, where Yacoub found a more receptive environment for developing her idea. Yacoub learned computer code to create her app and began creating a prototype of the mat. She also received legal advice to identify a name for her product: PetitCalm.

“It is really impressive how in just nine weeks I was able to go from an idea to a real product and business,” she says. “Now I have a fully written business plan and a good marketing strategy. My future steps will be testing my product, then going into manufacturing.”

Other Founders to Rely On

The most important outcome of the program is the incredible network I now have of founders like me,”

Accelerator cohort member Jennifer Spraggins (MBA ’18) didn’t study entrepreneurship at DePaul, but her conversations with entrepreneur students about their ventures inspired her to become a business founder. Following graduation, she researched entrepreneurial opportunities that combined her past retail experience, marketing education and personal interests. “I really love fashion, so I decided I wanted to sell fashion accessories. What I found after researching my competitors was that they didn’t use any models of color. They didn’t have any [marketing] stories geared to women of color. I was looking for a gap in the market, and this seemed to come naturally.” The research led Spraggins to found TeaseLush Accessories in 2016. The online retail jewelry business offers more than 200 products and features women of color as the face of the brand.

Spraggins entered the accelerator program seeking strategies to distinguish her brand as well as legal guidance. “As a result of the program I developed a strategy for marketing more efficiently to my niche,” she says. She also obtained free legal advice on logo and web content usage from DePaul’s Legal Clinic. Spraggins has begun revamping her website and implementing a targeted marketing plan.

Spraggins says the cohort’s spirit of mutual support also has given her more confidence. She helped others in the cohort understand how to manage inventory, while they have been generous in sharing their varied expertise with her.

“I feel the most important outcome of the program is the incredible network I now have of founders like me,” she says. “I now have a network that I can ask questions instead of just struggling so much. It took a weight off my shoulders.”

Taking Your Foot off the Brake

Carolyn [Leonard] told me, ‘Get your foot off the brake.Put your foot on the gas. It’s time to go.’”

Candy scientist Michelle Frame entered the accelerator program with a good problem: her business was growing. Five years ago, she founded Victus Ars, a confectionery lab that formulates sweets for candy companies and products such as gummy vitamins for pharmaceutical firms. Now she and the six food scientists she employs are juggling as many as 20 projects simultaneously in the lab’s cramped storefront in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. To continue to grow, Frame faced the challenges of finding a larger facility and hiring more staff.

“I felt like I was floating in an ocean alone, making my business decisions,” Frame says. “I’m in the middle of growth, need to find a new building and trying to sort out all of those pieces that I don’t understand in terms of the business side of things. I knew I needed help, and I started looking for options, especially for women.”

Frame found that help in the accelerator program. The workshops provided “concrete tools, books and information to look at businesses in a new light,” she says. The program’s mentors inspired her to turn this knowledge into action, generating “impact on both the company’s growth and my ability to breathe and think.”

Particularly influential was Carolyn Leonard (BUS ’64), CEO and founder of the financial consultancy DyMynd. A serial entrepreneur and one of the first women to trade options in Chicago, Leonard taught an accelerator session on start-up fundraising. Leonard visited the candy lab and offered Frame personal guidance on her expansion plans.

“What she wanted to understand was risk, which is something that I really have a great deal of knowledge and experience with,” says Leonard. Frame told Leonard that she was wary of risk because of her upbringing on an Indiana farm, where risk was a constant threat to the family’s livelihood. “But she knew that in order to become successful and to move to the next step with her business, she would have to become comfortable with assuming greater risk,” Leonard says. “My conversation with her was that you can’t make business decisions based on unknowns, you have to make them on knowns and what you know about your business.”

The advice was an epiphany for Frame. “I was letting fear cloud my judgment,” she says. “Carolyn told me, ‘Get your foot off the brake. Put your foot on the gas. It’s time to go.’”

Frame is now working with real estate professionals to find a new building that will accommodate her business for the next five to 20 years.

Mentor advice also gave her the confidence to begin hiring. DePaul alumna Adriana Tarasiewicz (BUS ’13) joined the lab in the spring and is learning the business from the ground up from Frame.

“The connections I made with mentors have been amazing,” Frame says. “I’m in a position to move forward faster because of their insights, support and positive feedback. Having like-minded women who have gone through the same trials and tribulations share their hard-won wisdom is a huge benefit as I maneuver the business landscape.”

An Enduring Network

“The nine weeks were over quickly,” says Ingram, “but the program and the connections we are building with these growing companies is not over at all.” Monthly programming now continues for the first cohort, and the women entrepreneurs are providing WEI with quarterly updates on their progress.

The preliminary outcomes have been promising. The nine companies are collectively on track to make 54 percent more revenue this year than the year before, and together they have created six new jobs so far. “If we see any red flags in this tracking,” Ingram says, “we have 40 expert entrepreneurs who are ready to step in and help fix whatever the issues might be.”

WEI is seeking an endowment and sustained funding to offer the accelerator program every quarter. Entrepreneurs are being recruited for the next cohort, which begins in January. “We hope in five years to have enough research done to show what strategies are most effective for helping women get that access to equal opportunity,” Ingram says. “We’d like to see the needle starting to move on figures involving investment, and to see more than 1.6% of women who own businesses reach a million dollars in revenue.

“Within 20 years, we hope we can shut the accelerator down because the work will be done,” she says. “That’s the real goal.”

Learn more about WEI and its accelerator program at go.depaul.edu/WEI

Read about the Women Entrepreneurs class taught by committee member and Associate Professor of Management Alyssa Westring

View an ABC7 Newsviews interview with Abigail Ingram and Joan Hannant about WEI and its accelerator program.

By Robin Florzak | Photos by Kathy Hillegonds

We’re going through the academic research that focuses on gender and entrepreneurship and trying to understand the key drivers of gender disparities in entrepreneurship. We are trying to use research evidence to uncover opportunities to level the playing field.”
– Alyssa Westring

Last spring Shelley Rosen, one of the 40 founding committee members of the Women in Entrepreneurship Institute (WEI), welcomed a mix of DePaul graduate and undergraduate students to her West Side Chicago office, where she and several employees run her luxury flower business Luxe Bloom. The students were celebrating their completion of Women Entrepreneurs, a new special topics course taught by Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship Alyssa Westring. Rosen was among the class’s guest speakers, providing an inside look at the real world of women in entrepreneurship.

The class—created by Westring, who serves on the WEI committee— required students to examine research surrounding the challenges and opportunities facing women entrepreneurs. Several of the students in the class were aspiring entrepreneurs, while others just wanted to learn more about women’s roles in entrepreneurship directly from women business founders.

“As a female in a male-dominated, industry there are a number of challenges that I face on a daily basis,” says class member Lesley Kraft (MBA ’19), senior manager of digital experiences at Life Fitness, a Chicago-based organization and brand that creates fitness equipment. “This class seemed like it would provide me with an opportunity to learn from other female business leaders’ failures and successes—something I believe is invaluable.”

Each week, Westring invited women entrepreneurs and leaders to talk about their personal stories of working as entrepreneurs.

“We’re talking about a variety of topics including bias, negotiation, access to mentoring and self-efficacy,” Westring says. “We’re going through the academic research that focuses on gender and entrepreneurship and trying to understand the key drivers of gender disparities in entrepreneurship. We are trying to use research evidence to uncover opportunities to level the playing field.”

Ensuring research is at the forefront of WEI’s mission is one of Westring’s goals as a committee member. Westring, who frequently delivers talks on women’s careers and work/life balance, has historically studied women’s careers in medicine and science. When she discovered that WEI was forming at DePaul, she knew she wanted to get involved.

“The barriers that women face in entrepreneurship are similar to those that they face in most male-dominated industries, such as reduced access to resources and opportunities. In science, that might mean grant funding, whereas in entrepreneurship that might mean venture capital,” Westring says.

To shed light on these issues and help WEI measure the effectiveness of its programming for women, Westring helped create a survey for women business owners in the first cohort in WEI’s accelerator program. The survey assesses the cohort members’ “entrepreneurial self-efficacy”—the belief in their capacity to be effective entrepreneurs. It was administered before and after participants completed the program to measure differences in their self-efficacy.

Rosen, who began her career in advertising for major global brands, agrees that research is important for women to understand their value, whether as entrepreneurs or in their quest to achieve equal pay for equal work.

“When I started working it was 69 cents on the dollar,” says Rosen, who opened her business Luxe Bloom five years ago. “Now it’s only 79 cents in 40 years. Ten cents? I’m not complaining, it’s progress, but it’s really slow. I just hope to make a small difference in those numbers.”

Read about the Business Accelerator Program at the Women in Entrepreneurship Institute business.

By Jaclyn Lansbery | Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

The whole motto of Greenwood is you can’t be what you can’t see. These kids come to us with almost no social capital.”

An immigrant from Trinidad, graduate business student Bevon Joseph has forged his own path in tech, finance and nonprofit management since coming to the United States at 18 years old.

Joseph is founder and CEO of Greenwood Project, a nonprofit he launched three years ago to help academically talented youth from underresourced Chicago communities gain access to the finance industry. Thanks to Joseph’s connections with firms in New York and Chicago, the Greenwood Project has collaborated with about 30 financial and tech companies, including Goldman Sachs, NASDAQ, Google and LinkedIn.

Joseph joined the world of finance in 1996 when he began working as an IT services provider on a New York trading floor, and later worked for some of the city’s largest Wall Street exchanges and financial services firms. He moved to Chicago, eventually working his way up to be a chief technology officer for a hedge fund—all with just an associate’s degree in computer electronic technology and a high school diploma from Trinidad.

Fascinated by the passion he witnessed on trading floors, Joseph noticed the lack of diversity among employees. “Most of the time I would be one of (a few) or the only person of color at a firm,” says Joseph, who runs the Greenwood Project with his wife, Elois. “I was always curious why other students who look like me weren’t given that opportunity.”

In 2014, Joseph enrolled in DePaul’s School for New Learning and became the first in his family to earn a bachelor’s degree. Joseph developed the idea for the Greenwood Project through a class assignment that challenged him to create a social media campaign around a social cause. After his professor encouraged him to pursue the idea, Joseph approached top-level financial executives he knew to gauge their interest in funding internships for students from low-income communities. His nonprofit began taking shape as interest from companies grew.

“They (students) are smart, they’re doing well in school, staying out of trouble, getting good grades, but they don’t know anyone who works in finance,” says Joseph, who now is enrolled in the Driehaus College of Business’s combined bachelor’s and master’s in entrepreneurship program. “The whole motto of Greenwood is you can’t be what you can’t see. These kids come to us with almost no social capital.”

The nonprofit works with high school juniors through recent college graduates. High school students attend, free of charge, the Summer Financial Institute, a six-week program that helps them build soft skills and financial literacy. The students also visit a different company each day of the program, in both New York and Chicago. In addition, Greenwood hosts Women in Wall Street student networking events in Chicago that feature panel discussions by female executives at top firms.

To help fund the nonprofit, Joseph manages a for-profit arm of Greenwood that charges companies to have access to recruit students who have been involved with the Greenwood Project.

“Running your own business, whether it’s nonprofit or for-profit, is a 24/7 job,” Joseph says. “But for me it doesn’t feel like work, just because we see the results and the impact that it’s having. And it’s changing the lives not just of the students, but their family and community. So I think that’s my motivation to keep doing this.”

More student leader profiles:

• Olena Cruz: A Leader on Campus
• Kevin Felisme: A Leader in the Community
• Rebeca Mitrea: A Leader on the Court

I love building excitement among people and bringing them together to do more than they would have been able to do individually. I am a big believer that together we can succeed even more than on our own.”

Marketing, chess and salsa dancing are disparate talents Olena Cruz pursues with the diligence and boundless curiosity that has made her a force to be reckoned with.

Cruz, who graduates in June with an MBA in marketing, has been instrumental in turning the Kellstadt Marketing Group (KMG) into one of the most active student organizations in DePaul’s business school. During her one-year tenure as KMG president, the organization sponsored 16 events that collectively attracted participation from more than 1,000 students, faculty members and Chicago marketing professionals.

She is most proud of convincing Microsoft to work with KMG to create a new case competition at DePaul. “Our idea was to get a real-world business scenario that would allow students to pitch their strategic recommendations and apply business concepts they have learned in class,” she says. “We had such great engagement. Microsoft came to campus, and students, professors and the president of the university all came together to support this event, which showcased the talent of students here at DePaul.”

Cruz says her drive comes from her mother, Lubov, an immigrant from Ukraine. “She helped build my work ethic. She started her own cleaning business in Chicago, not knowing the language or many people. She’s not only an entrepreneur; she put me and my brother through college as first-generation graduates in the family. I am very proud of my mom.” Cruz’s father died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis when Cruz was 20, and every year since she has participated in fundraising walks to find a cure for the neurodegenerative disease.

During her undergraduate years at Northwestern University, Cruz, who speaks four languages, studied international relations. “Originally, I thought I would go into diplomacy. But I soon realized that I can apply those skills to business, because now every company has a global presence.” After graduating, she worked as a sales strategy coordinator at Beam Suntory, a premium spirits company. At DePaul, her curiosity led her to the field of big data analytics. She now works as a solutions analyst at IRI, which uses predictive analytics to help clients develop customer strategies.

Cruz knows how to make the right moves not only in her career, but also on the chessboard and the dance floor. She played chess competitively in high school and won the National Girls Chess Championship in 2006. A semiprofessional salsa dancer, Cruz won first place with her partner at the Chicago International Salsa Congress two years ago.

Cruz uses her dancing talent to empower others as a founding member of Inspiración Dance Chicago, a Latin dance organization that seeks to enrich the lives of young people through dance. “We teach youth to express themselves in a healthy way, to collaborate in teams, and to find creative outlets for mentorship and development.”

Of her wide-ranging success as a leader, Cruz says, “I love building excitement among people and bringing them together to do more than they would have been able to do individually. I am a big believer that together we can succeed even more than on our own.”

More student leader profiles:

• Bevon Joseph: A Leader for Career Access
• Kevin Felisme: A Leader in the Community
• Rebeca Mitrea: A Leader on the Court

That’s what inspires me and drives me—not just to be a leader, but to work with people and support them. That’s what we’re called to do as humans— support each other, love each other and be better people.”

MBA student Kevin Felisme has been living in Chicago for just four years, but his passion for improving the community in his adopted hometown runs deep.

A native of Manchester, N.H., Felisme delivered the TEDxDePaul talk “Reimagine Chicago: Power to the People,” in which he proposed using economic development to revitalize the city’s low-income communities. He hopes to develop programs, supported by either public or private dollars, that will allow neighborhood residents to own and operate businesses within the community.

“When I look at low-income, African-American communities in Chicago, I see a lack of economic development and businesses that are owned by the people within those neighborhoods,” Felisme says. “I believe that if we have the ability to control the economics in our communities, they should have businesses that are run by us, who cater to us and who will inspire people to start somewhere and say, ‘Hey, this is our foundation.’”

Growing up in a single-parent household where money was tight, Felisme first visited Chicago in 2014 during an alternative spring break trip as an undergraduate student at American University. The trip took students to tour various organizations, including Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, a therapeutic residential facility for youth. Despite having a full-time job waiting for him in Washington, D.C., Felisme was moved by the organization’s mission and decided to relocate to Chicago and work for the organization as a youth care worker.

“I’ve always thought that it was important that if you want to work with people in the community, you actually have to live there,” says Felisme, who lives in one of the city’s South Side neighborhoods. “It’s important to know who your neighbors are, not just to come in and help and then leave. You should get to know people because you’re in kinship.”

Now, Felisme is a coordinator for Mercy Home, where he manages the nonprofit’s volunteer program. In 2016, he launched an open basketball gym program through the Port Ministries, a nonprofit on the South Side that serves those in need. He’s also one of the basketball coaches for Mercy Home’s Hoops to Homework League, which partners with the Chicago Bulls to boost young men’s sportsmanship.

DePaul’s Vincentian values and connection to the city inspired Felisme to enroll at the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business in the fall of 2017. Earning an MBA degree in entrepreneurship and management moves him closer to his goal of creating businesses in low-income Chicago neighborhoods, he says.

“That’s what inspires me and drives me—not just to be a leader, but to work with people and support them. That’s what we’re called to do as human —support each other, love each other and be better people.”

More student leader profiles:

• Bevon Joseph: A Leader for Career Access
• Olena Cruz: A Leader on Campus
• Rebeca Mitrea: A Leader on the Court