Corrie A. Harris – Page 3 – Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity

January 7, 2021February 28, 2022

Julianna Bond, Social Enterprise 2021 Cohort Intrapreneur

Julianna Bond joins the Hunt Institute’s Social Enterprise 2021 Cohort as an Intrapreneur. Her focus is on enabling the enablers: how can consulting firms use their unique position—straddling organizations, industries, and sectors—to accelerate innovation and amplify social impact? Consultancies are already experts in fostering partnerships, disseminating knowledge, coordinating efforts, elevating solutions, and catalyzing change. Within these firms are consultants with the desire to leverage their collective knowledge and skills to tackle environmental and societal challenges. Julianna’s project will develop a replicable framework for empowering consultants to serve their local communities and champion sustainability.

Julianna is a Data & Analytics Consultant for Slalom Consulting and has experience across a dozen industries and functions, serving in data visualization, business analysis, project management, change management, and data strategy roles. Internal to Slalom, she is passionate about building bridges across capabilities and driving social, environmental, and community stewardship. In her previous firm, Sendero, Julianna co-founded the internal Diversity & Inclusion Committee focused on recruiting, cultivating, and celebrating diverse talent; she also played a critical role in coordinating pro-bono consulting projects.

In service of the community, Julianna has served as the board chair and development committee chair for Kids-U, a non-profit providing tutoring and holistic care for at-risk youths in low-income apartment communities. She is currently a partner at Social Venture Partners Dallas and is an alumna of their Dana Juett Residency program designed to help young professionals become philanthropic leaders. During this program, Julianna led a non-profit consulting, capacity-building project for The Educator Collective and was the winner of a fast-pitch competition on the non-profit’s behalf.

Julianna’s passion for social impact began during her undergraduate studies at Southern Methodist University, where she graduated with degrees in Political Science, Management, and a minor in Chinese. Beyond campus life, she ran a 3-year long Big iDeas & Engaged Learning Fellowship project focused on food insecurity and sustainable micro-agriculture for urban environments, resulting in setting up an aquaponics garden at Jubilee Park Community Center in Fair Park. When she returned to SMU for her Master of Science in Business Analytics, she worked with the Hunt Institute to support research for the Collective Action for an Inclusive Sustainable Economy model and corporate stakeholder interviews. Her favorite quote by Frances Hesselbein is, “Carry a big basket. In other words, be open to new ideas, different partners, and new practices, and have a willingness to dump out the old and irrelevant to make room for new approaches.”

When asked what her motivation is as a social intrapreneur, Bond answered, “I live to help people realize their greatest potential and inspire us, collectively, to be better and do better. This starts with building deep, meaningful relationships based in genuine care and understanding of individual needs, motives, and struggles. Mutual understanding is the foundation for fruitful partnerships and cultural change.”

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

January 6, 2021February 28, 2022

2021 Social Enterprise Cohort

2021 Hunt Institute Social Enterprise Cohort of Intrapreneurs

Since the launch of the Social Enterprise Program in 2019, we had the opportunity to work with some amazing social entrepreneurs whose work is improving lives and livelihoods locally and around the world. This year’s cohort is no different. What is new, however, is that this cohort is dedicated to “social intrapreneurship”. This is a reflection of the challenging times we are experiencing and to highlight the unique role that social intrapreneurs can play in achieving scaled impact towards a climate-smart and inclusive economy.

From governments to leading think tanks and corporations, we have observed expressions of support and anticipation that social enterprises will play a critical role in rebuilding after the pandemic and steering our society towards a more sustainable and inclusive economy. However, the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs remain significant. The purpose of our program is to help understand these challenges, identify proven best practices to tackle them, and to empower the most promising social entrepreneurs in our community to put their ideas into action and maximize their impact.

There has been considerable attention on “intrapreneurship” in recent years. Intrapreneurship involves acting as an innovative entrepreneur but within the ecosystem of a larger, more traditional organization. These organizations can be private, public, or nonprofit; the concept of intrapreneurship is an important one across sectors. Intrapreneurship can bring together the best of both worlds: the innovation and dynamism of entrepreneurship and the resources and value chain of existing organizations. Social intrapreneurship is a more recent and somewhat lesser-known concept. Social intrapreneurship combines social entrepreneurship, the mindset of pursuing bold ideas and innovative solutions to address social and environmental problems, with intrapreneurship. As an example, M-Pesa is a successful social enterprise offering mobile-phone based money transfer and micro-financing services to over 40 million users in Africa, Asia, and Europe. A little-known fact is that M-Pesa is the product of social intrapreneurship; developed by two employees of Vodaphone and Safaricom from within their established companies. M-Pesa has been a driving force of economic empowerment and has had a significant impact on reducing poverty, especially among women.

I am pleased to announce the 2021 Cohort of the Social Enterprise Program: Pharr Andrews (City of Dallas), Dr. Candice Bledsoe (Action Research Center, Women of Color Collective, SMU), Julianna Bond (Slalom Consulting) and Matt Sheldon, (Toyota North America).

They are social intrapreneurs from across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors who are pursuing transformational ideas for a climate-smart & inclusive economy—the kind of innovators and leaders we desperately need to rebuild better.

Stay tuned to learn more about our social intrapreneurs’ initiatives and follow us on social media to get regular updates!

Eva Csaky, PhD MSF is the Executive Director of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity, the founder of the Social Enterprise Program, and the co-founder of the Inclusive Economy Consortium.

December 15, 2020January 7, 2021

2020 Social Enterprise Cohort

Our 2020 Cohort took a journey none of us could have planned or expected. We celebrated as both Dr. Lynch and Jin-Ya advanced in their work, we moved forward as Mohammed Nijie’s work branched out into a new phase, and we expanded to add a new Social Entrepreneur, Clara Rulegura Ford. This cohort focused on clean energy and community development.

Below is a brief description of each social entrepreneur’s venture along with links to their work in order to read more and/or follow their progress in the future.

Janta Energy

Founder: Mohammed Njie

Njie completed his business plan, launched his website, and remotely worked on a pilot project in Tintinto, The Gambia. In January of 2020, a team installed five 330-watt 24-volt solar panels, two 250 amp 12-volt solar batteries, and a 50 amp solar charge controller to power four classrooms and a staff room. The pilot is designed to test the panel’s effectiveness as a solution to bring electrical connections for lights, fans, and eventually computers. All supplies and labor were sourced locally, supporting the local economy.

Njie continues to communicate with Principal Amadou Kinteh following the progress of the project. Innovation in Tintinto tells the story of teachers leveraging cell phones to design and implement distance learning for their students during the pandemic shutdowns. His goals for 2021 include raising the necessary funding to finish the project so the entire school is powered by solar panels. Njie explains, “As a pilot project, we were limited to installing a limited amount of panels. We used those panels to provide 100% energy for half of the school. The idea was that after we did a successful pilot project, then we will install more panels to extend the power to the other side of the school.”

Principal Kinteh talked about how the students were able to attend night classes due to the solar power stored in fuel cells helping students to catch up in their studies, “…we benefited from night classes, as children living near or in the village were assisted by the teachers during the night because electricity is now available and the place is quiet, so children would come and read and they would be assisted by the teachers. This has helped our students a lot. They performed extremely well in the grade 9 examinations.”

Kijiji Innovation Solutions

Founder: Clara Rulegura Ford

Clara Rulegura Ford. Ford is the Founder and CEO of Kijiji Innovative Sustainable Solutions (K.I.S.S.) and a Class of 2020 commitment maker with the Clinton Global Initiatives University (CGIU). Ford holds an MA in Sustainability and Development from the Lyle School of Engineering where she began fleshing out the design and plans for KISS as her capstone project. Phase I of the project was completed in the Summer semester of 2020. Partnering with the Hunt Institute Global Development Lab, the project produced a broader impact report titled Building Bridges to Build Connections. Ford soon became an obvious choice to include in the Social Enterprise program. She is finishing final touches on her overall strategy, has assembled an advisory board over the years, and launched a competition for the design of The Rulegura Centre, Kijiji ISS, Kasisa Tanzania.

Ford says, “Our vision is of a Tanzania that is aware of its role on environmental stewardship and takes development initiatives that are conscious of environmental impact on future generations. A Tanzania that remains as a paradise island with its wildlife protected and natural resources replenished in the course of its economic development.”

As we approach 2021, we look back on the great accomplishments of this cohort and prepare to continue accelerating their important work.

December 15, 2020February 28, 2022

Women Artisans and the Case for Handicrafts

The Case for Homemade by Silvia Rivera '18, SMU and Hunt Institute Alumni

As more and more social entrepreneurs show up in industry, both non-profit and for-profit, there is increasing overlap between the initiatives of the Social Enterprise and the Global Development Lab. While this integration will be a primary focus for the Hunt Institute in 2021, the overlap between entrepreneurship and innovation has been evident in past Institute projects, too, such as a report on the international handicrafts industry by Silvia Rivera ’18.

Rivera moved with her family from Chiapas, Mexico as a child. With this perspective, she has always been passionate about breaking down complex issues to empower underrepresented individuals. During her college journey at SMU, Rivera was immersed in exploring handicrafts and artisanal goods. She soon joined the Hunt Institute as an undergraduate researcher mentored by the Executive Director Dr. Eva Csaky. At the end of her senior year, Rivera’s findings lead her to conclude that handicrafts, “have a significant potential for social impact, both in terms of the income they generate and the cultural traditions they help preserve.”

Her research questions searched for a connection point to link local artisans with the global supply chain. Shortly before completing her work at SMU, Rivera journeyed to Washington D.C. for The Creative Economy Matters conference, which had a lasting impact on her. She produced a report titled “The Case for Handmade,” exploring the global artisan sector, its potential for impact, and both the challenges and opportunities involved in realizing this potential.

Foundational to inclusive economic development is the IE Model for entrepreneurs, corporations, and enablers developed by Dr. Csaky (see Applied IE Model below).

Applied Inclusive Economy Model, Dr. Eva Csaky — Model by Dr. Eva Csaky, Executive Director of the Hunter & Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity

This model led Rivera to search for the multi-stakeholders, global forces, and the opportunity for inclusive growth to local economies. The abstract of her report states, “From the definition of artisanal activity, to its importance for poverty alleviation, to the various challenges and opportunities faced by artisans, businesses, and other sector stakeholders, this report concludes with a brief case-study of the DFW market for artisanal goods, attempting to put to the test ideas set forth herein on the global artisan sector and the key opportunities that may point the way forward.”

According to Rivera’s report, handicrafts are an essential source of secondary income. About 80% of artisans are women globally, and the handicraft industry was worth $32 billion in 2018. Because it is not capital intensive, the barriers to entry are low. Typically speaking, women reinvest 90% of earnings into their family and train other women, passing down their skills and knowledge. Her research found that these women were quite resourceful, using existing resources and materials to enhance the uniqueness of their handicrafts.

Rivera says, “But the potential for impact doesn’t stop there, like I mentioned earlier there are other cultural aspects to handmade goods that make them more than the sum of their parts, and part of that is that often that they are made by marginalized ethnic minorities using (again often but not always) traditionally environmentally friendly methods. This part of their potential needs more research and attention but does pop up in the literature.”

Women artisans help to support education, healthcare, and housing for themselves and their families. The industry serves as an important source of diversification, especially as climate change negatively affects rural agriculture. Challenges facing artisan women are well documented, country-specific, and difficult to overcome with a one-size-fits-all solution. Primary challenges include informality, aggregation, access to information, and access to finance. Finding opportunities to overcome these challenges is where the social impact space can help the most, investigating global connection points to consumer, entrepreneurial, and corporate trends for artisan groups.

December 1, 2020February 28, 2022

Controlled Environment Agriculture Technologies

After working at the Hunt Institute over the summer of 2017, Adrienn Santa decided to continue her research in controlled environment agriculture in an attempt to help address the issue of food deserts in urban areas like South Dallas. Adrienn grew up on a family farm in Hungary. She expressed her surprise when she discovered how difficult it was to find fresh food in urban areas and deep sadness at the reality of food deserts in one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

The video in this post explains her passion and vision for high-tech, small, urban greenhouses to help mitigate extreme climates in order to bring fresh fruits and vegetables closer to the consumer.

In the Fall of 2017, Adrienn recruited a team and together they began their senior design project monitoring Evie, the mobile greenhouse. As shown in the images, Evie was invited to the Science Place at the State Fair of Texas. Adrienn led her team as they installed sensors to read temperature and humidity in the small mobile greenhouse during the length of the State Fair.

Santa said, “My main goal is to be able to apply my educational and life experiences to this research and to contribute to finding a solution to this pressing global problem of food deserts found in low-income communities.”

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) is a technology-based food system used in large high-tech greenhouses for the purpose of controlling the temperature, humidity, airflow, and light in the building. With a greenhouse, the growing season can be expanded to be year-round if the inside conditions are controlled properly according to the requirements of the plants. With CEA, technology can assist the growers and reduce both the number of people and the amount of time needed to monitor and care for the plants. In the case of Evie, where the space available to grow is small, there are no low-cost solutions to grow food efficiently in small urban spaces as of the writing of this post. Combined with vertical gardening, technologies like hydroponics and grow lighting CEA can help to address food production issues anywhere from the most remote rural areas to urban areas.

The best possible orientation and structures of a greenhouse, heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, and glazing as well as insulation materials are discussed in Adrienn’s report. Adrienn says, “Results show that the most efficient and sustainable technologies are currently more expensive initially than the other ones. Due to this fact, most of the time small urban farmers are not able to afford sustainable and energy-efficient technologies.”

The findings of her report Controlled Environment Agriculture Technologies, the team’s research, and their observations of Evie’s sensor readings were that Evie was too small for CEA technology. This led her to conclude that CEA technology needed to evolve in order for it to be useful and affordable for small-scale farming operations.

Adrienn Santa graduated SMU in 2018, and she married one of her teammates Osama and is now Adrienn Alolabi-Santa. She and her husband live in Austria where she is pursuing a Masters in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.

To read more about Hunter & Stephanie Hunt Institute for Engineering and Humanity’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate to the work, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

November 23, 2020November 24, 2020

A New Thanksgiving Tradition in 2020

Each year, we celebrate the season of gratitude in the Hunt Institute with a Thanksgiving spread. Typically, I would make a huge pot of stew with homemade rolls and all the side items that help students connect with a home-cooked meal. This year, we are celebrating Thanksgiving with gratitude in our hearts and kindness toward our fellow man. We are finding new and creative ways to break bread together in a hybrid work environment. Some of our team members are fully remote, while others are in the office with a flex schedule. Instead of a turkey with dressing, we are doing chicken a-la Chick-fil-A! JuliaGrace even found a bakery that made mini pies individually wrapped. With that and a cup of joe from around the corner, we are set!

Our in-person workers are making a craft for our remote workers to add to the farm table centerpiece. We are calling them “trees of gratitude.” In the past, the highlight of the party would be when we would sit around the big farm table, scrunching our chairs to make sure everyone could fit, and share our different family traditions and what we were grateful for. Today, we are not just sharing our traditions, we are sharing our recipes with promises of pictures of our holiday spread later in the week to post on our Slack channel. Manuela might even make a recipe book! Mariana from the communications team created a Thanksgiving-themed Zoom background for our group picture. I even compromised my hard-line rule and we played Christmas music, which typically must wait until Black Friday. The room was full of laughter, music, and for a brief moment – no deadlines or stress.

Heartfelt expressions of gratitude were spoken as we gave each team member an opportunity to share what they are grateful for. Scott said, “I am grateful for all the medical workers and the companies that help develop the vaccine for COVID-19; hopefully that will be the solution and ending for this pandemic.” Well said, Scott.

After the party, we displayed our crafts in the middle of the table as a constant reminder of our gratefulness for one another as we push hard to wrap up work and ease into Thanksgiving break. We embrace our nostalgic memories and then create new ones – together. One thing this pandemic has taught us is to not take each other, our family, our friends, our liberties, or our country for granted. If you get the opportunity, find a neighbor and show a random act of kindness. Many are unable to be with family this year. Small acts of friendship could be what warms their hearts this Thanksgiving holiday. Then ponder and share what you are grateful for. We would love to hear from you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Corrie Harris

November 10, 2020August 31, 2021

STEM Up Phase 1: Empowering Engineering for Rural STEM Access

The video above is from SMU’s Giving Day in 2019 when the Hunt Institute’s project focused on the idea of bringing STEM education resources to rural communities. With motivation from personal experience, Cydney Snyder researched the potential of developing STEM camps in rural areas.

STEM Up Phase I: Empowering Engineering for Rural STEM Access focused on place-based education, specifically targeting rural schools that do not have the same support for STEM initiatives as many urban schools do.

The result of Ms. Snyder’s work was a report titled STEM UP: STEM for Rural Communities that proposed the use of place-based education to teach students about STEM in a summer camp setting. In the summer of 2019, STEM Up took on a different shape. After attempts to connect with camps in rural communities, the problem became clear – a growing number of rural areas did not have the resources to support summer camps.

With this revelation, the Institute partnered with the Caruth Center for Engineering Education to implement a STEM Up project, Evie-in-a-Box, with Caruth’s summer campers to test the interest level of the students. It was a huge success. The Institute made an open-sourced how-to video with a PDF containing instructions and dimensions for the project. All supplies are available at a typical hardware store or through Amazon.

In the summer of 2020, due to the global pandemic, summer camps were held virtually. As a result, the Caruth Center used the kits for remote camps, testing the true capabilities of the kits. Similar to the previous year, campers reported the kits being one of their favorite activities.

Snyder said, “Once when jokingly describing how I could see cows grazing outside the window of my US History class, a peer asked me, ‘if you came from a place like that, why are you normal?’ This project is important because millions of students grow up in rural communities and believe that their community is not good enough.”

Snyder’s concluding remarks in her paper sum up the spirit of Phase 1, “In development, growth is seen as an indicator of progress which leads to a lack of understanding of places that choose and rejoice in staying small. When students have to leave their communities in order to find more educational opportunities, they are not taught about subjects that relate to their experiences and their communities. Furthermore, when students leave their communities, they quickly find that people think of small rural communities as lesser. As a result, these students learn to reject small-town values and traditions, deny the good parts of their upbringing, and repress those aspects of their background that make them feel [like the] “other.” This camp, and in general the movement of place-based education, can provide students with a new narrative of what it means to be from rural areas while also giving them the opportunity to have a more well-rounded and adequate STEM education.”

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.

November 9, 2020February 11, 2021

Innovation in Tintinto, The Gambia

Janta Pilot project, Global Development lab, The Gambia, rich with natural resources for clean energy — Janta’s pilot project in Tintinto Village, The Gambia in West Africa. The Gambia is rich with natural resources for clean energy.

As the world continues to brace for the unknown while fighting the global pandemic, schools remain closed or partially open all around the world. To make matters worse, in The Gambia, a West African country surrounded by Senegal, just 48% of people have moderate, yet sometimes unreliable, access to electricity (typically in urban areas) and the remaining 52% have no access (typically remote rural areas). For children in rural areas, virtual learning as we define it in the United States is not possible, causing the children to fall behind in their studies during COVID-19 shutdowns.

The Tintinto Primary and Secondary school, founded in 2009, has 936 students enrolled. In December of 2019, they agreed to be a beta test site for Janta’s pilot project, a project designed to bring clean reliable energy to The Gambia. The project was funded by a partnership with the Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab and the Hart Center for Engineering Leadership.

In January of 2020, a team installed five 330-watt 24-volt solar panels, two 250 amp 12-volt solar batteries, and a 50 amp solar charge controller to power four classrooms and a staff room. The pilot is designed to test the panel’s effectiveness as a solution to bring electrical connections for lights, fans, and eventually computers. All supplies and labor were sourced locally, supporting the local economy.

Shortly after the solar panels were installed, the pandemic made its way to The Gambia. Fortunately for the students in the village of Tintinto, their teachers are innovative. Although they were unable to connect with students through virtual platforms because students do not have laptops or computers at home, nor do they have electricity or the internet. But, they do have cell phones.

Principal Amadou Kinteh spoke of his teachers’ innovation, “Most teachers used their mobile phone, charged them, and tried to create a platform to help the students because face-to-face learning was impossible. But with solar power, they were able to charge their mobile phones. Those platforms [cell phones] helped the students very well. In other schools, students were at home doing nothing, but our teachers … [created their own] online teaching.” This significant effort is a testimony to both the resilience of the people of The Gambia and the indomitable spirit of the teachers in demonstrating their love for their students.

In October, the students were allowed to return to their classrooms and are working hard to catch up with their peers in urban areas. Although the entire school is not powered yet, there are plans to do so. Mohammed Njie, the founder of Janta, explains, “As a pilot project, we were limited to installing a limited amount of panels. We used those panels to provide 100% energy for half of the school. The idea was that after we did a successful pilot project, then we will install more panels to extend the power to the other side of the school.”

Principal Kinteh talked about how the night classes are helping the students to catch up in their studies, “…we benefited from night classes, as children living near or in the village were assisted by the teachers during the night because electricity is now available and the place is quiet, so children would come and read and they would be assisted by the teachers. This has helped our students a lot. They performed extremely well in the grade 9 examinations.”

Njie has been in communication with Principal Kinteh, and both are pleased with the results. Together, they are looking forward to future panel installations, which will expand solar energy access to the rest of the classes. Once that is completed, they will advance to the next phase – STEM Up X Janta Ed.

Mohammed Njie and Manuela Murillo Sanchez were contributors to this blog post. Sam Borton edited and revised this post. Thank you for sharing our post and spreading the word about the work we do in the Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab.

November 3, 2020November 5, 2020

Counting Our Breakthroughs

October is over and November is upon us. Our team at the Hunt Institute continues to push through the normal stress of a college semester, project delays, and constant challenges that seem to pop up out of nowhere – not to mention a historic presidential election and the news of surges in COVID-19 globally.

We choose to count our breakthroughs.

Most students at SMU have completed their midterms, officially marking our halfway point for the semester. With approximately seven weeks to go in this semester, here are some of our breakthroughs. In the Global Development Lab, we have seen projects take off and pick up momentum while others stalled and have been put on hold. Through it all, we have been able to produce several deliverables including The Resilient Shelter Project finalizing their report Seeking Low-Cost Seismic Protection for Urban Masonry in an Unstable Terrain, the Moments that Matter project continuing to host Virtual National Focus Groups in partnership with the Veteran Women’s Enterprise Center over the Fall semester, and The Kijiji Project producing their report Building Bridges to Build Connections.

More deliverables are in the making right now, as we continue to find creative ways to work around delays and learn as we go. The Institute’s Assistant Director says about the strength of the team members, “Even more than the pride I feel in our finished work, I have so much pride in our team members. It is hard enough to navigate college, then add working for an Institute that is producing work that is impactful in people’s lives — that is a different level of strength of character. I am very proud of our team, watching them set aside fear and embrace potential.” One example is Sam Borton who is a third-year student. He joined the Institute in January of 2020. He quickly rose to a leadership position, as he naturally reached out to help his teammates over the adjustment period. He co-leads the researcher team and consistently supports the communications team with editing. Borton says, “The research team has faced numerous challenges due to the pandemic —stalled lab research, cancelled travel plans, and staying connected while virtual— but I am proud of each researcher’s resilience to stay productive even while facing challenges out of our control.”

One team has risen to the challenge to keep everyone connected both internally and externally, the communications team. Cullen Blanchfield is the communications team lead and a senior student with a passion for videography. He has been with the Institute since he was a freshman, filming and editing visual content. He was in his study abroad semester when the pandemic hit, resulting in his return to the states, after which he immediately jumped back into working with the Institute to further our mission. He has driven the team to new consistency over the summer months, working with and celebrating the contributions of each team member along with working towards including more visual content via social media and our weekly update. He speaks to the challenges his team continues to push through, “The communications team has had to pivot our internal workflow and adjust our content due to the pandemic, but we’ve stayed very productive and grown tremendously.”

Rachel Levitt is an MBA candidate in marketing at the Cox School of Business. She is the lead for the Social Enterprise and has helped three social entrepreneurs with their business plans by developing business models depending on each person’s need and value proposition. Levitt has written nineteen blog posts during her time at the Institute that started in May 2020. Rachel speaks to her challenges in running the social enterprise, “The social enterprise team has had to postpone on-boarding a new cohort of social entrepreneurs. However, it has given us the opportunity to focus on educating the public about the importance of social entrepreneurship, especially during these trying times.”

October 20, 2020February 28, 2022

Improving Engagement with Veteran Women Entrepreneurs

The Hunt Institute’s Global Development Lab project with the Veteran Women’s Enterprise Center (VWEC) in Dallas, Texas called Moments that Matter is hosting virtual focus groups with the goal to improve engagement with women veteran entrepreneurs. In order to obtain first-hand information, the project seeks to find veteran women business owners to inform the creation of a national assessment tool. The shift from in-person to online due to the COVID-19 response has resulted in an unexpected benefit – the focus group can have national representation.

Undergraduate research analyst Scott Zuo reflects on his experience working on the project, “So far, after inputting data and transcription from the past focus groups, I realized that most of the data is really valuable and meaningful for analysis purposes. The questions are so well developed that all the responses and answers to them perfectly represent the background of each participant. And it helps a lot for us and our affiliate to find patterns and moments that matter the most from the data.”

The sessions are open to veteran women entrepreneurs who are currently in business and have owned that business for at least one year. Eligible candidates can USE THIS LINK to register for a focus group that coordinates with their schedule. Focus groups will run through the end of November 2020 and are small by design to afford a depth of conversation and feedback over the course of an hour that would not be possible with larger groups.

In this era of COVID-19 economic disruption, real-time data-driven decisions are critical to the recovery, stabilization, and growth of small business communities that help build local economies. The tool will reflect first-hand feedback that will help chart the pivotal moments of running a business and finding the most important needs in those critical intersections. Because the groups are national, this tool will be able to study the recurring business patterns that women veteran entrepreneurs have in common and how their experiences may differ from non-veterans. The perspective provided by participants in the focus groups will inform decisions made by veteran support agencies, like the VWEC, to better provide the resources needed to overcome their challenges and contribute to their successes.

The Moments that Matter focus groups are the passion project of VR Small. She speaks to her motivation, “Why I am so determined to drive the collection and application of real-time data about women veteran entrepreneurs is because I know the impact; I know we are not just building businesses; we’re transforming lives. When we help a women veteran owner’s business succeed, we strengthen our family structures, create community resources, and fuel our nation’s economy. My personal slogan is changing the way we see the world and do business, and as a leader that’s what I strive to achieve every day.”

To read more about the Hunt Institute’s work to develop future-focused solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems, please click here. For the latest news on the Hunt Institute, follow our social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We invite you to listen to our Podcast called Sages & Seekers. If you are considering engaging with the institute, you can donate, or sign-up for our newsletter by emailing huntinstitute@smu.edu.