Life Lessons from Leading Girl Scouts at NextGen Workshops in North Carolina
May 9, 2024
Setting the stage When Christina Williams-Debrew signed on to facilitate a new series of one-day workshops for young women, she went in with plenty of entrepreneurial mindset knowledge thanks to her certification as an Entrepreneurial Mindset Program facilitator. She was familiar with one of the organizers, NC IDEA, a private foundation committed to supporting North Carolinians in achieving their entrepreneurial ambitions to start and grow high-potential companies, but she had less background with the other,…
Read moreHow the City of Albuquerque Grows Entrepreneurial Thinking From the Inside Out
January 25, 2022
Many cities have worked to attract entrepreneurs over the past decade. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is among them—but in an innovative twist, the fast-growing Southwestern city also worked to foster an entrepreneurial mindset from the inside out. City leaders aren’t looking for municipal employees to start their own businesses. Instead, they’re following the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative’s definition of entrepreneurship as the self-director pursuit of opportunities to create value for others. Here’s the story of how…
Read moreThe Untapped Potential of Unlikely Entrepreneurs
November 16, 2021
This post was originally published by the Independence Daily Reporter in the November 10th, 2021 issue. Read the text online here, the article is on page 3. What does the future hold for those who do not do well in school? Each year more than a million high school students drop out of high school. That’s nearly 7,000 per day. And in many cases, they do so not because they are incapable but because they…
Read moreTackling Social Injustice Through an Entrepreneurial Mindset
October 27, 2021
The opportunities and resources for Black entrepreneurs and minority-led startups often presuppose a skill set that people who grew up in poverty don’t have. “A lot of the circles of support are for middle-class Black people,” explained Pastor Myron Pierce. Pierce serves as the pastor of the Mission Church in North Omaha, Nebraska. “There’s a language you have to speak, systems and structures and culture you need to know about—and that makes it hard…
Read moreDeveloping an Entrepreneurial Mindset on the Path to Recovery
May 14, 2021
Judy Raper never saw herself as someone whose entrepreneurial mindset would make an impact on her community. She might have pointed to her younger sister, a CEO, as the mover and shaker in the family. Then Raper learned a new definition of entrepreneurship as the self-directed pursuit of opportunities to create value for others. She realized that by creating value for others, we empower ourselves. She realized that the Ice House training she…
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