As the Lab for Inclusive Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University begins its third year, we wanted to share with you some significant milestones in 2022.
Our 5-year grant from the Economic Development Administration enabled us to launch two major initiatives: The Inclusive Entrepreneur Fellowship program and a unique business assistance program.
We welcomed 10 diverse small business owners from Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island into the inaugural fellowship program, an amalgam of online workshops, mentoring networks, and project-based assistance. With their help, we ‘kicked the tires,’ learned what worked, and are now selecting the 2023 cohort of Fellows. We’re delighted that the 2022 Fellows continue to leverage the university’s entrepreneurial resources.
The second major EDA-funded initiative adds a new dimension to the project-based experiential learning so ingrained in the Northeastern DNA. Student teams in several colleges have collaborated with diverse small businesses to address business challenges. The EDA funding helps the sponsoring businesses implement project recommendations.
Another major focus of the Lab is promoting supplier diversity in higher education. With seed money from Northeastern’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, we conducted a major survey of diverse small businesses in New England. We learned first-hand about the barriers they face and the opportunities they envision in doing business with colleges and universities. We published a report on the survey findings and sponsored a symposium in May for diverse small business owners and higher education procurement professionals.
This work will continue on a larger scale. Thanks to a three-year Knowledge Challenge grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, we are developing a framework to monitor supplier diversity progress and educational resources for diverse small businesses and procurement teams to help ‘move the needle’ on supplier diversity.
We look forward to another year of collaboration and encourage you to follow us and share your input with us.
Many thanks to all who have worked with us in 2022!
Best,
Francesca Grippa
Executive Director, The Lab for Inclusive Entrepreneurship
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
College of Professional Studies
Northeastern University