Women Warriors Winning the Business Battle
Social Entrepreneurship: Learn from Leading Ladies in the Social Sector
This month we bring you the long overdue session on social entrepreneurship. Join our distinguished leading ladies Lauren Edwards, Executive Director, SEA Change; Suzanne Smith, Founder & CEO of Social Impact Architects; and Eva Szalkai Csaky, PhD MSF, Executive Director, Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity. Prepared for an engaging conversation.
Lauren Edwards reminds us that “Businesses that were created with the purpose of doing good are not new, but they are the next big thing in entrepreneurship. Every day more entrepreneurs recognize their ability to connect passion with profit, more and more consumers demand it, and our society learns that it will never be equitable without it. We will all have to work together to create change - and your Social Enterprise business is an important step towards making the world a better place for all.”
While Suzanne Smith explains that “Social entrepreneurship, while going mainstream in the last decade, will continue to be a trend into this decade. A few trends to highlight: 1) increasing the professionalism of the field as well as a disciplined approach to social change – ensuring that our “good work” truly creates impact; 2) embracing our #throwback origin story where the best solutions come from those we serve and equity is at the center of every decision; 3) embedding intrapreneurship as an equally effective strategy for making social change; and 4) a true “meeting in the middle” with businesses being catalysts for social change as well as nonprofits embracing entrepreneurial thinking as a mindset for growth and change.”
Dr. Csaky summarizes these perspectives noting that “We are at the dawn of a new era, one when technology revolution coincides with some of the most apparent human suffering, divisions, inequalities and inequities of most of our lifetimes. Our greatest opportunity, and challenge, is to empower social entrepreneurs in local communities with the transformational technologies being developed by fellow social entrepreneurs around the world. In order to do so we need to create robust social enterprise ecosystems both at the local and the global level.”
VWEC 2021 Theme: Women Helping Women
To support our Women Helping Women theme, we have also launched a daily social media engagement campaign where you can post your business, share a tip to help another women conquer her challenges. This strategy is designed to move us beyond just sharing information, but getting to know each, our businesses, and our areas of expertise.
Start connecting Facebook Live monthly 1PM CST for:
Managing Mondays-First Mondays
Technology Tuesdays-2nd Tuesdays
Wellness Wednesdays-3rd Wednesdays
Trending Thursdays-4th Thursdays &
Financial First Fridays-5th Fridays.
Our 2021 Format includes the following:
11:00AM - 11:05AM - Welcome & Opening Remarks
11:05AM - 11:15AM - Speed Networking with a Twist
11:15AM - 11:20AM - $30 for the Best 30 Second Business Pitch.
11: 20AM - 11:30AM - Wednesday’s Wellness -is now integrated into each monthly event to remind everyone that our health is the foundation of our wealth. Get ready for a series of engaging activities and conversations. Our featured wellness consultant is Camille Wright, Health and Financial Services, Wright Fit Coaching.
Camille Wright is a health and financial coach, protecting the health and wealth of families for 20 plus years. She holds a degree in health and fitness and is a licensed financial service specialist with proven dedication in helping families to achieve their health and wealth goals. Camille is a firm believer that your health is your wealth.
Camille has worked in many aspects across her career to ensure knowledgeable advising. She served in the United States Army for 10 years achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant and is a facilitator for Stanford University’s Chronic Disease Self-Management, Take Charge of Your Health program, as well as the American Lung Association, Freedom from Smoking Program. Licensed in several states as an Insurance Producer, helping families make sure they have living benefits insurance, mortgage protection, tax-free retirement, and strategies to make their money grow without losing a dime.
She is a personal trainer for veterans who have disabilities through the Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds program and serves as a Regional Adviser for the Office on Women’s Health BodyWorks Program for five states.
Camille is a CBD advocate and a Founding Member of an online CBD Company called Wakanna, started by Four African American Women based out of Chicago, IL.
In addition, Camille is a wife, mother of 2 boys, and 4 bonus children, a bonus glama~ma of one granddaughter.
Committed to the belief in her client's success to achieve Health and Financial FREEDOM!!
11:35AM - 11:45PM - Introductions Partners, Sponsors & Keynote Speaker - Get connected to the resources you need to succeed with a brief presentation from partners and sponsors supporting this and other VWEC events. Our featured Co-Host is Holly Caplan, is a female empowerment author, speaker , and confidence coach. As she climbed the corporate ladder for over 20 years, she learned that advancing meant tolerating discrimination in the workplace. This drove Holly to write a book titled, “Surviving the Dick Clique: A Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Male Dominated Corporate World.” Her most recent work related articles can be found in Fox Business, Inc, and Fast Company, CEO MOM and Cosmopolitan. Holly resides in Dallas, TX.
11:45PM - 12:00PM - 2nd Quarter New Partners - Prosperous Divas & Old Grumpy Radio Network;
12:00PM - 12:45PM - WORDS OF WISDOM - Social Entrepreneurship: Learn from Leading Ladies in the Social Sector - Prepare for an engaging conversation as:
MEET OUR LEADING LADIES:
Lauren Edwards:
Lauren Edwards is the Executive Director of SEA Change, the Principal/Owner of Next Step Business Consulting, and an associate professor of City and Regional Planning and Social Enterprise at the Ohio State University. Her passion lies in helping organizations and individuals alleviate poverty through program and business development, vision realization, and facilitated conversation.
Lauren is the owner and principal of Next Step Business Consulting, where she works tirelessly alongside clients to expand capacity through program and social enterprise development, project management, and building organizational efficiency. Lauren is a highly regarded lecturer and facilitator; during just the past several years she has been a guest speaker with more than 50 central Ohio organizations. She also currently sits on the board of the Franklinton Urban Development Lab (FUEL) and the YMCA of Central Ohio – downtown. She was also honored to be included in the 2020 Columbus Business First’s Class of 40 Under 40.
As the Executive Director of SEA Change, Lauren has played a role in guiding over 140 organizations through the live social enterprise training program. In 2018 these alumni earned over $2.3 million in revenue and impacted over 350,000 lives.
After earning her Master’s Degree in City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University, Lauren gained experience in working with government, private practice, and non-profit organizations before launching her firm. Lauren lives in Grandview Heights Ohio with her husband and three daughters.
Suzanne Smith:
Suzanne Smith (@snstexas) has a deep belief that everyone is a changemaker. As a serial social entrepreneur, she strives to harness the powerful force of organizations, including nonprofits, foundations and socially responsible businesses, and individuals, especially students and young entrepreneurs, to maximize the potential of the social sector to create real, scalable impact.
In 2009, Suzanne founded Social Impact Architects, a registered Benefit Corporation, to reshape the business of social change. She combines her MBA know-how with two decades of experience as a nonprofit innovator to serve as a consultant, advisor and thought partner. She is also a highly sought-after public speaker at conferences nationwide, including being selected as a featured speaker at TEDxTurtleCreekWomen. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. In this work, she has pioneered open-source frameworks for the creation of better social solutions, including layered logic models, ecosystem mapping and social alchemy. For her outstanding work as a leading thinker, she was recognized with the Next Generation Social Entrepreneur Award by the Social Enterprise Alliance. Since 2015, Social Impact Architects was recognized as one of the “Best for the World” small businesses by B Corp.
Suzanne also authors Social TrendSpotter (@socialtrendspot), one of the sector’s top blogs according to The Huffington Post. Known for its relatable way of blending important concepts and new ways of working with storytelling, Social TrendSpotter has been hailed by readers as “the only blog I read each week.” She is frequently interviewed by regional and national media on social entrepreneurship and has published articles in Forbes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, See Change, Nonprofit Business Advisor, Upstart and Grantmakers in Health.
Suzanne has been at the epicenter of game-changing social solutions for more than two decades as a social intrapreneur. Her first jobs at the City of Garland and Texas Municipal League taught her the power and potential of local government to impact change. Later, she worked for Phoenix House to scale evidence-based prevention and treatment programs to Texas and for the American Heart Association to build a national state advocacy strategy. One of her greatest achievements was co-founding the Alliance for a Healthier Generation – one of the country’s first movements focused on combating childhood obesity – with a team from the William J. Clinton Foundation. She also co-founded Flywheel: Social Enterprise Hub in Cincinnati, Ohio, to help nonprofits build meaningful and sustainable social enterprises.
Suzanne holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she was selected as the CASE (Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship) Scholar. Nationally, she was selected as a member of Peter Senge’s Society of Organizational Learning and has served on the national board of the Social Enterprise Alliance. She has advised many federal agencies on their efforts on social entrepreneurship and system change.
A third-generation Texan, her roots run deep through her work to improve her community with Leadership Dallas, Leadership North Texas, Dallas Summit, and the Junior League of Dallas. She has served a number of appointed posts for the City of Dallas and currently serves on the Library Board. In the past, she served in leadership roles on the Dallas Commission on Homelessness and the Mayor’s Task Force on Poverty. She was honored to receive the Dallas Business Journal’s 40 under 40 award in 2012 and the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Young ATHENA Leadership Award in 2014.
Raised by career educators who were deeply committed to making a difference through education, Suzanne found her calling at an early age as both a social activist and entrepreneur. When she is not traveling to speak, consult or discover new places, she can be found playing with her eight nieces and nephews or writing her first book on the social sector.
Eva Szalkai Csaky:
Eva Szalkai Csaky is the Executive Director of the Hunt Institute for Engineering & Humanity at SMU and the co-founder of the Inclusive Economy Consortium. She has 25 years of global experience fostering climate-smart inclusive economic solutions through innovation and social entrepreneurial approaches.
Her work leverages transformational technologies for high impact solutions, from energy efficiency, renewable energy and water purification to climate smart agriculture and sustainable and inclusive value chains. Financial and policy innovations are integral to all her efforts to ensure sustainability and systemic impact. Prior to the Hunt Institute, Dr. Csaky worked for 18 years at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, where she developed innovative programs and financial mechanisms to empower small businesses, farmers and social enterprises.
Dr. Csaky has served as an advisor to the G20, OECD and various UN agencies. She has also served on the Dallas Mayor’s Poverty Task Force and on the advisory council of the Dallas 100 Resilient Cities Initiative. Dr. Csaky has an MS in Finance from George Washington University and a PhD in Public Policy from Duke University.