By: Natasha Nunez
Ever since my teenage years I knew that I was passionate about social change. Having been raised in Dominican Republic, a country that is stricken by poverty and other social issues, it is almost inevitable to want to become a part of the solution, rather than the problem. As a result, volunteering proved to be an essential part of my life, well into my academic career at Northeastern University. However, I always wondered if there was more; more than volunteering, charity, or corporate social responsibility. This is when I discovered social entrepreneurship and the Social Enterprise Institute (SEI).
During my sophomore year at Northeastern, I chose social entrepreneurship as one of my minors (I would have chosen it as a major if I could have) and began exploring the world of social entrepreneurship and microfinance with Professor Sophie Bacq. I instantly knew this was where I would eventually want to focus my professional career on. This feeling only strengthened after attending several SEI Lecture Series and seeing how many other people were making it their life goal to use creative solutions in business for good.
By my senior year, I had become a Teaching Assistant for Professor Bacq’s course, Microfinance: Lending to the Poor, and a Research Assistant for her research on temporal orientation in the impoverished entrepreneurial context. By that time, I was officially hooked, but my senior year would end with a “bang!” with Professor Dennis Shaughnessy in South Africa, where I got the amazing opportunity to work directly with entrepreneurs, mostly from townships in Cape Town, who were inherently social entrepreneurs. They conducted business in a way that was for the betterment of the whole community they lived in, rather than solely for their own gain. While in Cape Town, I worked closely with a female entrepreneur who ran her very own funeral parlor – an unlikely business for a woman, she would tell our group. Seeing how she ran her business and how she improved the life of her own family, while also giving back to her community and potentially creating job opportunities in the near future, truly sparked an interest in me.
Fast-forward to today, and I am working as a Coordinator for the Women’s Business Development Center (WBDC) in Chicago. The WBDC is a non-profit focused on fostering entrepreneurship by supporting individuals in every stage of business development, from startup to established business. After seeing truly how much positive impact a woman can have on her family and her community, I knew that this was a career path that I had to explore. Throughout my time at WBDC, I have been able to use the knowledge that I have gained through courses in social entrepreneurship and microfinance, as well as my experience in Cape Town, to better understand how women entrepreneurs can be supported. It can be difficult to understand all of the challenges that come with being a female entrepreneur, especially considering that many of these women are also mothers, but my experience at SEI has equipped me with enough knowledge that I am able to see these challenges through their perspective.
SEI at Northeastern has truly impacted me, to the point that my career path changed from wanting to be a diplomat during my freshman year, to wanting to work with women entrepreneurs in my senior year. My goal is to become an expert in the fields of entrepreneurship and social enterprise and to be able to continually support entrepreneurs, especially women, through my job at the WBDC. However, my ultimate dream is to create my own social enterprise, which is in its idea stage at the moment. I truly thank everyone at SEI for showing all of us that business can be used for good and for encouraging us to become part of that good. You are making the world a better place, one student at a time.
