Maurice Muia, a master’s student in sustainability at Saint Louis University, had two golden minutes on July 25.
He had the ears of about 100 potential business partners, investors and mentors who gathered at Washington University’s Diversity Workshop to pitch his idea for a bottle-reuse business at the event’s IdeaBounce.
Then a few minutes after his pitch, entrepreneur Dawn Stovall presented her recycling program idea. After she finished, she whispered to Muia as she passed his seat, “We’ve got to talk.”
Those connections are exactly what the workshop was supposed to do – give women and minorities the opportunity to network with potential partners and funders.
“Oftentimes we don’t have the same resources as some of the larger companies,” Stovall said. “It puts us on the same level of gaining access to grant funds.”
Sponsored by the university’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, with support from the National Science Foundation Partners for Innovation program, “Diversity as a Catalyst for Innovation in the Sciences: Connecting Women and Underrepresented Innovators to Regional Resources” started at 7:30 a.m. and continued on into a cocktail reception and dinner at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center on the Danforth Campus.
“Our aim is to connect women and other minority groups with resources that can help them get their ideas off the ground,” says Kenneth A. Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center.
The workshop offered three learning tracks for ideas related to energy and environment, information technology and biotechnology, as well as a fourth track for entrepreneurs who are further along with their idea and wish to pursue Small Business Innovation Research grant funding.
The keynote speaker Brenda Newberry, retired chair and founder of the Newberry Group, spoke on “Why Innovation and Diversity are Critical to the St. Louis Region: Reflections from a Real Entrepreneur of St. Louis.”
“I was pleasantly surprised that she brought issues of prejudice that many might find hard to discuss,” said Malcolm Townes, of the Missouri University at Rolla Science and Technology office.
Townes liked that she spoke about her own experience of starting a business as an African-American woman when the information technology field would not let her in.
“Her message was, ‘Don’t let that discourage you,'” Townes said. “There are lots of people that want to help you out there.”
Overall Townes found the success stories of people on the panel discussions to be a great resource for him.
“Hopefully this is just the beginning, and we’ll see more events like this,” he said.
As part of the workshop, the center will publish and make available online a guidebook of resources available to innovators and entrepreneurs to connect them to existing innovation support systems in the St. Louis region.
The IdeaBounce featured 13 entrepreneurs pitching their ideas, followed by a reception and a dinner, all sponsored by Wells Fargo Advisors. The ideas ranged from surgical devices to computerized bowling programs.
Innovate St. Louis mentoring service also provided support for the workshop.
“We hope this gathering of regional and national leaders will cause new relationships and build momentum for other events supporting women and minority science entrepreneurs in the Midwest,” Harrington said.
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