Global Entrepreneurship Week celebrates Inclusive Entrepreneurship at SU

Jake deHahn

Syracuse University has been a leader in Inclusive Entrepreneurship for a decade.  It helped define inclusive entrepreneurship as: “A strategy and process for assisting people with diverse disabilities and/or economic and social disadvantages to become entrepreneurs through business planning training, use of customized business development goal and support planning, and access to financial resources utilizing the resources of diverse public and private partners working within a consensus-driven, collaborative framework.”  This definition comes from Gary Shaheen from BBI and Mirza Tihic from the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.

Inclusive Entrepreneurship has been led for the past decade by the Whitman School of Management Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises (EEE) department, together with the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) and the Taishoff Center for Inclusive Higher Education at SU’s School of Education.  SU Libraries also supports this focus through a new Inclusion and Accessibility Librarian.  The goal of inclusive entrepreneurship goes beyond business ownership. It creates opportunities to pursue creative passions, develop self-esteem and self-sufficiency, and a mindset and skills to create personal and professional economic opportunity.

Jacob deHahn (pictured above), a fifth year Industrial and Interaction Design student will lead a workshop on entrepreneurship for InclusiveU students and others interested in the topic on November 15 at 1 p.m. at the Blackstone LaunchPad in Bird Library as part of GEW.

deHahn is an entrepreneur – founder of Bowtie Boulevard — and is keenly interested in inclusive design for people of all capabilities,  The topic is the focus of research for his fifth year graduation thesis.  He is also a Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow, and the official talented LaunchPadSYR brand designer.  He was also born profoundly deaf.  Learn more about him here:  https://launchpad.syr.edu/jacob-dehahn/

deHahn will tell his story, offer insights and tips about what we can do to make the world more inclusive (literally and metaphorically), and lead participants students in a conversation.  Together, with LaunchPad staff, he will also lead an idea session, and offer ideas about how to launch a micro-business.  The workshop will conclude with tips about how to make an effective pitch.

On November 27, InclusiveU students will be invited back to the Blackstone LaunchPad to pitch ideas for micro-businesses, with feedback and helpful ideas about ways to take next steps.