I'm in it to WIN!
This month I launched a new growth journey as an entrepreneur - beginning 2023 in the newest cohort of the Babson CWEL: Center for Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership WIN (Women Innovating Now) Lab. I am excited to be taking Stone and Grace, all that I am incubating, and myself as a female entrepreneur through this accelerator program. What an honor it is to embark on this learning journey with a couple dozen other amazing trailblazing women in the leading institution for entrepreneurship.
A little over three years ago, in December of 2019 I sat down with Sheena Collier at the Whole Foods on Harrison Ave here in Boston. I shared with her how disgruntled I was with working for others, and how badly I just wanted to jump out of my professional circumstances and implement my big ideas for making the world a better place. I had so many doubts though - about if I had the proper skills to be an entrepreneur and build a business. Doubts that I now know were just the amplification of the doubts and fears of those around me, and that were instilled in me - in so many of us - from an early age. I asked Sheena how she was doing it, and she mentioned a program she was a part of: the WIN Lab at Babson College.
So much has happened since that conversation with Sheena. I left the job I was at, and found another job. Quickly got frustrated with the new job and explosively jumped out - vowing never to work for anyone or anything but my vision ever again. I started multiple businesses as a solo-preneur. Oh, and let's not forget all of us being unwillingly plunged into a three-year long global pandemic. AND, this past fall I finally got around to applying to Babson WIN.
Thank you Sheena for recommending this gem of a program! Just from participating in the orientation, I can confidently say that I have never felt more validated as an ambitious, entrepreneurial-minded female visionary than in that space. And I coached MBA students at Harvard Business School - working directly with some of the top business professors in the world!
Being naturally entrepreneurial-minded is rare. Being an unapologetically ambitious entrepreneurial-minded woman - a Black woman - in a deeply conditioned world is a special, distinct skill that needs constant development, refinement, and encouragement. How grateful I am to be have this opportunity to refine this special, distinct skill that I possess.
It is time to shift the narrative of what is possible in this world, because it is time to decolonize this world. I am excited to accelerate the disposition to thrive - with the strength and strategy that is stone, and the divine feminine that is grace.
It's go time!
In Love, Light & Power,
Shaunda