NewHavenBIZ

n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m M a r c h / A p r i l 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 23 W o m e n W h o M e a n B u s i n e s s C ollab New Haven co-found- ers Caroline Smith and Margaret Lee believe that everyone — of every age, from every background and every neighborhood — can become an entrepreneur. ey believe that by investing in local entrepre- neurs communities can create a model of economic development that is not only sustainable, but pretty powerful, too. ey believe that by empowering these entre- preneurs, transforming them into heart-powered, strength-centered leaders, you begin to change the conversation about economic de- velopment in both New Haven and across Connecticut. And it all begins with access. Accelerating entrepreneurial leaders e two 2014 Yale graduates met four years ago at a campus entre- preneurship event called the Yale Innovation & Entrepreneurship Bazaar. Lee was working at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, which is now the Tsai Center for Innovative inking at Yale, and Smith was working as a community organizer for SeeClickFix. Lee said as soon as she met Smith, they immediately began col- laborating on ways to bring the Yale and New Haven entrepreneurship ecosystems closer together. Lee's expertise in startup incuba- tion and entrepreneurship dovetails with Smith's know-how in com- munity organization and advocacy, resulting in the partnership fittingly dubbed Collab New Haven, named for its driving focus: collaboration. The Cradle That Rocks Collab New Haven founders Lee and Smith are not just building businesses – they're building entrepreneurs By Makayla Silva 'Connectedness is having a community, a network, relationships, confidence in action.' - Margaret Lee Since its inception, Collab has received 211 applications from 458 entrepreneurs, nearly two- thirds (64 percent) having been female-led, 72 percent people-of- color-led, and 46 percent women- of-color-led ventures. If you include Collab's food business accelerator with CitySeed that was completed in February, 34 ventures will have finished the Collab program. "ey go through the program and they're at this really amazing potentially catalytic state," explains Lee. "How do we then build the necessary infrastructure to really boost them on with real money and real resources? We don't want to just educate; we want them to be resourced." New Havener Lori Martin was accepted into Collab's 10-week accelerator program last fall. Having served as a longtime volunteer and the regional point person for Food Rescue U.S., Mar- tin dreamed of creating a nonprofit to address how food recovery cor- relates with environmental justice. Using an app to connect shelters, soup kitchens and service-based organizations with restaurants, bakeries, dining halls and grocery stores that produce and process excess food, Haven's Harvest deploys volunteers to pick up and drop off loads. Martin explains that Collab provided a viable means for trans- forming her dream into a realty. "Collab is successful because Margaret and Caroline are deeply thoughtful and are undaunted by musings, tangents, fantastical ideas of their venturers," says Martin, employing a made-up but oddly apt term for the strivers Lee and Smith serve. "ey are deep listeners. Aer listening to business plans that feel incoherent and disparate, they read back what they heard — and they have kept the wheat and ignored the chaff. "In seeing the structure of work needed to move a venture forward, they ground their venturers' work and increase their determination and confidence," Martin adds. By bringing in corporate part- ners that are open to and inter- ested in engaging with early-stage entrepreneurs, Smith says the hope is to build relationships, expand networks and give all their partner ventures the tools, names and faces they need to build their businesses out above and beyond the Collab cradle. "e dream is that you can have multiple individuals from multiple neighborhoods from the greater New Haven area that will take their one idea they have and build the confidence, build the network, have the education and the resources to not only impact their direct community but to have their own economic success for themselves— that's the dream," says Lee. Women in the workplace e name of their game is accessibility. Lee and Smith want to ensure that entrepreneurship is accessible to everyone from every neighborhood. "Whether you've been here your entire life, you're a single mother or you just arrived in this country yes- terday, you can be an entrepreneur," Smith says. Collab's 10-week accelerator of- fers aspiring entrepreneurs $1,000, a mentor, legal and marketing ser- vices, co-working space, child care and interpretation and transporta- tion services. Karla Lindquist, an economic development officer for the city of New Haven and Collab board member, says Lee and Smith came to entrepreneurship via some of the structural inequities that the pair are now working to rectify through their programming. "ey have been successful because they understand that tra- ditional entrepreneurship supports, and the professional ecosystem more broadly, were not designed for broad swaths of the popula- tion," Lindquist explains. "Women, people of color, low-income people, parents of young children, people with disabilities, people with little formal education — these catego- ries were all underserved in terms of programming aimed at elevating their ideas. "By providing supports to break down some of these barriers, they've been able to reach entre- preneurs that might have other- wise been unable to participate in resources like a business-accelerator course," Lindquist adds. Smith says that in building a pro- gram, the pair sought to address the barriers facing the individuals they had hopes to attract to Collab. "e first thing we did was talk to a lot of women and we identified a lot of different kinds of barriers specific to women that are finan- cial, logistical and psychological," Smith explains. "ey have families [including oen young children] and that's a big part of their life — and it should be. It shouldn't be taken away from them and it shouldn't prevent someone from building something." Another typical logistical barrier Continued on Page 47 PHOTO/DAVID OTTENSTEIN

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