Why this? Why now?

Entrepreneurship education needs to start earlier and it needs to reach wider. Girl Gonna is on a mission to make that happen.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are superpowers in this great nation of ours. In America, we do this really really well. So well in fact that we have programs at many Colleges that international students seek out so that they can learn how we do it so well.  There is also a strong very demand for these types of courses because students want to learn how to successfully launch, lead, and control their own destiny.

But as someone who spent many years teaching entrepreneurship and design thinking to college students, we are not starting early enough. College classes on entrepreneurship are great, but they may be too late. Young people can absolutely learn these skills earlier. Starting education earlier means they start to see themselves as entrepreneurs earlier. And that could make all the difference.

By the time some students get to college, they have already self-selected out of entrepreneurship. We see this primarily with female students. Many of my female students have told me (and themselves) that entrepreneurship isn’t for them; “it’s what guys do.”

But where in the world did they learn this? Who is telling them that entrepreneurship is not for them? Because women ventures are not only successful, they are also incredibly profitable. Women can – and do!– succeed in starting up and scaling up.