Taking Tools Off The Shelf: Converging Entrepreneurship, Activism, and Research
By Kalyani Singh
Last week, I was excited to attend LiftoffPGH’s Fempreneur Summit. All three days I attended left me chock full of excitement and inspiration for where we need to take the innovation ecosystem to be inclusive and accessible.
On Tuesday, I heard from Professors Tamar Krishnamurti, Sonya Borrero, and Mehret Birru-Talabi, who are leveraging technological solutions to aid womxn’s reproductive decision making through novel applications, including My Healthy Pregnancy, MyDecision, and MyVoice:RD. As they saw the natural synergies between their work, they also saw potential to elevate their collective research for public access, but they couldn’t go through the familiar channels of academia to do it. Entrepreneurship and commercialization appeared to be the only way they could truly make their research around womxn’s reproductive health constantly accessible to individuals.
Forming the Fem Tech Collaborative forced these colleagues to pivot from their comfort zone of academia in order to combine their research with activism. And they’ve certainly have had to balance tensions between their mission and the commercial structure. In their experience so far, foundations respond very positively when it comes to the academic research that underlies their digital platform. Venture capitalists, however, are less keen to fund mission driven projects that don’t see an immediate return (or research results).
Learning to be entrepreneurs without a rule book has been an organic, evolving, and challenging process, as they openly said to the group. We need to continue to talk about the uncomfortable parts of entrepreneurship when it comes to generating and funding social enterprises. To the academic researchers and practitioners, take your tools off the shelf and think creatively about how the public can access and benefit from your research. As an ecosystem, we need to push more investors to value innovative social enterprises at the level they deserve.
This sentiment was carried through the next two days of the Fempreneur Summit. Ayana Ledford and Audrey Murrell were guests on Wednesday, the 26th . Audrey Russo, CEO of the Pittsburgh Tech Council, opened up the conversation with the question, “Why are we leaving womxn innovators behind?” Ledford and Murrell stated that we have many womxn innovators, but they aren’t getting the visibility and investment they need to sustain and grow their business. Despite decades of research that says female-led firms have higher rates of return than male-led firms, there is still a persistent bias against womxn innovators (particularly black womxn) when it comes to investment from venture capitalists.
Murrell and Ledford highlighted another prominent hindrance to systemic change: lack of leadership diversity. As Murrell said, “Either you’re at the table or you’re on the menu.” They emphasized that in order to begin changing the tide, tech and corporate firms need to constantly be transparent about the make-up of their boards. Inclusive leadership makes a big difference if we want individuals in power to hold diversity, social responsibility, and accountability at the center of their work.
On Thursday, the 27th, guest Courtney Williamson shared her unique journey that led her to start her own business Abililife in 2014 to help people suffering from the physical ailments of Parkinson’s Disease. I was struck by her insightful candor about what it’s like to be a black woman in Pittsburgh who is not originally from here. Williamson stated that she understands both sides of the narrative around the Black woman experience in Pittsburgh. On one hand, she said she could not have built her company in any other city; with the rich knowledge of the universities and the startup ecosystem, she received a lot of support. On the other hand, her Black friends have had very real experiences of gentrification and discrimination in Pittsburgh. So, in her view, these articles don’t tell the whole story. The system must serve in all directions. Black womxn innovators and entrepreneurs are full of glorious potential and should be invested in.
Any entrepreneur will tell you that “who you know is just as important as what you know,” but womxn very often face the problem of closed networks because they have been historically and culturally shut out from this space. At least one thing was certain after attending three days of the Fempreneur Summit: our innovation ecosystem is failing if we don’t address the barriers facing womxn entrepreneurs. Look introspectively to see how you are subconsciously (or consciously!) perpetuating these barriers and then keep hiring, investing, and seeking out diverse womxn to speak and lead. And let’s keep these conversations going.