Mentor and community creator supporting entrepreneurship
An unexpected outcome of earning my MFA in Creative Writing was realizing that entrepreneurs were actually the most creative people I knew — and who I wanted to be surrounded by. I have been a Techstars mentor since 2016. More recently, I have committed to supporting entrepreneurs in my home state of Louisiana. I am a former EIR and current mentor at The Idea Village and a board member of the Loyola University New Orleans Center for Entrepreneurship. I also founded a peer community for Louisiana-based female startup founders, The Farm.
The Farm
In the summer of 2020, I temporarily moved back to the rice, crawfish and cattle farm where I grew up in rural Vermilion Parish, Louisiana. One day, while listening to local station KRVS, I caught an episode of Out to Lunch featuring a startup founder. I couldn’t believe my ears. In the two decades since I left the farm to work at a startup in New York City, the Louisiana tech ecosystem, while still nascent, had grown substantially. As I introduced myself to the community, I kept meeting female founders, in some cases living a few miles apart from one another, but with no knowledge of what the other was up to. I’ve spent the last two years gathering these women together in a community, The Farm, to provide connectivity, resources, and peer-to-peer support. We’re just getting started.
The Idea Village
The Idea Village has been supporting entrepreneurship in New Orleans for years. I was thrilled to be asked to serve as Entrepreneur in Residence for a recent cohort of companies and remain a dedicated mentor and marketing, brand and communications resource for the ecosystem. In addition to VillageX, The Idea Village’s primary startup accelerator, I also participate in IDEAInstitute, a pre-accelerator for even earlier stage companies. The Idea Village is the connective tissue bringing together entrepreneurs of all stripes in a region that really needs it.