Shayla Adams, CEO and Founder of RemixEducation, spoke to the UMBC community about her experiences as a social entrepreneur with a fast paced life style.

If you missed this informative and exciting workshop be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the workshop available below. Also below is the slide deck Shayla used in her presentations.

Shayla started off this series by talking about how she has always had the “entrepreneurial spirit.” As a kid she would sell toys and lemonade and as she grew, she constantly came up with new ideas to help her community. This was how she started getting involved with nonprofits.

After finishing college she came back to her hometown in Columbia, Maryland and saw that many students from her high school weren’t going to college because of their financial situations. She saw a need in her community and decided to start a scholarship to help first generation college students achieve their goals. This demonstrated Shayla’s first lesson of social entrepreneurship, which is to identify a need in the community.

She then moved to North Carolina to teach, and saw a need to help at-risk high school students. She went on to establish the H.E.R Story Program, where she exposes at risk girls to various post-secondary opportunities and mentoring. After the first year in North Carolina was a huge success, she was asked to open a program in Washington DC. This leads to Shayla’s second lesson of social entrepreneurship, which is to develop a strategic plan before you grow. She said it would have been a lot easier to start the Washington DC program if she had set goals and guidelines that encompassed the next 2-5 years. She said to always have a system set before growing, or it will be very hard to stay on top of everything.

She persevered through the challenges of running two programs in two different states because the problem she was trying to solve was authentic to her, which is the third lesson of social entrepreneurship. She has a passion and a great deal of knowledge about the education system and what at-risk youth needed to thrive. Shayla says to start something that you’re passionate about and then do research on that issue, which is the fourth lesion of social entrepreneurship. It is up to you to figure out if what you want to do is feasible and right for your community.

She then talked about her biggest challenges/surprises as an entrepreneur. She said her biggest challenge was identifying and maintaining leadership. To her, leadership is influencing others to want to follow you and your vision. She also said she was surprised to learned many managerial skills while running her business and was surprised with how often she needed to train others on these skills (i.e. Writing professional emails, how to document activities, etc.)

She suggested checking out the podcast called Startup, which is something she wished she listened to years ago.

She is also looking for student help! Shayla believes that innovative minds are what makes her program better. Below are the opportunities she is offering:

• Innovation fellows needed to help her throughout the year (with the potential to get college credit).
• Tech gurus needed to help her software company, Test4Me, continue to grow.
• Interns needed to work for her early start up involving “coworking spaces” called The Nest.

If you are interested in any of these opportunities please reach out to Shayla directly at shayla@remixeducation.org.