Black Girl MATHgic

Client Spotlight: Black Girl MATHgic

Brittany is the owner of Black Girl MATHgic, a math subscription box company that aims to decrease math anxiety for girls and empower them to embrace their math abilities. Brittany founded Black Girl MATHgic in 2018 after witnessing math anxiety in her students firsthand as a math tutor. Since then, she’s shipped over 5,000 math subscription boxes, helping hundreds of children gain math confidence. 
Currently, Brittany is working with two DNEP student teams to take Black Girl MATHgic to the next level: (1) In MKT 313: Consumer Behavior, students are conducting market research and surveying current customers to get input about …

Image of Ross's BA670 class: +Impact Studio Designing Equitable Enterprises

U-M students create new how-to guides and equitable business models for green energy businesses to help Detroit entrepreneurs take advantage of new federal funding

“The Inflation Reduction Act sounds really boring,” says Michigan Ross professor Jerry Davis, “but it’s actually a big stack of money for green energy businesses. If you read through it, it’s easy to think of dozens of ways that this could benefit a city like Detroit.”
Davis and his colleague, Cat Johnson, of Michigan Ross’ Business+Impact designed a class to do just that. The class, BA670: +Impact Studio Designing Equitable Enterprises, teaches teams of grad students from all majors how to use equity-centered design thinking to develop businesses that improve communities. This year’s focus is on the green energy transition in …

Photo of Helina Melaku of Konjo Me and Ysahai Honor-Marie of Ice Creame Detroit

Konjo Me & Ice Cream Detroit Selected for DNEP Accelerator: Business+Law+Design

When most small businesses become clients in a Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project class, they get a basketball team’s worth of researchers, data analysts, thought partners, and cheerleaders. Helina Melaku of Konjo Me and Ysahai Honor-Marie of Ice Cream Detroit, it’s more like getting an entire baseball team.
Melaku and Honor-Marie were selected as this year’s integrated semester clients, meaning that they are working with teams of students from three different classes at the Ross School of Business, the Law School, and the Stamps School of Art & Design. Students in the three classes work on different aspects of the business, but …

Baer considers long-term challenges for downtown businesses

Baer considers long-term challenges for downtown businesses

According to Christie Baer, assistant executive director for the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law and Policy, downtown businesses face a big decision as the pandemic continues.
“Businesses that thought that they just had to weather a short storm are suddenly realizing that it’s going to be like this for a long time,” she said. “It just becomes not as worth it to pay a higher cost of being downtown.”