DNEP welcomes new program manager Aaron Jackson
Aaron Jackson has been hired as the new program manager for the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project, the Center on Finance, Law & Policy announced.
Partnerships in focus: Learning and research collaborations that create better public policy
Lily Hamburger (MBA ’16) supports economic mobility for entrepreneurs as the senior director of the pandemic-born Detroit Means Business, a coalition housed at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and guided by a group of small business owner advisors. She works in collaboration with nonprofits, financial programs, and corporate partners to provide financial and technical assistance to small businesses. In this role, she also serves as a sounding board for the Ford School’s Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurship Project (DNEP) and facilitates connections between businesses and student learning projects.
Program pairs local, newly-trained tech pros with Detroit small business owners
A collaboration between Jefferson East Inc. and University of Michigan will bring new tech training opportunities to Detroiters and technology support for small business owners in the East Jefferson section of 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 …
DNEP +ISLB intern, Samantha Lang, shares experience
Throughout my life, I never thought of myself as a numbers person. Yet, with my goal being to pursue consulting after I receive my Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from the Ford School, I knew I wanted (and needed) to improve that “not a numbers person” attitude. So, I went out on a limb and was put on the Point of Sales (POS) team which focuses on using financial technology to optimize business analytics.
It has been a little less than two weeks on the job, and I can confidently say my knowledge of different POS systems has drastically increased. …
CFLP and School of Information lauded for Detroit Community Tech Worker project
The Center on Finance, Law & Policy is partnering with U-M’s School of Information (SoI) to provide Detroit’s Jefferson East Inc. (JEI) neighborhood organization, in a tech program aimed at aiding small businesses. Crain’s Detroit Business quotes JEI Director of Neighborhood Resilience Lutalo Sanifu as saying that he hopes to involve 140 businesses in the year-long project. “Tech experience is important, but not nearly as important as people being able to work with small business owners in underserved communities,” he said.
“We’re hoping this is a sustainable model. We are trying to build on a ‘train the trainer’ idea where the …
Detroit neighborhood businesses blooming after tapping U-M expertise
Nawal Denard knows the quality of the hand-crafted clothing, jewelry and shoes from her native Ghana in West Africa, and she is proud to sell these dynamic textiles through her Detroit-based business, House of African Prints.
What she didn’t know, however, was marketing. Her success at pop-up shops gave her the inspiration to search for help. To build her business in a sustainable way, Denard applied and was accepted to the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project, a program that brings together the University of Michigan’s students and professors to help entrepreneurs working in the city’s neighborhoods.
As a result, Denard said she is …
