Advance Women-Led Entrepreneurship
The first to create a center and accelerator specifically for women entrepreneurs, Babson has set out to increase women entrepreneurs’ capacity to start and scale new ventures. Only in doing so will economies reach their full potential, and more women and children will be lifted out of poverty.
Why Babson
Entering her sophomore year at Babson, Prabha Dublish, Class of 2018, traveled to northern India, where her family originally is from, to meet with women entrepreneurs in underprivileged villages. With no education or income, many didn’t qualify for loans. Instead, they pooled their money to give to other women in the community who wanted to start a business.
Inspired by their faith and trust in one another, Dublish launched Womentum, a crowdfunding platform that allows people to donate to women entrepreneurs starting businesses in developing countries.
“It’s not just about the power that comes from starting a business. Obviously, there’s an income stream, but there’s also a huge rise in these women’s confidence,” she says.
Babson’s Advantage
- Babson was the first business school to establish a center focused on women entrepreneurial leaders.
- Babson launched the first accelerator for women entrepreneurs.
- Diana Project™ research has generated 1 billion media impressions globally.
- Babson is the lead academic partner of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program.
- The Centennial class is 53 percent women.
Why the World Needs Babson
- Women invest 80 cents per earned dollar in their families, driving GDP up and mortality rates down.
- Seventy percent of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty globally are women.
- For every seven women, there are 10 men starting a new business in the United States.
- There are 200 million women entrepreneurs, yet only 3 percent of all venture capital funding goes to women-led companies.