Introductory nights:
Hi Everyone,
My Name is Natalia Pinzon and I am an up and coming senior. This summer I will be doing an internship in a company called IX-Style. Before my summer began I was having an existential crisis, due to the fact that I did not know what I was going to do once I graduated. So instead of stressing out about what I didn’t know, I focused on what I did know. I knew I wanted to give back to my country and I knew that somewhere along the line I would do a start up again. I contacted the nonprofit that I support in Guatemala and they put me in contact with an amazing women entrepreneur living in NYC. Her name is Francesca Kennedy, a former wealth management executive who decided to give meaning to her life by giving back to her country.
We talked about her life and the choices she had made by drifting from a corporate-financial world to a for-profit, non-profit start up. After a very interesting Skype call, she offered me an internship. Even though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to work for a startup, I felt that this internship would not only help me grow as an entrepreneur, but it would also help me understand how to successfully run a socially oriented startup. We came up with a plan that a part from my daily duties, (social media managing, marketing, sales and operations) we would also plan a fundraiser together in benefit of Asociacion Puente, (the nonprofit we both support). Asociacion Puente is a nonprofit in Guatemala that works to reduce extreme poverty and chronic malnutrition by empowering women and their families through education workshops and microloans. In the past I had done several fundraising activities for Asociacion Puente, but they have all been in Guatemala. So Francesca and I were a good team because she had all the contacts in NY and I had all the time and past experience to plan it. So I packed my bags, went to NYC and the adventure begun.