From Melinda Marcus, intern with Handshake 2.0:

First impressions.

Ah, yes.  We are told they are so important, yet most of the time first impressions are very, very wrong. I am sure each us has a story where we had a bad first impression of a person, and now we realize how wrong it was.

I feel as though that is what is happening with my ideas about Social Entrepreneurship (not that I want to marry the idea, just that I really like what I see now). When Anne Clelland, my boss (actually, my internship supervisor) and CEO of Handshake 2.0, first mentioned the idea of Social Entrepreneurship, I thought it would be a small topic, unpopular, and, honestly, not applicable to what I wanted to do with my life.

Now, as I reach the midpoint in my semester,  I realize how wrong I was about Social Entrepreneurship.

For this blog post I want to take a step back and evaluate what I have learned, what I want to learn, and basically state what this internship is teaching me about myself and my passions.

Here are a few thoughts on what I have learned so far about Social Entrepreneurship (SE):

• SE isn't just for the "non-profit" sector
• An SE can be an architecture firm, a retail store, high-tech companies, and so much more
• In essence it is all about giving back - taking what you have learned though school, experience, and life and applying it to a business mission
• I have a lot to learn about businesses and how they work
• An SE places ethics and social justice at its core (not profit)
• SEs are changing the world

The more I learn about the business world and the world, the more I realize how important SE companies are for our future. 

In the last half of my internship, I really want to learn about opportunities in which to practice social entrepreneurship as a business student. I want to develop my own expertise in this field.

This is where I need YOUR HELP!

If you have any ideas about innovative and socially-grounded RNR (Roanoke and New River Valleys) businesses that practice even a hint of social entrepreneurship, please let me know!

I am very interested in talking to all kinds of businesses that have included "giving back" in their business models.

You can follow the entire Defining the Local Social Entrepreneur series by Melinda Marcus.

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Melinda Marcus is an intern for Handshake 2.0, a member company of business acceleration centerVT KnowledgeWorks, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology park, a research park, and a science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The research park provides high-technology companies access to university faculty, university facilities, university equipment, and business-related support services.  The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center fosters commercialization and technology transfer of university research for both high-tech start-up companies and established technology businesses.