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YBI ‘Breaks Boundaries’ with WE program, event
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Carmella Williams has a game plan for her hair product company, Carmella Marie.
With the hair to flaunt her products’ work, the products themselves and the skills she gained from the Youngstown Business Incubator, Williams is ready to take her business to the next level.
One day she hopes to have a storefront filled with her products and a full-time hair salon all in one.
“We would love to do that,” Williams said.
Williams is a graduate of the first Women in Entrepreneurship, or WE, class at the Youngstown Business Incubator.
She’s also the first to receive a $5,000 grant reward from the WE Program after she finished her classes.
The grant money helped her buy ingredients for her hair products and marketing and will help with the cost of having a space to make her products.
The nine weeks of classes on business 101, finance, legal, marketing and other topics made her company more viable, she says.
“It helped me look out and forecast legitimate sales,” Williams said.
“It helped me get a game plan for five years down the road.”
The WE Program grew out of the YBI, a known technology-based incubator, in the summer of 2015.
Before the program started, the local incubator would consistently receive calls from female entrepreneurs with business ideas.
Leaders at the technology incubator decided to put together a program specifically for these women with ideas outside of technology-centered businesses.
The first WE program had 14 graduates in the spring. For the fall, there are 18 participants selected out of 25 applicants. The fall classes start Sept. 21.
“I was looking for a more diverse group of women that could accept mentoring [and] that had viable business ideas that could impact the community in a positive way,” said Stephanie Gilchrist, WE program director.
The businesses are typically oriented around lifestyle: skin care, hair care and food.
Williams started her hair-care product company in the summer of 2013 while doing some soul searching after she was laid off from her job.
She did some research on what the best products were for curly hair and coily hair, which is hair with a tighter curl pattern in which the width of the curl is very narrow and can easily tangle, and started making them in her kitchen. She now has nine hair products and a growing list of followers who come from all over to attend her “Let’s Talk Hair” sessions.
“Our whole purpose is to help women feel confident flaunting their hair in its natural state,” she said.
Williams was able to do this at an even higher level with the help of the WE program.
“It has really brought community-awareness to a group of folks who didn’t recognize that we were here to support entrepreneurship,” Gilchrist said. “It opened us up to the community.”
Next week, the WE program will bring in speakers, Denise DeBartolo York, a co-chairwoman of the San Francisco 49ers; and Manon Rh aume, known as the “First Woman of Hockey,” who was the first and only female to play in an NHL game with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992.
The event, which takes place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Covelli Centre, is the first fundraiser for the WE program.
“I think it’s important to raise the awareness of the program and to get the message out that women can break boundaries,” said Colleen Kelly, director of development for the YBI.