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Christina Meade - Nerdy Girl Success

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HCC Small Business Alumni Success Story & Update

HCC Business Plan Competition

Christina Meade

Nerdy Girl Success

Founder, Executive Director

  

HCC Business Plan Competition, 2017 Graduate


Nerdy Girl Success® is changing the landscape of leadership by supporting and preparing young women to become the leaders of today and tomorrow. We do this through career exploration and skills development that results in leadership roles. https://www.nerdygirlsuccess.com/

 

Why did you pick Nerdy Girl for a name and how did you get started?


I got the idea to start Nerdy Girl in 2015. I’m actually not very creative when it comes to naming things. So I put it out in a Facebook group and explained the concept. A daughter of one of the group members suggested Nerdy Girl and everyone loved it.

 

I began planning and launched Nerdy Girl Supplies, LLC in 2016. A portion of the proceeds from sales of Nerdy Girl Supplies would go to a social entrepreneurship component of the business which was to provide leadership training for teenage girls. 

 

So I had begun developing and selling journals and planners when I learned about the HCC Business Plan Competition from a mentor and friend of mine who had recently won the competition. Kathleen McMordie had moved through the competition with her husband and son for their business, Texas Swim Academy, and it had helped them work up a strong business plan of action to implement together. I was a startup and applied for the competition because I felt it would help me develop a stronger plan of action for Nerdy Girl. I got accepted into the 2017 Competition.

How did the HCC Business Plan Competition help you?   


It trained us to learn how to treat our plan as a living breathing document and pivot as we tested portions of our plan, if testing results indicated we should adjust or pivot. We came out of the competition in mid-2017 with a plan to further grow the education side of our business.


Name change - As we did so, for the next year, we realized that our name Nerdy Girl Supplies was good for selling journals and planners but it confused our market when it came to what was most important to us, which was the education side. So in 2018 we repositioned our company and became Nerdy Girl Success to clarify our mission.


We also became a non-profit, so we could focus on other means of raising funds to support our education programs. The competition training had helped us work to and through this. The training in the competition led us to run our non-profit to make money. Non-profit entities still need to be run as efficiently as a For Profit, because we need to generate funds to pour back into the organization to help grow it; and that also helps a non-profit attract additional funding. All the training about the numbers and budgeting, managing expenses, piloting programs without incurring obsessive risk before going full steam ahead on something..... That all helped us establish ourselves in the non-profit world in 2019 and get through the pandemic.  

So what happened to Nerdy Girls Success® when the pandemic hit and how did you make it through?  

 

Well, Nerdy Girl hit a crossroads in 2020 and I had to decide if we were going to fold or go on. My grandmother had a stroke and I was taking care of her. We’d done all of our education programs face to face and no one was going anywhere. So we experimented with making our education program virtual. In April and May I conducted 40 virtual Zoom interviews with women about various topics. In June, we made them the virtual recordings available for our teen girls to watch at any time convenient to them. Then we gathered all of them up in a Zoom conference in May/June. That’s how our first virtual conference went and it kept us afloat and active as we experimented with our delivery. Since then we’ve developed live virtual programming that leads to the wrap up virtual conference and we’ve gone back to onsite programs as well.

In 2021 and 2022, you went back to onsite at some local Houston high schools, and also to onsite activity in Chicago and San Francisco. How did you do that? 

 

Our 2020 Virtual Summit attracted a high school career counselor from Chicago and she contacted us after it to ask us about partnering. The San Francisco opportunity is thanks to one of our Advisory Board members.

 

Advisory Boards have been important in your evolution. How did you get an advisory board with people from all over the country? Also what’s this about a Teen Advisory Board too?

 

  • Advisory Board – Our then Board President, Kate Glasser, and I were trying to determine how we could successfully grow and scale the organization, especially during a pandemic, when she came up with the idea of creating an Advisory Board. We shared on Linkedin about our mission and that we were seeking to build an advisory board. The response was amazing. We asked those interested to apply and we interviewed them to select and build our board. Their support and advice has been key to our success. This has led to leads for where to bring our programs and to funding from a corporate sponsor to do six programs at onsite locations of our choosing; all offered at no cost to the teens participating. 
  • Regarding the Teen Advisory Board – We started that as an outcome from our first virtual conference in 2020 by contacting the most active teens to invite them to participate. This has been invaluable in getting feedback from our market to help us evolve our programs. We do podcasts and have blog posts written by teens too.

What’s next for Nerdy Girl Success®?  


We’ve grown to clearly define and offer three primary programs:


  • Career & Leadership Summit for High School Girls  – This is offered at a specific high school or corporate location and teens from that area can sign up to attend on Saturdays.
  • Career Prep Program for girls aged 17-22 – is virtual. We have live virtual training that leading them through leadership skills, seeking jobs in the career they are pursuing, interviewing and resume skills and job shadowing opportunities after the program wraps up.
  • Nerdy Girl Club – Once a month program where the girls can meet with career women and receive skills workshops.

·        I’ve gone from pulling no salary in prior years to earning a salary now.


We’ve hired a virtual assistant and a marketing company. In fact, our marketing company is Vertical Web; who also sponsors the HCC Business Plan Competition. We are expanding our presence in Houston and Chicago. 


In March 2023, we held our PowHER Leaders Award Celebration. and we are currently in conversations to deliver programs in Boston and in Philadelphia.

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO INTERVIEW - CHRISTINA MEADE on HCCTV

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About the Glenda & David Regenbaum Center for Entrepreneurship

HCC Northwest

 

OUR MISSION: To help entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses.

We do this by offering workshops, seminars, summits, classes and competitive training and advising, while also providing practical knowledge, resources and connections. We are also known for three Signature Programs: the Annual HCC Business Plan Competition, now in its 16th year; the Small Business Success Series by by HCC©; and the HCC Mattress Mack School of Selling©

Contact us at c4e@hccs.edu or 713-718-6650

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 Houston-based academic group called out top universities and programs from around the world — including one in Houston and another in Texas — that are excelling in educating future entrepreneurs at the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers Conference in October.

The GCEC is a consortium of more than 250 university entrepreneurship programs that is headquartered at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, which has been named a top entrepreneurship program itself time and time again. Houston Community College's Office of Entrepreneurial Initiatives (led by Dr. Maya Durnovo) won in the Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Education category. The office is known for signature programs like its annual business plan competition, which has been running since 2008. It is also home to the Minority Business Development Agency, created by a grant from the Department of Commerce in 2013, and the MBDA Pandemic Recovery Center. Additionally, the HCC Alief Hayes Campus is in partnership with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, providing 100 hours of instruction and advising and access to capital and an alumni network.

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Houston Community College has won the 2022 Bellwether Award for its outstanding and innovative workforce development program: HCC’s Entrepreneurial Initiatives. The Bellwether Awards are widely regarded as one of the nation’s most competitive and prestigious recognitions for community colleges. Dr. Maya Durnovo, HCC’s chief entrepreneurial initiatives officer leads HCC’s mission of helping entrepreneurs start and grow businesses to bolster the local economy, create jobs and build Houston’s ecosystem by starting and growing small businesses, including minority-, veteran- and women-owned businesses. Dr. Durnovo said. “I am so fortunate to have a highly motivated and passionate team that strives for excellence in everything they do.”

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Congratulations to all students, faculty, staff, entrepreneurs (aspiring & existing); and to all our community participants, supporters, volunteers, partners and sponsors who collaborate with us to make awards like this possible! Congratulations also to all of the other honorees and awardees! 


#WeAreHCC # HoustonStrong #HBJDiversity


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Houston Community College 

2020 Entrepreneurial College of the Year


October. 6, 2020: The Houston Community College System was selected as the winner of the 2020 Entrepreneurial College of the Year award by the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) at NACCE's annual conference, where entrepreneurial colleges from across the U.S. gather to share best practices. On behalf of all of our entrepreneurial programs and staff, we thank all of the entrepreneurs, partners, sponsors, volunteers, students, and HCC faculty and staff who have contributed to our efforts! Without your support and dedication to our programs, this wouldn't have been possible!