Students gathered in Hyland Hall Feb. 18 to hear from four women entrepreneurs who turned post-college uncertainty into thriving businesses. This year’s panel had three UW-Whitewater alumnae and one current student. The panel was created to encourage UW-W students to be inspired and hear about one of the several possibilities they have after college.
“We started doing it because there’s Women in Entrepreneurship Week in the fall, and we were just trying to celebrate it,” senior lecturer Megan Matthews said. “And then we ended up moving it to the spring this year.”
For the past five years, the school has chosen UW-W alumnae as the panelists. The school does not usually have to look far for panelists each year. Many UW-W alumni are often looking for ways to give back to the university.
“Sometimes they will reach out to us and they want to give back,” said Rashiqa Kamal, director of the Women in Business Institute and Associate Professor of Finance. “And they ask, ‘how can we get involved?’ And then there’s others, we just know of them, and we reach out to ask if they want to contribute to the college.”
This year’s panel was different though. Instead of four alumnae, the panel had three of them alongside a current UW-W student, junior Sophia Polenz, who owns a jewelry shop she started at 17.
Besides Polenz were April Devalkenaere, Elena Gildemeister, and Taralinda Willis. The women talked about how they got their businesses started and whether or not they found it, or the business found them.
Gildemeister said she and her husband knew they did not want the usual 9-to-5 office desk job. So they bought Whitewater Cinemas, and later opened The Sweet Spot Cafe.
Devalkenaere talked about how she wanted to help those affected by cybersecurity, and discussed the HQ barriers she had to jump to be able to start her own business.
The panel began over five years ago to go hand-in-hand with UW-W’s Women in Business Week. A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes on for this event, more than the audience might expect.
“It’s kind of like those things that you don’t realize when you’re not an entrepreneur… the hours of putting the questions together, communicating with the panelists, making sure they have parking, promoting the event, getting emails out to different instructors, all sorts of other places,” Matthews said.
This panel was a great opportunity for UW-W students to learn more about the options they have outside of college and different ways to pursue any possible career plans.
“The panel helps our alumni and our students see something that they don’t always think about,” Matthews said. “It’s worth the energy and the effort to make it available. I like it because every year someone goes, ‘oh, I didn’t know that was a thing.’”
The panel is also beneficial for the panelists to get their name out and give back to their school.
“I think our alumni, they just want to give back,” Kamal said. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to get students to benefit from that. That’s kind of the hard part. But they’re always reaching out to us. And they’re like, ‘what can we do? How can we give back?’ So they are a great part of this.”
UW-W looks forward to hosting next year’s panel and the successful alumnae who will join it.
