Writer in the Thick of It: Recapping EforAll Lowell Lawrence Winter Accelerator Awards Celebration

Crowd Beginning to Arrive at Everett Mills -- Such a Beautiful Space

On Thursday, March 15 (two whole days after the blizzard) Everett Mills hosted the EforAll Lowell Lawrence event celebrating the completion of the winter accelerator program. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful this historic mill is with its old wooden floors and big windows. It also never ceases to amaze me how much entrepreneurial energy there is in the Merrimack Valley. Thank you to Marianne Paley Nadel for hosting such a wonderful celebration of local entrepreneurship in this historic building.

Marianne Paley Nadel Welcoming Us to Everett Mills

A showcase of the businesses in this cohort, tasty food from El Taller and Cafe Azteca, an inspiring keynote speaker, a wonderful class speaker, the traditional one-minute pitches, and the awarding of $15,000 in prize money made for a great evening. I love going to these awards celebrations because I get to catch up with entrepreneurs that I met at the pitch contests and hear about their experience of the accelerator program. Everyone I asked used the word "amazing" to describe it.

Nate McNiff -- The Wandering Stage

I enjoyed catching up with Nate McNiff whose idea for a mobile theater was my favorite at the All Ideas Pitch Contest back in October. He's changed the name of the project to The Wandering Stage (it was Mobile Entertainment Theater back in October) and made great progress in lining up funding and starting to get some bookings.

Michaela Quigley of Shine Magazine with Mentor Todd Smith

Michaela Quigley started Shine, an online publication for teens and young adults with disabilities, so that young people would have a place where they can celebrate their abilities. It's a general interest magazine, not a magazine that's only about disabilities.

Kim Mahady -- TLC Autism Parent Community

TLC Autism Parent Community supports the needs of parents with children on the autism spectrum. There are lots of services for kids with autism, but not so much for their parents. Kim Mahady and Andrea Magnell have been scheduling events to connect with parents to discuss what they need.

Cindy Ngin -- Sugar Dust

Sugar Dust is a bakery specializing in custom cakes and French macarons. My mouth started to water at the thought of macarons.

Heather DeBerio -- Powerhouse Juice

Powerhouse Juice showcased some of the juices and an article about them from the Globe Magazine. Powerhouse provides cold pressed juices and farm to table catering all over Massachusetts.

Kim BeBe's Table

Kim BeBe is a small batch manufacturing facility that caters to fashion designers. Manufacturing fashion and accessories locally is a growing trend, you could even say it's a movement. Kim's one minute pitch emphasized the importance of bringing manufacturing back to the USA.

Angel Hernandez -- FocusedPT

FocusedPT provides customized personal training and health coaching emphasizing the client's individual needs and goals. Check out Angel's EforAll Lowell-Lawrence post on their Medium blog for a glimpse into his EforAll accelerator experience.

Chris Janowski--WakeMe and Yetta Procope--Yettaz Studioz

WakeMe is a social video alarm clock that plays short, personalized videos from your friends and family on your smart phone to wake you up. Making waking up a social experience gets you engaged in your day immediately. It's a much more pleasant awakening than an alarm clock -- you might even start to look forward to waking up.

Yettaz Studioz is a custom designed clothing company that combines modern fashion and traditional Senegalese fabrics.

As I made the rounds of the tables, the theme I kept hearing from the entrepreneurs is how they have formed a strong bond during the accelerator program and how much they value that connection. I could feel that in the air and see it in practice as they interacted throughout the evening, sharing insights and experiences and supporting each other.

Keynote Speaker Mary Guerrero

Lawrence entrepreneur, Mary Guerrero co-owner of Cafe Azteca and El Taller, gave an inspiring keynote address emphasizing the role of businesses in building community. One insight she gleaned from running restaurants really resonated with the crowd: "I've come to realize that restaurants aren't just restaurants, they're places where people come together." She convinced us that it's not just restaurants and coffee shops that build community. She had the audience talk with each other about businesses they remembered that had been important in their lives. I was surprised to find myself talking about The Barn, a shoe store in my home town, which also sold sporting goods. I bought my first baseball glove there. It's the sort of place that people remember long after they've moved away. I've actually shared memories of buying shoes at The Barn with people I didn't even know when I was a kid -- a different generation. Thinking about that along with my favorite coffee shops and restaurants and the people I've met through them really brought home what she said about the power of small local businesses: "Your businesses are going to be much bigger than yourself. They will be apart of a community, and help people feel like they belong. They have the power to transform."

Class Speaker Nate McNiff

Class Speaker Nate McNiff's talk addressed community also -- the community of the EforAll Winter Accelerator cohort. He said he looked up the origin of the term cohort and found out it referred to an ancient Roman military unit and that struck him as very appropriate for the group of entrepreneurs in the accelerator. The thought that stood out for me was "We are going to rise together, just like a group of warriors, we're going to have each other's backs."(Hope I got that right.) I could see the spirit of the group in the way they listened to each other doing the one minute pitches and cheered for each other as the awards were presented.

Cohort Lined Up for the One Minute Pitches

One Minute Pitches -- Kim BeBe

Kravant Boutique is a Khmer specialty boutique in Lowell focused on renting, buying, and selling high end dresses. I remembered Bora Chiemruon from the October pitch contest when she pitched it as Jewell by BC.

One Minute Pitches -- Kravant Boutique

I appreciated hearing the one minute pitches because I somehow didn't manage to talk with each entrepreneur one-on-one and I like to include at least a summary of each one in the write-up. Here are the ones I didn't get to:

The Leap Network is an umbrella company for professional services ranging from recruiting and career advisory/coaching to social networking.
My Playground Spanish Academy is a for profit bilingual preschool that will expose children to Spanish.
Crose Nest Collective, LLC is modern botanica offering locally sourced herbal, holistic, and hand-crafted artisan goods.

Yetta Procope Listening to the One Minute Pitches

The Cohort with Lianna Kushi and Joey Banh

After the one minute pitches, the cohort received their certificates and class gift. Then it was time for the awards. The award money went to:

The Wandering Stage - $5,000
Del Sur - $4,000 A maker of all natural empanadas sold at farmers’ markets, catering, and specialized retail
Sugar Dust - $3,000
WakeMe - $1,500
KimBeBe - Christina Hamilton Award - $500