For Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08, co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth in Lewiston, one word to describe a great entrepreneur is “iterative.” For Google account manager Michelle Pham ’15, it would be “relentless.” For Mbali Ndlovu ’09, founder of activewear brand Lukafit, “persistent.”

Sleeper-Whiting, Pham, and Ndlovu joined an alumni panel discussion on entrepreneurship in Chase Hall on Nov. 4. Chris Barbin ’93, a �ֲ���ý trustee and founder of several companies, including IT consulting firm Appirio, moderated the discussion, which was hosted by the Center for Purposeful Work.

The Center for Purposeful Work hosted a panel on entrepreneurship on Nov. 4. From left: Moderated by trustee and entrepreneur Chris Barbin ’93, panelists Mbali Ndlovu ’09, Michelle Pham ’15, and Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08 spoke about their experiences and offered advice to students. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The panel marked the launch of this year’s Bobcat Ventures competition. Over the next several months, the student club will organize a series of workshops on how to design, run, and raise money for a new business, followed by a pitch competition for thousands of dollars in funding.

From their stories of founding their own businesses and working with other founders, Sleeper-Whiting, Pham, and Ndlovu offered plenty of advice and insights for budding �ֲ���ý entrepreneurs. Here’s what we learned.

Find a need

Sleeper-Whiting never expected to start a business. She came to �ֲ���ý wanting to be a veterinarian, but what she called an “epic fail” in a chemistry course left her searching for other paths.

Her sister, Anna Sleeper Cressey ’05, suggested she take an education course. For the accompanying placement in a school, Sleeper-Whiting helped out in an English language learning classroom at Lewiston Middle School.

Lewiston’s Tree Street Youth started because ”there’s kids who need support, and we’re able to do it,” said Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

After that, “�ֲ���ý was my extracurricular,” Sleeper-Whiting joked. “I was off campus way more than I was on campus.”

She continued to tutor students, recruiting her friends to help. She started a homework help program at a local church, and when participants exceeded capacity, she and Kim Sullivan ’13, who volunteered for the program, founded the full-fledged Tree Street Youth Center, which serves primarily immigrant and refugee families in downtown Lewiston’s so-called Tree Streets neighborhood, named for streets like Oak, Walnut, and Birch.

“We didn’t come into it thinking we were going to start a business or that we needed to think of budgets,” Sleeper-Whiting said. “It was just, there’s kids who need support, and we’re able to do it. What’s so complicated about it?”

“I’m always trying to learn how I can improve, with ideas directly from the customers,” said Mbali Ndlovu ’09, founder of activewear brand Lukafit. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Create a community

Ndlovu, who majored in African American studies at �ֲ���ý, always knew she wanted to start a business. But a business doing what, she didn’t know. So after graduation she took jobs at media companies, including Firelight Media, working to increase the representation of people of color in film.

Like many young professionals, Ndlovu tried but failed to establish an exercise routine. That changed when she found people to work out with.

“I started a meetup group for women of color in New York who were also looking for workout buddies,” Ndlovu said. “That grew to almost a thousand women who were looking for the same things I was. Through conversations with all those women, I got inspired to start my company.”

The result is Lukafit, which sells workout gear like leggings and bike shorts designed for women of color.

Be comfortable with ambiguity

As a �ֲ���ý student, Pham was a sociology major and founding leader of the Bobcat Ventures competition. Now she invests in and consults for the companies of friends, and in her role at Google she’s worked with company founders in fields ranging from healthcare to online mattress sales to develop advertising plans on the search engine.

An entrepreneur — or any young professional — should be comfortable with ambiguity, said Google account manager Michelle Pham ’15. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ambiguity is a fact of life for entrepreneurs and many young professionals, Pham said. Departments at Google are frequently reshuffled, merged, or split.

“You can never get too comfortable, because the next day you might be working under a new director or under a new business unit with new goals completely,” she said.

Let the customers guide you

“I’m always trying to learn how I can improve, with ideas directly from the customers,” Ndlovu said.

Talking to customers is what an entrepreneur should do before anything else, she added, referring to Giff Constable’s book Talking to Humans, a guide for conducting customer development interviews.

How many customers? Thirty. “Not five, not 10 — 30,” she said. “Meet them in person or over the phone, and ask questions.”

Though she runs a very different organization, Sleeper-Whiting’s clients — the children and families of Tree Street Youth — are at the center of her model. “Nothing beats directly talking to your clients, talking directly to the people most impacted,” she said.

Since Sleeper-Whiting is not from the Tree Streets neighborhood, she developed a vision for the youth center by listening to children and their families. “Tree Street became an incubator for the kids’ ideas. You could have a really bold youth emerge who says, ‘I want to do X, Y, and Z.’ You’re like, ‘Okay, what can we do with that?’’’

For the panelists, the process of running a business and the relationships you build along the way are as important as the end goal. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Get support

Since founding Lukafit, Ndlovu has joined a community of “peer mentors,” fellow entrepreneurs who talk regularly to share ideas, resources, and emotional support.

“Entrepreneurship is very hard emotionally, financially, and socially,” she said. “You don’t hang out with your friends and family as much, so it can be very taxing on you, and it’s very important to have support. My peer mentors have been that support for me.”

Network, network, network

At �ֲ���ý, Pham said, it’s easy to take for granted the number of “interesting people” who visit campus. But after college, “nobody’s going to curate those events for you anymore.”

So, working at Google in California and then in New York City, Pham has made an effort to go to talks on her own, often sitting in small audiences to hear business giants like Charles R. Schwab speak. In turn, she invites people with interesting ideas to give talks to Google employees.

“You need to keep that curiosity going,” she said.

Chris Barbin ’93, whose startup Appirio sold for $500 million in 2016, recommended being comfortable with rejection and making sure employees are happy — and always making sure an investment is worth it. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Get a return

Chris Barbin has founded four companies so far; his first, IT firm Appirio, sold for $500 million in 2016, after being fueled by several rounds of investor funding.

If an entrepreneur is lucky enough that an investor takes interest — investors and venture capitalists passed on Appirio 21 times, Barbin said — the founder should then move heaven and earth to make the investment worth it.

“I will never not get a return for my investors,” Barbin said. “It is very important to me that if I take their money, they will get a better return than putting money in a safe.”

Don’t fail. Evolve

What happens when you fail? Barbin asked the panelists.

“I don’t fail,” Sleeper-Whiting replied, to audience laughter. She wasn’t joking. “If something’s not working, then you change it. Then you don’t fail, because you’re constantly evolving.”

“The greatest failure that some people have is that when they recognize that something’s not working, they’re too afraid to say that and pivot,” she added.

That pivot isn’t always easy. Sleeper-Whiting recalled Tree Street Youth’s recent move to a new building. Though the new space is nicer, “we lost a lot in moving away from our old building because there’s a lot of history and dynamic to that,” she said.

“We had to intentionally create space to grieve that loss in order to be able to embrace what we can do with this new building.”

Students attending the Nov. 4 entrepreneurship panel discussion in Chase Hall Lounge asked about the panelists’ challenges and rewards, the importance of building relationships, and how to balance raising money from investors and making a profit on the product itself. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Focus on process

One student in the audience asked whether the panelists preferred to focus on the process of running a business or the organization’s end goal.

“You have to work toward something,” Sleeper-Whiting acknowledged, “but I would say it’s process, not perfection. If you’re trying to get it right, at least in my field, you’ll die trying, because you’ll not get there. You’re working with lives, and it’s messy.”

Sleeper-Whiting said she sometimes craves a clear ending. She’ll go on construction jobs with her husband to help him paint, because the job has an end point. She’ll work on financial paperwork for Tree Street Youth “because it gets finished.”

But even when a goal is clear — like Tree Street Youth’s recently completed $2.4 million capital campaign — attention to the means is essential. “We constantly had to iterate to reach that goal,” she said.

Build relationships

Creating relationships is part of reaching any goal, “and those relationships aren’t going to go away once you get to that end goal,” Pham said. “You still need to maintain them to get to the next new goal.”

Relationship-building once saved Ndlovu from a supply-chain disaster. She recently expanded the number of activewear designs Lukafit offered and took pre-orders, not realizing that the factory she used required a minimum order for each design that was higher than the number of items she’d actually sold.

“That was one of my biggest learning curves,” she said, “but because of the relationship I had built with a specific sales rep, she was able to negotiate down for me.”

The Nov. 4 panel discussion kicked off this year’s edition of Bobcat Ventures, a student-run series of workshops culminating in a pitch competition to fund student businesses. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Consider the community

Sleeper-Whiting encouraged budding entrepreneurs to think about more than just profit. “There are a lot of social ventures right now that are combining product creation with providing for a community need,” she said. “Those stand out in today’s society.”

Pham agreed. Social impact is what millennials “care about, more than other generations,” she said.

“How are those products being made? Is there a social component?”

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Elizabeth Strout on Returning to Olive Kitteridge — The New Yorker

Elizabeth Strout ’77 thought she was “done” with Olive Kitteridge, the central character in her 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Until, she told New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Triesman, one day in a European cafe when Olive “just showed up.”

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout ’77 stands with President Clayton Spencer following her 2017 Reunion discussion with Spencer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Olive, Again, will be published in October. The sequel features Olive as she ages and her interactions with other characters deepen and change.

The books’ Maine setting, Strout told Triesman, is inextricable from its characters. “Olive — my Olive — would not be Olive if she lived anywhere but Maine,” she said. “She is like a barnacle clinging to the rock of the place.”

Read the story:

• “,” The New Yorker, July 29, 2019

See also:

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Sept. 1, 2019

Michelle Greene

�ֲ���ý College receives its largest-ever federal grant — Multiple outlets

Maine and national outlets covered the announcement that �ֲ���ý received a $3.97 million National Science Foundation grant to build a video database to support research in fields that rely on the analysis and recognition of images, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene, the principal investigator for the grant, will lead the creation of a Visual Experience Database comprising some 240 hours of video clips that depict everyday human activities and, importantly, simulate human vision and track head and eye movement.

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience Michelle Greene (right) works with student researcher Hanna De Bruyn ’18 to prepare an EEG test in March 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As Greene told Maine Public, the process of collecting video clips for the database will involve trained members of the project team, including �ֲ���ý students, “going out into the world wearing head-mounted cameras, like a GoPro. We’ll be recording what the world looks like as we engage in some common, everyday activities.”

Read the stories:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 16, 2019
• “,” Maine Public, Aug. 16, 2019
• “,” The Associated Press, Aug. 16, 2019

Peter Goodrich ’89

Timeout: 9/11 still a painful day for those who knew Peter Goodrich — Sun Journal

On the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Sun Journal sportswriter Tony Blasi returned to the story of Peter Goodrich ’89, the track and field All-American who died on Flight 175.

Blasi had interviewed, written about, and gotten to know Goodrich as a student as he racked up track and field awards and majored in math and physics.

Peter Goodrich ’89, shown throwing the shot put for �ֲ���ý, “was a gentleman,” said classmate Greg Nespole ’89. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

This year, Blasi talked to Goodrich’s classmate Gregory Nespole ’89. “Peter was a kind, thoughtful man who was modest, though highly exceptional as a student and athlete — a gentleman,” Nespole told him.

A lawyer, Nespole has long worked in Lower Manhattan, and his office is near the 9/11 Memorial. “I lost many friends,” he said. “It is still a painful day.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Sept. 11, 2019

Christopher Petrella ’06

Colin Kaepernick wants you to know your rights — PAPER magazine

Chris Petrella ’06 had a in a recent issue of PAPER focusing on human rights.

The issue, called a “,” by the New York Daily News, carried the theme “Know Your Rights” and featured Q&A interviews with 10 black thought leaders, including 2018 �ֲ���ý Commencement speaker Bryan Stevenson.

Christopher Petrella ’06, director of engagement at American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center, makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group in 2017, when he was a �ֲ���ý faculty lecturer member of the Office of Intercultural Education staff. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The issue’s lead story, “Colin Kaepernick Wants You To Know Your Rights,” was written by Petrella along with radio host Miabelle Bocicault and scholar Ameer Hasan Loggins. The trio also wrote the introductions to each Q&A story.

The entire issue was guest-edited by Kaepernick, the football player-turned-social activist, whose current efforts with his Know Your Rights camps teaches young people their legal rights and, importantly, how to exercise them.

A friend and part of Kaepernick’s inner circle, Petrella is director of engagement at American University’s Antiracist Research & Policy Center.

Read the stories:

• “,” PAPER Magazine, Fall 2019

Michael Rocque

The U.S. Attorney got the numbers wrong. Here’s a look at D.C.’s actual incarceration rate — DCist

A recent debate in Washington, D.C., saw criminal-justice reform advocates saying that D.C. imprisons more people than any of the 50 states. At the same time, the district’s U.S. Attorney said the opposite, that it sends fewer people to prison than any state.

The news website DCist turned to criminologist Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology at �ֲ���ý, to untangle the numbers.

Michael Rocque, associate professor of sociology. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ultimately, you can’t compare D.C. statistics to state statistics, said Rocque, “just as I would caution against comparing NYC to Maine.”

The contrasting data points were bandied about during a public debate over a D.C. Council bill that would “expand opportunities for certain violent offenders to petition for a reduced sentence,” according to the DCist story.

After its initial claim, the U.S. Attorney backtracked and admitted that it had used federal data that only counted inmates at the D.C. jail as opposed to D.C. inmates held by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in federal facilities across the country.

Read the story:

• “,” DCist, Sept. 10, 2019

Edmund Muskie ’36

During his 1972 presidential race, Maine’s Edmund Muskie faced at least three death threats — Sun Journal

FBI files related to Edmund Muskie ’36 and released to the Sun Journal revealed that Muskie received three death threats while campaigning for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president.

“It doesn’t appear from the 1,038 pages of material released to the Sun Journal that the FBI ever tracked down two of the culprits,” wrote the paper’s Steve Collins, who obtained the files through a Freedom of Information Act request. “Federal prosecutors opted not to charge the other, a mentally ill man quickly found by agents.”

Edmund Muskie ’36 and supporters at a 1968 campaign event, location unknown. (Burton Burinsky / Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

Collins also learned that Muskie had a police record (sort of). “On Dec. 28, 1965, in the tiny town of Centreville on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Muskie was issued a criminal summons at Broadwater Farms for ‘attempting to take migratory water fowl with the aid of bait,’�ĝ writes Collins.

Muskie paid the $25 fine.

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 31, 2019

Clifford Odle

‘The Petition’ addresses black liberation and white allyship in the Old State House — WBUR

Jerome Campbell of Boston public radio station WBUR sat in on a performance of The Petition, a play by Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle that explores the contradictions of the American Revolution when it comes to slavery.

The immersive play, in which audiences sit around a table in the Old State House Museum in Boston, is about Prince Hall, a free black man who unsuccessfully petitioned the Massachusetts assembly to abolish slavery.

Lecturer in Theater Clifford Odle (right) talks with Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kirk Read during Opening Convocation on Sept 3. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In the play, Hall’s friend and ally Joseph Warren encourages the petition but ultimately prioritizes the “liberation” of white colonists from British rule.

It’s an example of the harm of white inaction, Odle told Campbell. “Unless you are arguing and agitating for people to have the same rights that you already have, unless you are willing to put your privilege on the line, the job is not done.”

Read the story:

• “,” WBUR, Aug. 27, 2019

Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08

Local people who are all about the work share what motivates them — Sun Journal

A Lewiston Sun Journal article on what motivates community members’ work featured Julia Sleeper-Whiting ’08, co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth.

Julia Sleeper ’08 (right), co-founder and executive director of Tree Street Youth, speaks in 2016 with then-Lewiston High student Binto Matan and Gene Geiger, who supported an expansion of the youth center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“Work is about creating solutions to things happening around us and solving challenges in the world,” Sleeper-Whiting told reporter Beth Herman. “As long as your focus remains on the greater purpose, the work itself remains relevant and meaningful.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Aug. 31, 2019

Ann Kranjec Fortescue ’84

New IMAS exec seeks cross-culture experiences — The Monitor

Francisco E. Jimenez of The Monitor of McAllen, Texas, profiled Ann Kranjec Fortescue ’84, the new president and executive director of the International Museum of Art and Science.

Fortescue said her 35-year career in museums was inspired in part by a �ֲ���ý course on 19th-century European history that included a visit to a historical farm.

“We spent two days on this farm, harvesting rye with a scythe and experiencing what it was like to live as closely as we could to 19th-century peasant farmers,” she told Jimenez. “That was when a switch went off in my head in terms of, ‘I could actually work in a museum and teach with objects.’”

Read the story:

• “,” The Monitor, Sept. 3, 2019

�ֲ���ý College

New students at �ֲ���ý College told to become activists — Sun Journal

The Sun Journal covered �ֲ���ý’ Opening Convocation, in which labor activist and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta received an honorary degree and delivered the keynote address.

The 89-year-old co-founder of the United Farm Workers told the incoming Class of 2023 to learn their history and engage politically to get the country “off the road to fascism.”

Dolores Huerta acknowledges applause as she’s given an honorary degree at Opening Convocation. Ready to present her with the honorary hood is Michael Murray, Phillips Professor of Economics. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The wonderful thing about a democracy is that we can change things,” she said. But “nothing is going to change unless you decide to change it.”

Read the story:

• “,” Sun Journal, Sept. 3, 2019

See also:

• “Convocation speaker Dolores Huerta to the Class of 2023: ‘We have the power,’�ĝ �ֲ���ýNews, Sept. 4, 2019

James F. Amaral ’80

“We want people to bake”: Baker, food writer team up to publish book — The Lincoln County News

Jessica Clifford of Maine’s Lincoln County News interviewed Borealis Breads owner Jim Amaral ’80, who wrote a cookbook with food writer Cynthia Finnemore Simonds.

Amaral told Clifford that the goal of the book, Borealis Breads: 75 Recipes for Breads, Soups, Sides, and More, is to encourage people to bake, even if it costs him business at his popular bakery.

“It’s hard not to feel good about yourself when you bake a loaf of bread, no matter how it turns out,” Amaral said. “It’s a life-affirming thing when you bake – you’re nourishing yourself, you are nourishing your family.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Lincoln County News, Sept. 9, 2019