MAGIC MIXER: Forget Networking, GirlsUp Mingle!
With charming Christmas tones, heartwarming decorations, and table after tables of beautiful gift bags and desserts, all evidence points to a Christmas party, except, it is more than a party!
With a full house, GirlsUp finished the year strong with our very own Magic Mixer! Following our previous speaker panel: Power of Female Entrepreneurship, we have doubled the number of mentors and restricted the attendees to 30 in order to provide our girls with enough chance to talk to mentors one on one.
We invited 10 stellar CEOs with expertise ranging from start-up advisory (growth, marketing, strategy, and funding), media, entertainment, fashion, technology, business networking and even horoscope as our mentors.
“Just tell me what you need, and I will help or connect you with the best people!” was what each mentor repeatedly offered.
We kicked off the event by having everyone do a 30-sec self-intro. This made finding the right person to talk to later on much easier.
Hillary Gadsby is the Founder and CEO of Gadsby Media Group, an event marketing company that has planned campaigns for Saks Fifth Avenue. She also founded her own community supporting female entrepreneurs, StilettoGal, and expressed her interest in hiring interns.
Kevin R. Gould, Founder and CEO of Kombo Ventures, used his expertise working in one of the world’s largest talent agencies to create his own venture consulting firm. He is passionate about using the 360 degree approach to support, guide, and invest in start-ups. He is also seeking interns at our mixer.
Dosse-Via Trenou, a USC alumni, a Model and Founder of ScorpioMystique talked about how a horoscope blog she set up during freshman year turned into an entrepreneur idea. Her site now welcomes more than 190,000 potential customers, attracting celebrities such as Katy Perry.
Elaine Binder and Michael Popovsk, a loving couple and Founder of their long-standing company, Spongelle LLC, are eager to share their lessons learned from 10 years of building their own company. In particular, Michael highlighted his expertise in “what not to do” in a startup.
Cal Amir, having worked at Wall street in management consulting, is now a startup advisory at Guzu.com. He is passionate about developing strategies that guide entrepreneurs on the right direction.
Victor Valdez, a bootstrapping serial technology entrepreneur, has already founded 4 companies and is in the process of founding another one!
Among the attendees, we welcomed our youngest attendee, Sarah, as well as her entire family of entrepreneurs. Howard and Debbie Nodelman, the founders of Tru Alka Alkaline Water, brought their daughter to our mixer hoping to encourage her to pursue entrepreneurship following their steps.
Sarah, although only a Senior at high school, is already in charge of the social media and marketing for her family business. She is also passionate about technology, and has many ideas of developing mobile applications for her school. Impressed with GirlsUp's vision, Howard immediately expressed his interest to become our mentor. Before the mixer ended, Sarah also joined us and became our youngest member at GirlsUp.
After learning about everyone in the room, we soon opened the floor up to free networking in a session called “FaceTime”. Attendees made direct acquitance with the mentors they would like to talk with in this session.
Our GirlsUp member Emily found her “twin sister”, another girl interested in holding photography and art exhibitions. Through further introduction, Lucy and Melissa discovered that they have the same entrepreneurial idea. Julie, a girl who has already worked at the Big 4 consulting firms, now turns to GirlsUp for inspiration and resources to entrepreneur.
After “FaceTime”, attendees had the opportunity to talk to mentors one on one. Through sharing and exchanging ideas, knowledge, and connections, many GirlsUp members found a mentor of their own to begin their journey of entrepreneurship.
By the end of the mixer, everyone left with meaningful connections, inspiring stories and ideas, and most importantly, beautiful memories and gifts. Empowered and connected, GirlsUp’s girls are ready to rock the world!
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