As Female Founders In Chicago Grow, Northwestern Bolsters The Pipeline

When it comes to promoting women in business, Northwestern University recently proved it is doing something right. The school ranks 12th on CrunchBase for producing female founders, 9th when adjusted to only including graduate school alum, the highest among any Chicago-area university. In addition, this year Kellogg's incoming MBA class is made up of 43 percent women, according to Poets and Quants-- tying a record set last year by University of California-Berkeley. This news comes on the heels of a Compass survey that found 30 percent of Chicago's startup founders are women, the most of any top startup ecosystem in the world. As Chicago seeks to maintain and increase that representation, the growing Northwestern pipeline gives some insight into what can encourage women to get into business, and perhaps launch a startup of their own. "We knew our numbers were strong… and we were hopeful," said Beth Tidmarsh, director of full-time MBA admissions at Kellogg, about this year's incoming class. "This is the result of several years of effort and attention and partnership with Women's Business Association. You can't on a dime in your admissions practices or pipeline." The last few years, Kellogg has hovered a bit above 30 percent in its admissions, rising to 38 percent last year. In the meantime, Tidmarsh said applications from women have grown stronger over time, as well as in volume. In that time, Northwestern has ramped up resources that have connected women in business as soon as they step on campus. The school is a sponsor of Forte, a national organization that encourages women in business, which hosts events on campus and across the city. It also sponsors several scholarships to promising incoming MBA students. Northwestern has also had a particularly active Women's Business Association, which hosts events, networking, and professional development initiatives across campus, as well as an annual women's preview day for incoming students. Aside from active recruiting efforts, Tidmarsh pointed out that the school leads by example: the leadership team at Kellogg has seven women, including dean Sally Blount. That was what drew Blair Pircon, current MBA candidate and CEO of edtech startup The Graide Network, to the school. She didn't know much about Kellogg as she prepared to transition from a career in finance to business school, but she soon realized how important that was for her next step. "The school is run by women," she said. "I was coming from a world where I was the small minority of women in my department….I was ready for an environment where there was a strong female leadership." Pircon, who is also the co-president of Kellogg's Women's Business Association, went to Kellogg with the aim of starting her own company. Entrepreneurship is also something that Tidmarsh has seen change in enrollment over time, particularly with women: 10 percent of this year's incoming full time MBA class are women interested in innovation and entrepreneurship (overall, 25 percent of the overall class indicated an interest in starting their own company). Almost immediately upon starting with the program last fall Pircon was able to connect with a cofounder that had her same vision, and this upcoming school year they are set to start the second pilot for their company, which connects college-age education students with teachers to help with grading and receive mentorship. She took a course with entrepreneurship professor Linda Darragh, who connected her with mentors at Impact Engine. She won a social impact award and funding from Kellogg and edtech hub LEAP Innovations, and incubated at LEAP this summer as a result. "I can really feel that Kellogg wants entrepreneurs," she said."At Kellogg, our courses and extra-curricular activities emphasize that there are many different pathways to entrepreneurship and many different functions within entrepreneurial companies," added Darragh over email. "We believe that this has resulted in female participation in our core entrepreneurial courses to mirror the percentage of women in the school." Shradha Agarwal, a Northwestern alum and cofounder of ContextMedia, felt the entrepreneurial push even back in the mid-2000s when she was an undergraduate in the process of launching her company. Though she said there wasn't a strong entrepreneurial community in Chicago at the time, the community of Northwestern faculty members with connections in the business scene helped strengthen the foundation she built to move forward and make ContextMedia one of the most notable startups in the city. She also found a diverse community, which helped spark discussion and connections that could turn into ventures. "Any engineering class, math class or journalism class - you were welcomed as a Northwestern student, not via the sub-identities of being a female or an immigrant," she said over email. "This diversity allows you to gain perspective, embrace new things and build confidence in our own abilities. This also creates the perfect environment for finding co-founders who have complementary skills, exploring new industries, joining student organizations on themes unrelated to your study major, and pushing yourself to a new challenge." Though these factors may have contributed to the rise of female founders out of Northwestern, there is still work to be done: 43 percent isn't 50 percent when it comes to women in the incoming MBA class. The combined number of female founders from top Illinois universities on CrunchBase (119) is half the amount of the top university producing female founders (Stanford: 236). "If Chicago's startup ecosystem has 30% women founders, aren't we about 21% below our goal?" tweeted venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker after the recent survey news. Kellogg's Women's Business Association is addressing issues with gender dynamics in the office with an upcoming winter quarter seminar series run by professor Victoria Medvec, who runs the popular "Negotiations" class. Still in development, the classes will touch on topics that have been barriers to women moving forward within the workplace in the past, such as being heard, taking smart risks, and selling their ideas. The aim is to bring men into the conversation as well. Developing these skills can be important for later in the business world, when the gender ratio is skewed male. Pircon said that though she has been happy with the gender dynamic at Kellogg, she points out the women in business school are often "a smaller pool of women who have already fought that battle and made that commitment to continue on." Now the key is to making sure younger women see the path that they have highlighted."One of the main issues is always going to be a pipeline--start thinking about it earlier and thinking about it more," she said. "People are following career paths where they see people like them be successful. It really really helps to see that role model doing it." Agarwal echoed this sentiment. "When young girls read that there aren't enough women in the career of their choice, they feel discouraged," she said. "In order to solve this problem - and the way to do that is by encouraging more women to start businesses and explore the careers they are most passionate about - we need to highlight those who have walked that road before and show young students it is possible and they can do it too."