When Linda Dwyer looked at her business classes at Cicero-North Syracuse High School, she thought something was off-kilter.
“I noticed that most of my classes were male-dominated,” Dwyer said. In fact, one of her class sections doesn’t have a single female student.
In an effort to jumpstart C-NS girls’ interest in business, Dwyer applied for and won the “E-Girls: Empowering Girls through Entrepreneurship” grant from the North Syracuse Education Foundation. She received about $1,400 to give 40 girls a taste of entrepreneurship.
Dwyer is using those funds for two special field trips — one to Armory Square in Syracuse last month and one to the annual Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (WISE) Symposium in April 2015. She opened up the trips to all girls at C-NS. Forty of them took her up on the offer and traveled to Armory Square Sept. 30.
Amanda Gold, owner of clothing boutiques Jet Black, Bounce and Frankie and Faye, and Karyn Korteling, cofounder of Italian food icon Pastabilities, offered a tour of their businesses and the best of their entrepreneurial wisdom. After learning about Gold’s and Korteling’s business ventures, the troupe enjoyed lunch at Pastabilities.
Dwyer often invites successful businesswomen to speak to her students, including several alumnae of her classes. Korteling has hosted tours for Dwyer’s class in years past. This trip introduced a variety of girls to the idea of opening their own businesses.
“When I’m older, I want to own my own cupcake shop,” said Gabby Lounsbury, a student in Dwyer’s entrepreneurship class. “It’s cool to see how [Karyn Korteling] expanded and started from nothing… It made me want to follow my dream even more.”
Annie Lin, an accounting student, said she’d like to open her own restaurant someday, like her parents before her. Korteling’s story of Pastabilities’ trial-and-error — from its popular self-serve lunch counter to a failed breakfast venture to the booming sister bakery, Pasta’s Daily Bread — inspired her as well.
“I liked how she was saying she’s tried a lot of different things and how it made her business better,” Lin said.
Tesia Olijnyk, a friend of Lin’s, said the field trip made her more likely to consider taking business classes at C-NS — “so I can learn how to run a business and control my money,” she said.
The Armory Square and WISE Symposium trips are a one-time endeavor for Dwyer, thanks to the grant, but she said she will continue to champion the successes of women entrepreneurs in her classes.
“A few of them are in business classes, but many are not,” Dwyer said of the girls on the trip. “That was the goal … [to let them] know it’s not out of their reach.”
