Introducing Our First Trailblazer (Duo): Mia Nguyen and Eliana Berger.
This year, the theme of our annual design conference is Interventions: Trailblazers… so we thought, why not spotlight some of Northeastern’s very own?
by Veronica Cihlar, images by Jasmin Yu, Gabi Homonoff, & Yasmeen Masri
In the spirit of our Interventions theme, Scout will be featuring three of Northeastern’s own “Trailblazers,” who will also win free tickets to our conference! Since there was really no splitting up the duo that is Mia and Eliana, we decided to make an exception and allow for four.
Before I even had the chance to launch into the usual year-major-hometown introductions, Mia beat me to the punch. Quickly and articulately, she inquired, “Could we introduce each other? I know her like the back of my hand at this point.”
Nothing could have given a quicker snapshot of their dynamic, which also speaks to the unique environment they have created at WISE: a fusing of close, personal friendships and highly ambitious, professional relationships, with mission-driven passion at the very core.
So without further ado, here are our very first trailblazers:
Mia Nguyen and Eliana Berger,
the Co-Founders and Co-Directors of the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship (colloquially known as WISE).
Mia Nguyen (MN): “So Eliana Berger. First, she’s my best friend. Family is also everything to her, and I’m grateful to be part of that family. She’s also the Co-Founder and Co-Director of WISE, a Venture Partner at Contrary Capital, and a Product Manager at Lola. She’s had numerous internships over the summers, but I won’t go into those. Right now, she’s in her second year, studying business, design, and psych, and she’s from Long Island, New York. Outside of that, she likes to sing and play the guitar… but unfortunately not shop, so we can’t do that together!”
Eliana Berger (EB): “Mia is my best friend, and the other Co-Founder and Co-Director of WISE! She’s also a third-year studying finance and global social entrepreneurship, and she’s from Chicago. She is currently an Investment Associate at Underscore VC for her co-op, which is really cool. This past summer, she went on a Dialogue to India, which was incredible and a huge step out of her comfort zone. She was working with women there that were running their own local social enterprises... She’s incredibly empathetic, and I think that’s probably one of the biggest strengths that she has — how much she cares about people, working with others, as well as mentoring and learning from them.”
Veronica Cihlar (VC): “So how did you two meet?”
EB: “We met through the Entrepreneurs Club; we were both on its board.”
MN: “She was a freshman, I was a second-year. It was fall, October 2018, and we met at the first board meeting of E-Club — I still remember how I was late because I was going through recruitment. I was simply stunned by the woman sitting across from me… I was like, ‘yup, I want to work with her!’”
VC: “Well thank you both for such great intros, that was so wholesome. One of my next questions was about how you created WISE together. What need did you see on campus that wasn’t being fulfilled that led you to found WISE?”
MN: “Well, we didn’t identify a solution right away, but we did see a problem. We saw that there was a niche community of women who wanted to educate themselves about the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but there was some blocker they were facing to engage. And so we took it upon ourselves to conduct what you might call ‘user interviews’ — but more friendly — to find out why women weren’t engaging with the already-amazing organizations on campus. We wanted to see if there was a misalignment or a missing stepping stone, which we identified was true, and that’s where WISE was born.”
EB: “We also have a really big focus on being interdisciplinary — we definitely saw that we wanted to get women involved from outside the business school, too… We saw the need for women from all backgrounds that were interested in exploring entrepreneurship, but maybe didn’t know what entrepreneurship really meant, or thought they could only get involved if they already had a company.”
We wanted to demystify that and explain what entrepreneurship really is: it really means just being incredibly passionate about something and going out to find a solution, which we saw many people were willing and wanted to do.
I think that’s kind of where WISE came from, as well as our need for community. I think we struggled to feel like we belonged anywhere.”
MN: “Yeah, an ongoing joke that we share with the team is that we really started WISE because we wanted a friend group. We joke about it now, but we were young students at the university, and Northeastern’s unique in the sense that it has a community of come-and-go. So I think that we really wanted a community that was not only there professionally, but also personally.”
VC: “So you mentioned a ‘missing stepping stone’ for women entrepreneurs. I was looking at some of the statistics on your website earlier, about how little funding goes to women entrepreneurs — what do you think that ‘missing stepping stone’ is?”
EB: “Part of it is just a place to belong. You have to see it to believe it, and that’s really what we were hoping to do: just get a bunch of like-minded individuals together, and create a community. But there’s a big part of it that relates to the general entrepreneurship ecosystem, where there’re really not that many female founders. So with WISE, we also had a broader goal of encouraging the creation of more female-founded companies and ventures, and educating women early on. There are many facets to entrepreneurship and there isn’t just one way to do it, or just one path. We wanted to bring in a diversity of speakers and of events, which is where the idea for our different programs came from… and which is something that differentiates WISE a lot. So much incredible thought, care, and attention goes into every single thing that we put out. We call it our ‘WISE Touch.’”
MN: “It’s what we would have wanted, and do still want, as young women pursuing careers in business and entrepreneurship.
I think that with anything you do in life, the people are the most important, which is why community is a pillar of everything we do.”
EB: “We’ve also both had individual experiences that contributed a lot, ones we went through in high school and in college… like feeling out of place in certain situations, whether it’s at work or with other things we are involved in.”
MN: “It’s situations where we as young women don’t receive little but important things, like eye contact or handshakes.”
EB: “Or we’re just blatantly ignored... It’s definitely a lot of experiences where these issues hit very close to home.”
MN: “And then, when women share these things publicly, they can come off as complaining, and they might feel shamed or shunned for sharing those feelings. And what’s so nice about WISE is that when you share these experiences, we know from firsthand, unfortunately, how it may feel. We know that it’s not a complaint but rather an ask for, ‘how can I overcome this?’… It’s so important because we want women to know that they’re not the only ones feeling like this.
We’re all here together to change the world and break glass ceilings.”
EB: “And you can see that with our team. The people that we attract to all of our programs and on the board share very similar values. It genuinely just feels magical because there is no such thing as feeling uncomfortable when you come into one of our events. It’s always incredibly welcoming and every single thing that we plan has that at the forefront of our minds.”
MN: “The WISE Touch.”
EB: “The WISE Touch!”
MN: “A main goal is to make sure that you feel welcome…Yes, it’s to educate one another — like learning from a speaker and having those tangible outcomes — but it’s also the soft skills, and how the event or program will have a long-lasting, sustainable impact on you as an individual.”
VC: “Yeah I agree, those skills are definitely underrated. On that note, earlier when you were introducing each other, you touched on the skill of empathy. Empathy is a really important tool to have in design, so I was wondering how empathy played a role in establishing WISE?”
EB: “Oh yeah, empathy we talk about a lot.
We aim to lead our team with empathy, and all of our programs are built with empathy. You need to be selfless if you’re in this organization.
Things will always come up and that’s why we spend hours every week on coffee chats with members, mentoring the women going through WeBuild, or supporting our mentees in WeSupport. That’s what’s encouraged from our team. When we look to add team members, the first things we look at are kindness, if this person is looking to give back, and if this is a mission that’s important to them.”
MN: “I think what drives us to lead with that empathy and authenticity is that the mission of WISE is something bigger than the two of us. It’s not simply that we wanted a friend group. It’s not that we want Northeastern to be the ‘leader in women’s entrepreneurship’ — which I do hope it becomes — but the mission is much bigger… We want women to engage in whatever interdisciplinary subject that they best see fit. We want them to engage confidently, we want them to support one another… We often say the line — it’s actually on our team sweatshirts — ‘authenticity is power.’”
EB: “We want the women of WISE to be their best selves, to always think of the bigger picture, and to carry the team forward through that, which I think is a huge differentiator on our team. We never have to ask them for anything, honestly.”
MN: “They’re passionate.”
EB: “They’re so passionate… And they lead with incredible autonomy and responsibility. They care so deeply about the organization, which is why we really never worry about sustainability and what happens when we hand it off or graduate… because we know that the mission is going to stay.”
Have your own Trailblazer that you’d like to nominate? You can submit a nomination using this form until March 17th.
