Baltimore’s Young Entrepreneurs Level Up during Dent Education’s Summer Internships
This is part one of a two-part series featuring the youth programs occurring at Impact Hub Baltimore in Summer 2022. These youth programs are vital due to the loss of learning that students experience when they are not enrolled in school in the summer months. The youth programs we are highlighting in this series provide free access to educational summer programs, amplify student voices, and provide support throughout the school year. This article details one track of a Dent Education internship program known as Accelerate Your Dent — Entrepreneurs.
Over the past five weeks, if you walk into Impact Hub Baltimore (IHB), you will see an abundance of youth programs taking place throughout the space. High school students practice business pitches, learn from different speakers and program leads, and collaborate amongst themselves. Accelerate Your Dent — Entrepreneurs is one youth development program taking place at Impact Hub Baltimore this summer. This program is a specialized track offered by Dent Education’s Bet on Baltimore Internship program.
Dent’s Bet on Baltimore program is a 5-week intensive, paid internship where high school students choose one focus area from the more than 10 opportunities available over the summer. In the track hosted at Impact Hub, high school interns learn about entrepreneurship, prototyping, and business skills to launch their business or other social ventures. At the end of these 5 weeks, interns present and pitch their ventures for future funding at the 6th annual Bet on Baltimore showcase at Baltimore Center Stage, open to all community members. In this Accelerator program, students practice their pitches, identify target customers, create advanced prototypes, and develop a unique business model and strategy to make a real impact through their venture. This is part of a year-long program for interns to grow their business, but this summer serves as the launchpad for this program.
Dent interns shared with Impact Hub staff about their businesses and social ventures efforts, their experiences with Dent, and how the program has helped guide their business endeavors and personal growth.
Mackenzie Smith, Co-founder of Cycle Secrets
Cycle Secrets creates and sells menstruation kits for teenage girls to prepare them for their menstrual cycle. The kit includes a yoni wash, on-the-go yoni wash, a relaxation candle, body scrub, no more cramps tea, and a choice of pads or tampons. Mackenzie produces and packages the products with her co-founder and cousin. She began this business “so that teenage girls could be prepared for their menstrual cycle, because I know how it feels to feel like you’re alone, or like it’s a new chapter in your life that you are not completely prepared for. So I want to do my best to prepare these girls for what is to come.” Smith’s business solution highlights a national problem. A study done by Harris Poll of 1,000 US teens who menstruate ages 13 to 19 found that 79 percent feel that they need more in-depth education around menstrual health, and 64 percent believe society teaches people to be ashamed of their periods.
Smith got the idea after it was presented to her by her mentor, Ebonee Purviance, a herbalist and founder of Love Yourself Herbal, that both Smith and her cousin worked under together. She learned how to create these products, and slowly they began getting their business into pop-up events to sell their kits. While participating in these events, they found that marketing their products felt very daunting. They realized that they wanted to strengthen their confidence to improve their pitching ability, which is one opportunity that drew Smith to join the Accelerate track. Dent’s focus on practicing and perfecting pitching helped her navigate running a business while managing her social anxiety. Her growth in pitching Cycle Secrets was her best memory from the program. Smith recounted that while practicing this skill sharing “we had to stand up in front of the entire circle of people… and we had to pitch, and then we had to get feedback. And I really enjoy feedback because it helps me better my pitch…. it is always going to build me up and make me stronger. “ At the program’s end, she can confidently say that she has grown into a stronger speaker, serving both the mission of her company and her own personal growth.
Shania Stevenson, Founder of NAV
Amera Hargis, Partner of NAV
In the interview, Stevenson and Hargis discussed the background and vision of their business. NAV is a company “based around making mental health services accessible to teens ages 13 to 18.“ In her own words, Shania Stevenson shared why she founded NAV because “I know how it feels to be alone and I realized that there were other teens going through what I was going through so I really wanted to impact them with NAV.” Her mission with NAV is to help other teenagers benefit from the healing tools she had found for herself. Stevenson describes two primary practices of NAV. She asserts “we ended up creating two main solutions that we’ve been working on, one which is our Instagram page (@NAV_igation) where we’ve grown 95 percent to hit 1000 followers, which I’m excited about. We post daily mental practices and basically getting into deeper conversations with our followers about depression, anxiety, and anything they’re going through.” The second solution is in-person mental health seminars and lessons. One of Nav’s focuses is to adapt these mental health curriculums to the different age groups interacting with its efforts.
Stevenson joined the Accelerate Your Dent — Entrepreneurs because she had already participated in a different Dent track last year and wanted to learn new skills this summer. Hargis’ learned an important takeaway all entrepreneurs must accept as they launch their business. She described this realization by saying “I have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because if I didn’t come here and learn that, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here and talking as much as I am.” This internship creates an opportunity for students to practice presenting ideas and solutions they are passionate about, and gives Denters a place where they feel safe working on very challenging and personal efforts such as public speaking.
Since NAV’s creation, the business has already received over $17,000 in grant funding from The Casey Foundation and the Rally Foundation. Stevenson and Hargis plan to use this funding to create a profit-making opportunity for the business to be sustainable and better serve its participants. The partners will produce apparel that represents displaying pride for different shades of melanin and the spectrum of emotions that NAV strives to normalize for its teen followers. Additionally, funding will enable them to develop a mental health book series for teens to use during their in-person programming.
Jennifer, Founder of Imagine
Imagine is “a business centered on helping young immigrants in Baltimore [to] have the same opportunities in America… by helping advance their language skills, English skills, helping them get job and internship opportunities, and helping them explore different career paths.” As a first-generation immigrant, she saw a need for a program like this as she could relate to a lot of the people that she is serving. Her next big investment into her business will be creating a website for Imagine.
Jennifer found out about Dent from a school program that helps educate students about community opportunities. Her favorite memory from this internship was the field trip day they took, where interns went out and spoke to professionals who worked in similar businesses to the specific endeavor of each intern. Jennifer used the opportunity to speak with experts to gain some valuable mentorship about her business ideas.
Christian Hicks, Founder of Baltimore Oasis
Christian Hicks founded Baltimore Oasis, a new social venture focused on expanding healthy food access in Baltimore. Hicks wants to “use or replace vacant buildings with greenhouses in order to provide clean, fresh, inexpensive and healthy foods.” Hicks found that the Dent internship was a great opportunity to develop this business idea that he has been considering for a while before this summer internship.
As a result of Accelerate Your Dent — Entrepreneurs, Hicks also feels like he has exponentially grown his business plan. He claims “I believe I’ve developed almost a full plan of what I need to do. I’m still deciding on whether I would grow the produce myself…or use local farmers in the city. But I think, once this program is over, I’ll be able to talk to investors, start up the business and finally, actually start selling quite a viable product by at least next year.” He credits his Dent coaches as being invaluable in supporting him to refine his business plan and connecting him with opportunities like attending Mayor Scott’s Youth Summit where he was able to pitch his idea. What at the beginning of the summer was just an idea, is now growing into a fully formed business model harnessing a young innovator’s passion and energy.
Adeola Ajani, one of the coaches for Dent Education, emphasized how amazing this summer has been. She describes the beauty of this program, reflecting that, “we are getting to teach teenagers how to actualize their dreams and make them a reality.” This passion for dreams turned into reality was evident in the accomplishments and vision of each Dent student. The interns all started with differing levels of business expertise, but they all launched their business in the same way: recognizing a problem in their community and creating a way to address that need. We are so excited to watch their business and social ventures continue to flourish!
Further information and resources about Dent Education, Impact Hub Baltimore, and the business ventures featured in this story are below!
Empower Baltimore — Small business program for business and digital strategy
Impact Hub Newsletter — Subscribe now
Dent Education Connect with Dent Education!
Bet on Baltimore Tracks See More of Dent Education Bet on Baltimore Program Tracks!
@cyclesecrets_ Follow Cycle Secrets!
@nav_igation_ Follow NAV!
@Imagine Follow Imagine!
