This case descibes the journey of a social entrepreneur as she establishes a new venture in the garment manufacturing business. It explores how she chose to become an entrepreneur, how she utilized her ecosystem to establish her venture and the choices and challenges she faced creating and financing a new venture. At the end she is faced with strategic decisions about how to grow the venture and its impact. This case provides an excellent illustration of the challenges faced by early stage entrepreneurs, as well as the value of using a hypothesis driven approach to evolving a new venture.

Carole Carlson, lead editor, is professor of the practice and MBA program director at the Heller School for Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She is an expert in case method teaching and entrepreneurship and currently teaches courses in social entrepreneurship, global social entrepreneurship, and health care entrepreneurship at Heller. She holds graduate degrees from MIT and Harvard Business School. She is the author or co-author of dozens of published cases and recently published a textbook on social entrepreneurship and innovation.
Rachael Weiker is a project manager with the City of Saint Paul Department of Planning
and Economic Development, where she focuses on building its entrepreneurial ecosystem. She has worked on community engagement, civic participation, economic development, and entrepreneurship at local, national, and international levels. She has an MBA and an MPP from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She is also a fellow with the Eli J. and Phyllis N. Segal Citizen Leadership Program.