Student Podcaster Tells Stories of Young Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs who tell their stories at GE Week "have so much wisdom," says senior Marisa DeGennaro about why she is hooked on Global Entrepreneurship Week. The week-long series of hundreds of events around the Penn State campus was held Nov. 12-16 to celebrate and share the value of entrepreneurship.

Three students, including DeGennaro, share their most important takeaways from participating in GE Week, in DeFiore's GE Week episode 1.

"You're basically creating a map to go somewhere that no one's ever been," says Erin Weidemann, who started her own publishing company, Bible Belles, and podcast to provide young girls with strong heroes to help them discover the real definition of beauty, not the culture's definition.

Alumni Weidemann and Harshil Patel were both in their 20s when they each faced a personal crisis. At 26, Weidemann was diagnosed with aggressive thyroid cancer.

Patel was an intern at a big corporation when he realized he was bored and that would not be his path. Patel became a fitness coach then created FitSoul, and a Mindful Minute video series out of his own exploration of mindfulness.

Weidemann re-shuffled priorities during her battle with cancer, became a teacher then created Bible Belles with her family to provide girls with strong, female heroes via publishing products cool enough to compete with Disney. When she learned she was pregnant with her daughter, she created a podcast, Heroes for Her.

DeFiore interviews both in GE Week, episode 2.

Why be an entrepreneur?
"Because you have to. You're not going to work for somebody else."
Listen to gems of inspiration and words of wisdom from this year's Global Entrepreneurship Week at Penn State in student-entrepreneur and podcaster Katie DeFiore's third and final episode from GEWeek 2017.