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The jobs have not been posted yet – and we’re not accepting applications yet, but check out these opportunities!

Interested? reach out to Donna Ennis for more information: donna.ennis @gatech.edu

#1 Online Community Manager

We are seeking an experienced Online Community Manager to join our team as an individual contributor. The Online Community Manager will be the liaison between our team, our customers, and partners. You will be the voice, tone, and moderator of the SE MBDA Business Growth Hub through community support, content distribution, and digital engagement to build brand presence and trust. This position requires knowledge and experience managing communities online through various social media and online tools.

Responsibilities

• Interact with community members in a professional, personable, and timely manner to grow and connect with the community.
• Monitor activity and improve community engagement.
• Support Hub programs by planning and implementing creative community messaging and online content that engages participation and dialogue.
• Answer customer questions, share knowledge, and provide positive support to our customers.
• Drive customer awareness, membership, and engagement of the Hub community through customer outreach initiatives, networking opportunities, documentation, and content that reduces barriers to adoption.
• Serve as the go-to for all customer and internal teams’ regarding content, how-to questions, troubleshooting issues/questions, or ideas regarding the Hub community.
• Create and implement guidelines for internal and external participation within the community.
• Define and share reports on Hub community KPIs that assess the effectiveness and ROI of the customer community, as well as identify areas of improvement.
• Develop effective feedback loops to ensure key insights and learnings from the community are captured and shared internally.
• Manage communication plans and social channel strategy, including social boosting planning and coordination.
• Provide meaningful feedback on the community’s sentiment, concerns, and suggestions.

Qualifications

• Experience working remotely with a team, ideally within a fast-paced startup environment
• Demonstrated experience in managing online communities
• Proficiency in building and managing social channels on LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
• Thorough knowledge of the social media trends, publishing tools, and online tools for building communities
• Excellent English communication skills
• Focused, detail-oriented, resourceful, and flexible
• Strong communication skills and passion for teamwork
• Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, or related field or equivalent work experience
• Minimum three years of experience with brand communications, social media, or community development
• Minimum two years experience with online community management
• Must be based in Georgia and willing to work in a hybrid environment 

These skills/experiences are a plus.

• Spanish language fluency
• Comfortable with public speaking, being on camera to host events, networking
• Video production and/or graphic arts experience

 

#2 Community Outreach Specialist

We are looking for an experienced Community Outreach Specialist to join our team as an individual contributor. The Community Outreach Specialist will be the liaison between our team, our customers, and Business Support Organizations (BSOs) in eight southeastern states. They will focus on building the BSO community for the Hub.

Responsibilities

• Interact with community members in a professional, personable, and timely manner, to grow and connect with the community.
• Build a community of Business Support Organizations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Caroline, and Tennessee.
• Answer questions, share knowledge, and navigate minority business owners to BSOs.
• Connect BSOs to other partners, HBCUs, MSIs and MBEs in the Business Growth Hub.
• Develop Connection Sessions and other activities to engage BSOs in the Hub.
• Monitor activity and work towards improving community engagement.
• Support our programs by planning and implementing creative community messaging and content that engages participation and dialogue.
• Create and implement guidelines for internal and external participation within the community.
• Develop effective feedback loops to ensure key insights and learnings from the community are captured and shared internally.
• Provide meaningful feedback on the community’s sentiment, concerns, and suggestions.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience working remotely with a team, ideally within a fast-paced startup environment
• Demonstrated proficiency in building relationships and a track record for supporting businesses
• Focused, detail-oriented, resourceful and flexible
• Excellent English communication skills
• Strong communication skills and passion for teamwork
• Bachelor’s degree in economic development, communications, marketing, or related field or equivalent work experience
• Minimum three years experience with economic development or community development programs

 These skills/experiences are a plus.

• Familiarity with business support organizations, including but not limited to incubators, accelerators, small and minority development business centers, and co-working spaces
• Spanish language fluency
• Comfortable with public speaking, being on camera to host events, networking
• Familiarity with social channels on LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, Twitch, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
• Must be based in Georgia and willing to work in a hybrid environment.

Our first annual meeting was held in August 2021. Leader Donna Ennis made opening remarks.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the first meeting of the SE MBDA Business Growth Hub. My name is Donna Ennis.  I’m the director of Diversity Engagement & Program Development at the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute and the project lead for the SE MBDA Business Growth Hub.  On behalf of Georgia Tech, the MBDA, and the SE MBDA Business Growth Hub team I want to thank you for attending our first annual meeting. We appreciate your taking the time to learn about what we are working on and to provide your feedback and insight. We know that you are busy people, and we value your time. We are building something for you and people like you.

We are excited about this two-year pilot project. Before I talk about the initiative, let me start with a quick overview of MBDA. For those of you who don’t know MBDA, the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency or MBDA is the only federal agency dedicated to the growth and development of minority business enterprises or MBEs.  The agency has operated since the late 1960s and funds a national network of over 100 Business and specialty centers along with special projects.  We have operated the Georgia MBDA Business Center here at Georgia Tech since 2004 under the umbrella of the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute which is Georgia Tech’s economic development and service arm, serving Georgia and the nation since the late 1950s. We have a number of programs focused on starting, growing, and sustaining businesses along with developing entrepreneurial ecosystems here in Georgia, nationally and even internationally.

In 2020, MBDA provided a grant to Georgia Tech to launch a two-year pilot program, called the MBDA Inner City Innovation Hub. We have since renamed this project, the SE MBDA Business Growth Hub to better reflect the Hub’s objectives and goals. The MBDA Business Growth Hub will operate virtually and in person throughout the SE region in selected cities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Led by the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute, the MBDA Business Growth Hub is a collaboration between:

• Georgia MBDA Business Center
• Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) – that is the technology incubator of Georgia, located at Georgia Tech
• Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (MIEC) – that is the entrepreneurship center for students and business support organization for the community at Morehouse College
• PRENEURology Global – a private company focused on providing entrepreneurship programing to people and organizations around the world.

Each one of these collaborators has a particular role in the Hub – and I’ll explain that in a minute.

The GOALS of the Hub include:

• To weave a strong, blended network among entrepreneur service organizations and programs, incubators, accelerators, innovation spaces, state and federal organizations, corporate partners, universities, investors, and other ecosystem partners to create a regional innovation hub for Minority Business Enterprises or MBEs to gain immediate and impactful access to start, grow, and scale their companies.
• To increase access to opportunities and resources for MBEs as well as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) entrepreneurs in big cities in the Southeast region.
• To establish and nurture connectivity across historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), minority serving institutions (MSIs), MBEs, corporations, entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, and other stakeholders.
• To create and deploy a virtual technology solution that will automatically and dynamically suggest, match, and track MBEs to the resources and connections that are needed to successfully grow and scale their companies.

Here I want to note that we are currently in a proof-of-concept phase for this project. For the last year, we have been developing what we call lanes for the Hub.

• We have our HBCU/MSI lane led by the Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, Dr. Tiffany Bussey and her team have connected with dozens of program leaders at HBCUs and MSIs in the Southeast – to research what is needed to build and run an entrepreneurship center – either serving students and faculty on campus – or to serve the local business community.
• the Entrepreneur or Minority Business Enterprise Lane led by PRENEURology Global. Le’Kiesha French and her team have conducted in-depth interviews to understand the entrepreneur’s journey – and the obstacles faced by business owners and aspiring business owners.
• The MBDA@ATDC lane by ATDC. John Avery and his team are developing a model of how a high-tech incubator can become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive when attached to a predominately white institution.

You’ll hear from the leaders of each of these lanes shortly.  Our fourth lane, which we are beginning to develop will be what we call our Anchor Institutions. For purposes of this meeting, our anchor institutions are organizations, corporations and programs that serve entrepreneurs. We also are developing partnerships with companies and organizations that want to support the Hub.

Today, we will begin to merge the 3 lanes along with the anchor institutions.  We will show you a demo of a tool along with the concept of the Hub. Accenture has generously joined our team to help develop the Hub – along with Atlanta technology startup The Labz – and will lead the feedback session. Before we get started, I’d like to emphasize a few points.

Through research and feedback from the program leaders at the HBCUs and MSI, in depth interviews with entrepreneurs and business owners we know several things.

1. Hundreds of entrepreneurial ecosystems exist in the country. This summer, we had a graduate student map the entrepreneurial assets in the SE, and he identified hundreds of organizations in Georgia alone.
2. Entrepreneurs and business owners are on a journey. We have heard from many of you that you are often “bouncing” around trying to find the right resources and support to help you along your journey.
3. Program leaders at many HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions want to launch, grow, and sustain entrepreneur programs and connect with students, faculty, and businesses in the community. Programs might start but lack planning and resources to sustain the effort. A lack of dedicated staff can lead to lack of engagement on campus.
4. Finally, we know that these journeys can be time-consuming, tiring, and frustrating.

Our goal today is to show you something that we think will help us to solve these serious problems and build a foundation for a stronger community.

We want this Hub to create a community that is a living and breathing entity. We are not trying to create a super website or another resource directory. We want to figure out how to bring support organizations to the Hub in a way that entrepreneurs can utilize the services and resources in an active way. We see this as an opportunity for MBEs to expand their network as well as a way for entrepreneur service organizations to reach more entrepreneurs.

This image shows the region with a true network of relationships – connections between and among the people and organizations on this call today:

• The business owners and entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their business.
• The program leaders at the schools who want to help students and business owners in their local community.
• The entrepreneurship programs and the business support organizations that meet the needs of established and new business owners in the region.
• And the other stakeholders who supply capital, connections, and more.

Again, I am thrilled to have you here and hear your feedback on the concept we’re about to share.

Before I have the team introduce themselves, I would like to thank Accenture for joining this initiative. We know that it’s a huge vision and we appreciate their willingness to learn with us how this might work.  Also thank you to The Labz, the company which created the online demo that you will see shortly. And a shout out and thank you to Charles Weems of Weems Design Studio, Charles is an entrepreneur who has built a business using many of the resources that would be available in the Hub. He provided valuable insight about his journey.

And finally, I want to recognize and thank the organizations, companies, and HBCUs/MSIs that have provided letters of support.

From the private and nonprofit community, we have

1. Aero ATL
2. Efficio, Inc.
3. Operation HOPE
4. The Gathering Spot
5. Zane Venture Fund

HBCU/MSIs

1. Albany State University
2. Benedict College
3. Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
4. Fayetteville State University
5. Fisk University
6. Jackson State University
7. Oakwood University
8. Spelman College

This first year has been an adventure. We were funded as a pilot project and we are learning as we go along. I’ll use the expression, we’re building the plane as we’re flying it so your feedback will help us to set the course for the second year of the project – and more going forward.