By Michelle Cornelius
The Titan Women’s Collective, a new resource created this past semester through the Cal State Fullerton Center of Entrepreneurship, will provide business students scholarships, workshops, and mentoring to help with their professional development. Their entrepreneurial goal is to develop future women founders.
The personalized mentoring program will work in collaboration with the Titan Women Collective. Southern California businesswomen such as CEO and co-founder of Connected Women of Influence Michelle Bergquist, as well as Nicole Washington, director of Innovation & Growth for OCTANeOC, and Maureen Tschopp, a financial advisor of Merrill Lynch and Pooka Platner, a partner in start-up Aruta On-Demand, an Uber for notary publics will be mentoring students.
The initial program plan was restricted to junior and senior business students, but has shifted to include all majors, and allows students who are graduating in May to join.
The Titan Women’s Collective gives young women opportunities to connect with leaders in their industries of interest and provides an exchange of perspectives between the mentors and the students.
“They help me with looking at things I do creatively with a business eye,” Alexis Omoghene Akpodiete, a CSUF business student, said.
While there is another CSUF program with coaching and similar services like the CSUF Women’s Leadership Program, what distinguishes the Titan Women’s Collective from the CSUF Women’s Leadership Program is the simultaneous business and interdisciplinary framework and outreach.