Elizabeth City Condition University (ECSU) will host its second Viking Entrepreneurship 7 days, presented by PNC, from Feb. 13-18, 2023, with Do it yourself dwelling style and design skilled and ECSU alumna Ashley Basnight to present coaching and mentorship to college student-entrepreneurs in her potential as ECSU’s 2023 PNC Entrepreneurship Fellow. The weeklong collection will kick off with a keynote address and insights from Basnight on constructing a model. All over the week, learners will have the option to take part in pop-up stores, a speaker series with entrepreneurs and an celebration hosted in collaboration with the Elizabeth Metropolis Space Chamber of Commerce. The programming will culminate Sat., Feb. 18, with a college student pitch level of competition in which additional than 30 groups from six Traditionally Black Schools and Universities (HBCUs) will participate.
“We are energized to have Ashley Basnight arrive household to ECSU as the 2023 PNC Entrepreneurship Fellow,” reported Joy Turnheim Smith, Ph.D., Dean, ECSU Faculty of Schooling and Business and Director of Graduate Education. “Ashley shows the creativity of college students from majors across the institution. ECSU is thrilled by the opportunities that the PNC Basis grant presents all of our college students to generate and increase their enterprises and brands. We search ahead to our college students benefitting from Ashley sharing her ordeals that have made and created her model.”
Viking Entrepreneurship Week and the PNC Entrepreneurship Fellow method are manufactured doable through a multi-yr grant from PNC Foundation. In February 2022, PNC Foundation launched the PNC North Carolina HBCU Initiative, a a few-calendar year, $2 million effort and hard work that aims to enrich the long run of entrepreneurship and make workforce opportunities in the point out. ECSU is one particular of five N.C. HBCUs acquiring grant funding as a result of this initiative. In addition to the scope of the weeklong programming and fellowship, the grant helped create the recently opened ECSU Entrepreneurship Fab Lab and Social Media Internet marketing Lab run by PNC.
“All of us at PNC understand ECSU’s integral purpose in driving financial progress locally and preparing its students for accomplishment in business enterprise and leadership,” said Jim Hansen, PNC regional president for Jap Carolinas. “We glance ahead to becoming a member of the campus group for Viking Entrepreneurship 7 days and the a lot of discovering and qualified enhancement opportunities that are in retail store.” PNC hosted the very first PNC North Carolina HBCU Initiative Pitch Opposition on Friday, February 3, 2023, in Greensboro, N.C., and 3 ECSU students—Brandon Shaw, Quante Bishop and Joshua Hunter—won 2nd put. A news release about the opposition is available here.
Meet up with ECSU’s 2023 PNC Entrepreneurship Fellow, Ashley Basnight
Basnight, who earned a Bachelor of Science from ECSU in 2013, is the founder of Handmade Haven LLC, a complete-assistance household transforming and design and style studio based in Oklahoma Metropolis, Oklahoma. A native of Currituck, North Carolina, she began a vocation in engineering upon graduation. “I interned at Boeing and commenced working at the company’s Oklahoma City plant 1 month soon after graduating,” states Basnight. “Over the training course of my 9 several years at Boeing, I was promoted from working in application engineering methods improvement and check engineering to turning out to be a software package exam direct for the plant.”
Basnight wished to be the first in her instant household to come to be an entrepreneur and transitioned complete-time to concentrate on her passion as a house designer and remodeler in 2021. “As an engineer, I constructed points and also gained the expertise of getting in management, major a crew, running a business enterprise properly and doing work as a result of conflict. It was beneficial for me to have a company career and acquire those competencies prior to pursuing entrepreneurship. I have been capable to efficiently implement all that I learned over the decades to my possess company,” states Basnight. She also birthed Handmade Haven to empower females and many others to study how to establish on their individual and make their properties stunning. “Isaiah 61:3, which speaks to providing a crown of beauty for ashes, is what I set out to do,” she notes. Her qualifications as an engineer is a stage of distinction in her small business. “In this business, persons either construct or structure, and I do both of those.”
Basnight displays on how she decides to work with shoppers and enjoys functioning with these who give her whole creative regulate. She notes that her favourite task to date is her parents’ grasp bathroom renovation. “They’d been seeking to update their rest room for a lengthy time, so I took a several months to do a reno and they beloved it. I experienced enjoyment and it was the to start with task my father and I worked on together from start off to complete.” Now, her desire is to host her personal tv structure display, and she is perfectly on her way just after showing on NBC’s “Making It: Time 2,” “The Drew Barrymore Clearly show,” in Household Depot’s Introduction Calendar Diy On-Pattern Workshops on YouTube and owning a characteristic story on her organization in Better Households & Backyard journal. She is continually expanding her brand name existence and has amassed an Instagram next of additional than 250,000 – and rising – on her handle SmashingDIY.
For a lot more details on Viking Entrepreneurship Week, call Dr. Joy Smith at [email protected] or 252-335-3485.

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