Featuring Veda Swaminathan: Business with my Best Friend

(Sorry about the audio quality in some parts of this podcast)

Veda Swaminathan is a current first-year student at the University of Chicago and a recent graduate of Greenwich High School. Published in the Journal of Future Economists by the New York Federal Reserve, National Champion for the 2020 Euro Challenge, two-time recipient of the World Affairs Forum Award, and Greenwich High School Scholar Leader, Veda is extremely passionate about global affairs and macroeconomic theory; she aims to eventually work in finance and at its intersection with social impact.

During her junior year, Veda co-founded the Imagine, Innovate, Inspire (I3) Competition after observing the damage done to the small business community during the COVID-19 pandemic. She brought Aarya Dhru, another GHS junior, onto the team and forged a partnership with the Institute of Entrepreneurial Leadership (IFEL) in order to maximize the impact of her work. After serving 50+ high school students and 20+ businesses, Veda is working on taking this competition to a national scale, expanding its mentorship program, building the management team, and completing the registration process for non-profit status. You can contact the I3 competition [e-mail] if you have any questions or would like to join the management team.

The focus of the I3 Competition is twofold: first, we work to provide business owners who have historically had difficulty getting access to capital and resources with the tools to adapt their businesses online and maintain that online presence; second, we aim to give high school students a chance to make a real impact and apply entrepreneurial/professional skills in the real world. To do this, we pair teams of 3-4 high school students with a real IFEL small business and give the students two weeks to develop an app, website, or social media presence for the business in the competition’s Practical Division. Mentorship is a core tenant of our competition. All student participants have direct access to formal mentorship sessions with Partners at Big4 consulting firms and corporate digital strategy experts, but they also have unbridled access to informal mentorship from their small business partners. This mentorship is not just for hard entrepreneurial skills like data collection, analysis, and social media marketing, but for soft skills like team management, communication, and professionalism.