Ibanca Anad

If you flip through my fifth-grade yearbook, prepare to find something highly embarrassing and undeniably amusing on the 36th page. I’m not speaking about the goofy headshot of me in pigtails (although that comes in a close second), but rather, the short description I give of my future goals. When 10-year-old Ibanca was asked the question “what do you want to be when you are older?” her answer was slightly…ambitious. “Lawyer, author, and astronaut.” Let’s take a moment to emphasize the AND. Not even a modest “or.” Back when I was a starry-eyed elementary-schooler, there was nothing unusual about...

Meet Rajvi Mehta, second-year student at Duke University Medical School, who recently won first-place and $50,000 in the annual Duke Startup Challenge.  After traveling to India in 2010 and getting tested positive for anemia, Mehta learned that around 80% of the nation’s population is affected by iron deficiency. In the four years since, she’s built a social business with 50 employees and over 200 volunteers, providing protein-rich nutritional bars to affected regions all throughout India.  As a sophomore at Brown University, Mehta spent her summer working with three NGOs to improve health outcomes in rural India and she started...

Photo credit: Duke Photography Women have a tough time becoming entrepreneurs. Not many people I know would be willing to argue against this statement. Whether it be familial responsibilities, lack of confidence, stereotypes, or discrimination, there are many forces pushing against us when it comes to starting a business.  Since a young age, I’ve dreamed of starting a company. I began an ice cream shop out of my home in elementary school, ran a summer dance camp in 7th and 8th grade, and established a non-profit organization as a high school sophomore. The idea of creating something that is...

A few weeks ago, I entered a classroom filled with a very unlikely group of Duke students. There were intellectuals pursuing vastly different interests—Pratt School of Engineering students, literature enthusiasts, Econ stars, global health/political science double majors.  But even though the textbooks we carried couldn’t have been more dissimilar, we gathered for one singular purpose: how can we further Duke’s mission of knowledge in the service of society, and how will the new Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Certificate help us do that?  The I&E Certificate, which launched this semester, is a novel concept in the university’s curriculum. In lieu of entirely classroom-based...