tldr: founded Gen She @ Rice, rallying 90+ students from 6+ universities, $25K+ incredible sponsors, & 20K+ impressions through Houston’s first Makeathon

intro

6 years ago, I interned at Generation She — a nonprofit organization aiming to close the gender gap in the leadership and entrepreneurial landscape. Those two years really solidified my belief and passion in their mission, so I created Rice University chapter of Generation She: a student-led org to instill young women and non-binary identifying students with a sense of ownership and entrepreneurial spirit.

Our flagship initiative was Houston’s first-ever Makeathon, a three-day entrepreneurial experience that brought 90 attendees from top universities across Texas (Rice University, UT Austin, UT Dallas, Texas Tech, University of North Texas, Lone Star College, and more) to listen to keynote speakers, participate in educational workshops, and pitch a business idea to a panel of judges!

tldr, here were the stats we accomplished:

⭐ Held Houston’s first ever makeathon!
📌 Obtained $25k+ in sponsorships from Kendra Scott, H-E-B, Angie’s Boom-Chicka-Pop, RESP, and Liu Idea Lab
📌 Featured 8+ distinguished speakers & mentors, including a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and the founder of Angie’s Boom-Chicka-Pop
📌 20k+ views in marketing & social media platforms
📌 Engaged 90+ attendees from Rice, UT Austin, Texas Tech, UNT, Lone Star, and more
📌 Featured on Rice News

As Co-President, I managed logistics, operations, and financial management. With an incredible team — special shoutout to Cecilia Nguyen, Joyce Zhang, and Claudia Lin — I coordinated fundraising and partnerships, securing $25K+ in sponsorships from high-profile brands such as Kendra Scott, H-E-B, Angie’s Boom-Chicka-Pop, RESP, and Liu Idea Lab. To manage logistics, I built and led a team of 20+ executive directors and committee members, overseeing finance, outreach, marketing, and operations. I also spearheaded our branding and outreach, leading marketing campaigns that garnered 20K+ social media impressions!!

What we created was incredible… and we quite literally had to start from scratch. Below is a list of everything we did:

1. build and execute our product vision

2. build and lead an extraordinary team

3. establish the best social media platform @ Rice University

4. host Houston's first ever makeathon!

Note that the information below may be slightly outdated and only talk about 2023's first Rice-based Makeathon.

1) 💡 build and execute our product vision

Before we did anything, we treated Gen She @ Rice as our own "product" that needed to be deployed. We needed to clearly define the "product" vision first.

We had to first question ourselves: why are we creating this club? Would people endorse it? How can we stand out? We thought about the mission and values of Gen She and how they, most importantly, would benefit our "users" (the student body). Below is what was found:

This product/design thinking was carried onto the rest of our endeavors from then on forth: lots of iterations, lots of planning, and lots of user testing. For example, below is an example of the user testing we did for the makeathon (see #4)!

2) 💖 build (and lead) an extraordinary team

After clearly mapping out the purpose, the vision, and the goals of our club, we knew that we needed some help. Cece and I had very similar strengths — both of us already had strong leadership experience, strong design skills/interests, the same goals and vision for our lives and this club. This, however, put us into a tricky spot: this meant we had around the same weaknesses.

In particular, we decided that we would divide the club into four sections: finance, outreach/marketing, operations. Both of us had a strong say over the marketing and design portions, but to best play with our strengths, we opened up leadership roles for finance and outreach and committee roles for those branches.

We quickly found Claudia and Joyce: Claudia for outreach, and Joyce for finance! I genuinely cannot imagine a better executive board, and with the four of us, we formed a wonderful team of ~20 committee members with various disciplines (finance, computer science, business, humanities, operations research, ...) to get our work done.

With efforts from the team, we were able to contact 30+ speakers and powerful entrepreneurs, earned 10k in funding, and got 8+ distinguished speakers, workshop leaders, panelists… you name it! Very grateful for these girls - especially to Cecilia, Joyce, and Claudia. Dream team.

3) 📷 establish the best design & social media presence at Rice University

We wanted to make sure we had the BEST reach out there — so this meant creating a ton of assets, producing a ton of content, and being incredibly active on social media. Most of our target audience were on Instagram (and LinkedIn, but we're too cool for that), so our content was released there.

We ended up reaching a LOT of people with our social media: with over 10k reach on singular posts, and over 50k accumulated. We also had email campaigns and set up impact reports to fully communicate the mission, goals, and impact of the team. This meant that I did a LOT of design. All of these assets were created by either Cece or me on Figma, and we still have many, many designs cooking up…

Still trying to get viral…

4) 🎯 finally, host Houston's first-ever makeathon!

tldr: read this impact report.

Have you heard of a hack-a-thon? A Gen She Entrepreneurship Makeathon is meant to be something similar, but with an emphasis on empowerment and support. Usually a 3-day multi-day event, the makeathon is meant strengthen the entrepreneurial spirit/leadership skills within university students — a foundation for those just starting off in entrepreneurship with pitch competitions, many prizes, and events in design, coding, marketing, and many other real industry skills.

In addition from the impact that we had, however, the community that we were able to establish with this also made it so worth it. Aside from this being career driven, we strive to have our members and participants meet female founders, discuss solutions with the team they made before, and dream big with one another. We even had a portion of the makeathon simply dedicated to talking about the struggles that come with being a woman - inspired by Kode with Klossy.

We want to encourage young women to take the leap, find their community, and create their own “something," the same gift that Gen She @ Rice gave us.

With all of these together, we ended up hosting a three-day Makeathon at Rice that brought together women and nonbinary students looking to hone their entrepreneurial skills and find a place of belonging. Don't get us wrong: hosting this was hard work, and the planning was a big task. Below is a concise summary over what we did, but please reach out if you're thinking about hosting something similar/more about the planning process!

next steps…

The makeathon is our biggest pride and joy. It was a hit at Rice University, so we're now going to host one for all of Houston, available to every college student in the area. That's quite ambitious, and there's a lot of work behind the scenes. So, if you're thinking about being involved as a participant, speaker, organizer, sponsor, or anything else in between, please do not hesitate to reach out to me or any of these wonderful, beautiful human beings: Cecilia Nguyen (general), Claudia Lin (outreach), Joyce Zhang (finance).

typical lucy being sentimental section

Overall, we had to do everything founders have to do: set up the culture, confirm the strategic direction, maintaining accountability (not just with the team, but with each other as well): creating a product from scratch. I've found my own limitations as a leader, and I'm still learning from them.

I really think it's an honor to be passionate in something. And it's even MORE of an honor to bring this passion to life, to find a group of amazing, likeminded girlbosses, and keep executing. There's an overwhelming amount of work behind the scenes, but Gen She @ Rice genuinely makes me very proud to be alive.

This makeathon, incredible team, and our smart, capable, incredible attendees remind me that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life: to lead and to empower.

reach out!

If you'd like to support Gen She, Gen She @ Rice, and the next generation of leaders, please do not hesitate to reach out. I'm always more than happy to talk about this wonderful club and the lasting impact it's made in my life!