Last month, NewTown Macon & Macon-Middle Georgia Black Pages celebrated Downtown Diversity Initiative’s 13 new graduates!
For the past twelve weeks, this cohort met bi-weeky with the NewTown Loans staff and Alex Habersham, along with other guest instructors from the community, to learn how to be successful entrepreneurs in Macon. During this program, participants learned to develop thoughtful business plans, effective marketing tools, and met with business mentors. At the final class, each participant presented seven-minute pitches of their business idea to a panel of judges. The five winners received $5,000 stipends as start-up funding towards their business concept! Congratulations to this year’s winners: Tedra Huston, Geleesa Denton, Materra Drafts, ShaBrea Duffy, and Anissa Jones
We want to say a special thank you to our judges, Stephanie Howard, Dr. R. Kris Ellis, Dominique Johnson, Trudy Lawrence, and Elizabeth McCane, for taking the time to support these fantastic entrepreneurs!
Last by not least, we would like to especially thank Wells Fargo for awarding NewTown with a $20,000 grant to fund part of the prizes for our DDI winners.