Last Tuesday, April 7th, the Harvard Her Campus chapter and other members of the Harvard community (and beyond) gathered in the Harvard Coop for a Discussion and Signing of Her Campus founders’ new book, The Her Campus Guide to College Life.
Annie Chandler Wang and Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, graduates of Harvard themselves, shared with students about Her Campus’ founding, from its inception, to their experience juggling a start-up with a full academic workload, to ultimately choosing to turn down other opportunities in favor of working on Her Campus.
Annie and Stephanie shared with students how they met co-founder Windsor Hanger Western (who was away on a Her Campus college tour on the day of the event) at a student-run lifestyle magazine at Harvard. When the trio saw how popular the publication was, even among non-Harvard students, they saw a business opportunity.
Students left feeling inspired by Annie and Stephanie’s story of creativity and perseverance, many with signed books and gift bags containing LeSportsac, Bare Minerals, and other goodies in hand.
My greatest takeaway was the women’s ability and willingness to create opportunities for themselves. Harvard, a liberal arts- first education offering extremely little business-related coursework is not always the most start-up friendly environment. However, these women found utility in their (perhaps seemingly irrelevant) majors (Psychology and Visual and Enviornmental Studies) and in their extracurricular activities.