Gen Y entrepreneurs balancing profits with volunteerism
Category: Keeping Up With Gen Y, Y Gen Entrepreneur
March 9, 2011 | BY Tamara Bell
AJ Thomas, the March Y Gen Entrepreneur, is a San Jose, Calif.-based founder of Infuse Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit program that brings opportunities to inner-city schools showing students that possibilities are endless in pursuit of their own ideas to make the world a better place.
AJ joins Keeping Up with Gen Y to talk about how adversity and failure are often the best teachers as Gen Y moves from start-up to success. She also discusses how young entrepreneurs are effectively balancing the need to make a profit with the desire to give back to their communities.
MORE ABOUT AJ THOMAS
March Y Gen Entrepreneur AJ Thomas, founder, Infuse Entrepreneurship
AJ Thomas is a quintessential Generation Y employee of various Fortune 500 firms and start-up ventures with the goal to operationalize, evangelize and implement social entrepreneurship programs in inner-city communities.
At age 22, she founded a consulting firm offering unique expertise that blended successful entrepreneurial experience, academic/legal insight and practical business analysis to Gen Y and inner-city youth in the Silicon Valley. This venture led to consulting opportunities, including for Google’s Innovation Strategy teams and several high-tech firms.
Three years later, AJ is founder of Infuse Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit program that brings opportunities to inner-city schools showing students that possibilities are endless in pursuit of their own ideas to make the world a better place.
A graduate of San José State University, AJ also is a Stanford University Certified Project Manager who has worked in the Human Resources field in the Silicon Valley supporting various global HR operations and international teams. Currently, she works at Infinera Corporation, a high-tech IP company located in Sunnyvale, California.
You can listen to the show below. And check out our Page on WomensRadio Network for more information about the show and our guests.
The Y Gen Entrepreneurs series, which airs the second Wednesday of each month, is sponsored by Constant Contact, a leading provider of email marketing, event marketing, and online surveys to small businesses, associations and nonprofits. Click here for more information.
Tags: AJ Thomas, featured, Gen Y Entrepreneurs, Infuse Entrepreneurship, nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, volunteerism
About the Author
Tamara Bell: Tamara Bell is the editor of Y Gen Out Loud. She began her journalism career as a reporter in Dallas, Texas. A few years later, she moved into politics and government, working for both Democratic and Republican members of the Texas Legislature. When not working on Y Gen, Tamara is a lecturer in the Advertising Department at The University of Texas at Austin. Tamara has a B.A. in Journalism from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. in Journalism from The University of Texas at Austin.
