Loyola University Maryland’s Simon Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship accepted 11 new ventures for the center’s 2024-25 Baltipreneurs Accelerator, a four-month part-time program supporting startup businesses and social ventures with training, technical assistance, mentorship, networking, and access to capital.
This year’s Baltipreneurs harness artificial intelligence and machine learning for health care, source and roast coffee beans, lead in women’s fashion, cosmetics, and services, provide educational tools for underserved students, and explore for minerals while minimizing the ecological impact. Largely women entrepreneurs this year, they include Loyola students and alumni as well as entrepreneurs from other universities and the community.
“We are pleased that the national growth in microbusinesses owned by founders of color and the 70% increase in the number of Black-women-owned businesses since the pandemic were reflected in our Baltipreneurs applicant pool,” said Wendy Bolger, founding director of the Simon Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. “Baltipreneurs’ success will be the city’s success, as microbusinesses create seven jobs for every one entrepreneur, on average, and drive unemployment down.”
The 2025-25 Baltipreneurs are:
- Canopy Minerals, eco-friendly precision mineral exploration
- City + Sea Boutique, coastal chic and city-inspired fashion
- Modelus and Neurobarr, artificial intelligence and machine learning for health care
- NovvaCup, the future of menstrual cups
- Nu Momish, a social enterprise focusing on the wellness of moms
- REAL digitizED, education for the digital age
- Solsis Beauty, empowering women through makeup
- Sunday Morning Coffee, sourcing and roasting coffee beans
- The Creative Representation Empire, culturally representative educational coloring books
- The Queens’ Sisterhood Society LLC and QSS Baltimore Inc., a noncollegiate sisterhood, investment club and community-based organization empowering women
- Yelé LLC, fashion rooted in heritage
The Baltipreneurs Accelerator will provide $47,000 in total funding to the participants. They will attend 10 sessions from December 2024 through March 2025, culminating in a Demo Day showcase at Loyola on March 18. Throughout the program, mentors, instructors, coaches, and consultants will provide guidance customized for each participant, and participants will collaborate and learn from each other.
Loyola University Maryland’s Sellinger School of Business and Management in Baltimore delivers an internationally recognized Jesuit business education. Recognized for its scholarship, ethical leadership, and tradition of excellence, the Sellinger School delivers a wide range of sought-after fields of study including nine undergraduate majors and 12 undergraduate minors as well as full-time, part-time, and fully online MBA and Master of Accounting programs. (www.loyola.edu/sellinger)
