#StartupsEverywhere profile: Bethany Hartley, Director of Diversity & Inclusion, South Bend - Elkhart Regional Partnership
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Improving Diversity and Inclusion Efforts to Bolster Economic Development
The South Bend - Elkhart Regional Partnership includes 47 smart connected communities across Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan that are working together to improve economic development across the region. With five distinct committees focused on improving business opportunities, increasing per capita income, and improving quality of life, the largely volunteer-driven partnership is working to make the region a hub of economic activity. We recently spoke with Bethany Hartley—the partnership’s Director of Diversity & Inclusion—to learn more about the organization’s work improving diversity and inclusion programs for entrepreneurs across the region.
Can you tell us a little about yourself? What is your background?
I’m originally from Michigan, and attended undergrad at Loyola University Chicago. My first professional job was at an organization called the Women’s Business Development Center, and it was focused on helping women start businesses, grow businesses, get certified, and work with one another. It was really one of the pioneers for getting a lot of technical assistance off of college campuses to create more accessible opportunities for everyone. It was an honor to work there, and I worked there for about 5 years in their marketing department.
I ended up moving back to the area I was from, except on the Indiana side of the line in the South Bend area. I had a background in marketing development, but what I realized when I came back to the South Bend - Elkhart region is that I really took diversity for granted living in Chicago. When I came home, it took me a little while to realize what was off, but once I did I started reaching out to see what existed and what work was happening around this area. And, frankly, there wasn't much that was crossing different industries, socioeconomic classes, races, and ethnicities.
Through my previous position, i learned about the committee—the Diversity & Inclusion Committee for the South Bend - Elkhart Regional Partnership—and I started volunteering. At the time I was facilitating an entrepreneurship program for high school and college students across the region, and I never planned on leaving that position. The Partnership was hiring for the position I currently have—the director of the D&I initiative—and I just felt really compelled to do this work. I started the position in October 2018, and I’ve loved every moment of it. It’s challenging and different every day, but it’s been amazing.
Tell us more about the South Bend - Elkhart Regional Partnership. What is the work you’re doing, and how are you working to support the development of inclusive startups across Northern Indiana and Southwest Michigan?
The partnership as a whole is an economic development organization, and our overarching goal is to increase the per capita income of our citizens to be at least at the national average. Underneath that goal we have five committees, including the Diversity & Inclusion Committee. Each initiative has a committee that acts like a board of directors for those programs. We have about 140 volunteers on those committees, and we are a staff of five people right now. It's a very unique situation, in that we are very autonomous in our work.
This was all built on a lengthy strategic planning initiative that stemmed from the Regional Cities Initiative, which was a state of Indiana program that awarded $42 million to three different regions across the state of Indiana. The initiative's purpose was to get communities to communicate and work together instead of the cities and counties doing different things. We were successful in getting that $42 million, which we then converted to over $300 million in public and private sector investments. Our organization came to be based on time-intensive strategic planning. We worked really well together securing this funding, so we thought about what else we could do to promote our region, and encourage people to move here and want to stay.
So, fast forward a little bit. We developed the strategic plan for the Diversity & Inclusion initiative, which is specifically focused on minority household income and eliminating the racial wealth divide in our region. We decided to have a separate initiative for diversity and inclusion as part of our overall economic development plan because we realized that people wouldn’t take it seriously if it wasn’t on the same level as the other efforts.
All of our committees have different focuses, but our committee is embedded in all the others. The brand for our entrepreneurship committee is Startup South Bend - Elkhart, which has great momentum now because we are an entrepreneurship region. The University of Notre Dame is nearby, and Elkhart has some of the highest numbers of entrepreneurs coming out of that region. We looked at entrepreneurship to see what was being addressed by that committee, and it really focused on high-growth potential startups. There was this gap in our ecosystem, though, where minorities and women tended to not be a high percentage of those types of startups. So we thought about how we could support minority and women-owned businesses that already exist, and then help them see that they could also be high-growth potential startups.
That all started happening mid-2019, and what we did was build out a new program. We worked with a consulting agency to build a six-month cohort-based model specifically for women and minority business owners. It was for business owners that already had a brick-and-mortar store or were food-based, like a catering service. We didn’t have any criteria for industry or size, but we gave them the technological and infrastructure tools they needed. We did it in partnership with Startup South Bend - Elkhart, and we decided to see what came out of it. We just closed out our first cohort, and we know that 29 percent of participants saw an increase in the number of employees and 71 percent of participants saw an increase in revenue.
I can tell you anecdotally that access to opportunities was the number one piece of it, and that’s a big part of our initiative. Access to opportunity around networks and social capital is a huge component of entrepreneurship. It’s who you know, and who you know who has the pockets to support you. There are a lot of entrepreneurs within entrepreneurial families. But how do we look at that for minority households that don’t have similar generational wealth? How do we help them access capital? We’re focused on creating access points and awareness campaigns, and elevating the message that they’re minority or women-owned businesses.
What steps could other states, cities, and regions take to improve startups' diversity and inclusion efforts, including access to opportunity and entrepreneurship?
The big first step is to map what resources exist, and have an understanding of where you’re working. From there, there needs to be at least one person solely focused on this activity, and that person should be reflective of the community and a trusted resource.
Trust is a big piece of this work, and I can only speak to our region, where trust between organizations, government entities, higher education institutes, and underrepresented individuals has historically been lacking. So with our work we’re trying to understand what exists, what doesn’t, who should be a part of the conversation, and then decide what we’re going to do.
One of the tactical pieces of what we’ve done is set up funding opportunities. There’s this idea that friends and family can be a source of funding for a lot of entrepreneurs, but that’s just not appropriate for a lot of folks. A lot of this has to do with inclusive investing and not asking biased questions. So it’s that two-sided approach: How do we educate funders on being better investors and thinking differently, and how do we build up minority and women-owned companies to hold their own? Some folks are challenged by unconscious bias on a larger scale than others, so acknowledging those concerns and bringing them that awareness has been incredibly helpful.
Bringing on a cohort-based model for entrepreneurs is also huge. In addition to the one we created for minority and women business owners, we’re also creating another one that’s specific for high-potential growth startups that is open to everyone. We’ve started tracking race, gender, identity, ethnicity in the program. It’s always optional of course, but that’s just a very basic step. We’ve gotten some interesting responses from folks who run programs and say “isn’t this too invasive?” The answer is no, because people don’t have to answer those questions and the demographics are kept separate from the individual's information when reporting out data. Additionally, what can be measured can be improved.
Understanding your market and choosing what piece you’re going to take on is also huge. It’s like running a startup, frankly. You can’t be everything to everyone. We’ve said we’re focusing on women and minorities, but those are not the only classes of diversity. We acknowledge that as well.
How can companies look beyond high level diversity efforts to focus on more inclusive measures?
You need to curate resources from everywhere. I’m reaching out to a number of folks now to get different resources—whether it’s recruiting or setting up a supplier diversity program—because you can’t expect there to be an increase in women and minority founders if there isn’t an increase in awareness from the people who will be buying from them.
The very simple answer though is asking questions. I know that sounds elementary, but I think there are stereotypes and assumptions that everyone holds, and they can’t let go of them unless they ask questions. What I’ve seen work well is when there are these types of conversations. I’ve done some courses on inclusive leadership, and there’s this approach to employees and coworkers that you can’t assume everyone is coming from the same background and experience. If we did, what a boring place it would be. You wouldn’t get very much innovation out of that company.
It’s challenging, especially if you’re not a woman or minority, to keep that at the top of your mind. If you have the budget to have a champion for inclusive practices, that is incredibly important. You can also work on setting up internal committees that care enough about these issues, and work on getting the buy in from the top levels of the company.
What makes the region’s startup ecosystem so unique?
People around here are nice and want to be helpful, so if you ask someone to try out your new app, they’ll probably say yes. On the flip side, sometimes they can be too nice and not tell you that it’s terrible. So it can be a catch.
The other piece is the amount of money you need to be successful here. Our cost of living is incredibly cheap. We are about 78 minutes away from Chicago, so our location allows for a lot of access. A startup could take a couple thousand dollars and turn it into something real here, whereas the same would cost $100,000 on the coasts. There is a pool of educated talent here—including at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University South Bend—and we’re in the business of making sure there’s a reason for them to stay or come back after being away from school.
I will say that we’re continuing to work on it for diverse entrepreneurs. How can we make sure that minority business owners moving here to start businesses have all the access to capital they need, without having lived here for 100 years? So that’s something we’re aware of and working on.
What startup-related policy issues do you believe should receive more attention from state and federal lawmakers?
Something that came across my desk recently was from the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion. They were working on the Paycheck Protection Program around increasing technical assistance and education for minorities, and increasing access to capital. The capital gap is the biggest barrier, in my opinion, and activities such as that are incredibly helpful.
Providing low-cost capital to entrepreneurs is also huge. I asked a question in a mayoral debate a while back about the policies around tech startups—specifically around whether there are incentives built in to encourage tech startups to move here. We’re traditionally more of an advanced manufacturing region, especially in Elkhart, so we know how to make things, but when it comes to the intangibles—the tech based activities—I think we need to do more to encourage that behavior. Those are the high wage positions that we’re encouraging.
The concerns about the women wealth gap goes back to child care and access to capital. Policies that encourage support and access for child care are all positive steps because we have so many highly educated women that leave the workforce or don’t start a business because they go home to care for their children.
What is your goal for the South Bend - Elkhart Regional Partnership’s diversity and inclusion efforts moving forward?
We are keeping our focus on our North Star of eliminating the racial wealth divide, and we need to stay the course to show that we’re having an impact—because we are.
We’re also expanding our online resources. We’re branding a new initiative called DI360, which is going to be a pretty robust public portal for companies to find support for inclusive practices. That includes how to set up a training program and how to set up supplier diversity programs. That will be accessible to anyone, and really just a great resource once it comes out later this year.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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