Rahama Wright '02 (Photo provided)
Social entrepreneur and women’s advocate Rahama Wright ’02 will deliver this year’s Campus Sustainability Lecture on Monday, September 30, at 4 p.m. in the College Union Ballroom on the SUNY Geneseo campus.
Wright will deliver a lecture titled “Beyond Beauty: Empowering Communities and Building a Sustainable and Equitable Future." The event is free and open to the public and launches Campus Sustainability Month at Geneseo.
After graduating from Geneseo with a degree in international relations, Wright served in the Peace Corps in Mali. She used her experience to start Shea Yeleen, a social impact company that creates living-wage jobs for women-owned shea butter cooperatives in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Mali. As a social entrepreneur, Wright works at the intersection of beauty, business development, and policy. She has expanded her impact by serving on the Presidential Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa for four terms and works with a local collective in Washington, DC, to provide inclusive business opportunities that address gender and racial inequality.
Wright’s work spans several sustainability goals, including environmental (the source of the shea butter product), economic (job creation and business promotion, especially for women and disadvantaged communities), and social (promoting the well-being of communities in Ghana, throughout Africa, and in Washington, DC, by supporting their economic success).
She describes herself as a social entrepreneur, and her work as an "entrepreneurial journey [that] has spanned bootstrapping to landing deals with Whole Foods Markets & MGM Resorts International. I’ve navigated manufacturing, supply chain development, marketing, and sales."
Read more about Rahama Wright’s work and accomplishments.
Watch a video about her.