ENDING EXTREME POVERTY
Devin believes we can end extreme poverty in our lifetimes. She is the Founder Street Business School—an entrepreneurial training program that helps women living in poverty go from an average of $1.35 to $4.19 per day by starting their own small businesses. Through a social franchise scaling model, Street Business School is now training organizations globally to deliver our proven poverty-eradication business training.
Building Bridges
As a champion of connections, Devin strives to build bridges between concerned world citizens and people who experience poverty. She is a speaker, teacher, mentor and thought leader in social entrepreneurship, women’s economic empowerment, and micro-business creation as a means of eradicating poverty. She’s seen what can happen when women are empowered as business owners, and she believes unleashing a generation of women entrepreneurs can help us realize a world without poverty.
Devin’s Work
Devin’s work has been featured in Nick Kristof’s New York Times column, Entrepreneur, Barron’s, the Today Show, O Magazine, Vanity Fair, Lehrer News Hour and dozens of other publications. Prior to Street Business School, Devin co-founded and served as CEO of BeadforLife, which helps women living in poverty earn income through the production of handmade paper jewelry. BeadforLife pioneered the global cottage industry of paper jewelry, inspiring hundreds of other organizations and benefitting thousands of women.
WORKING TO EMPOWER WOMEN
Devin is on a mission to end extreme poverty in her lifetime. This driving purpose led her to live and work in India, Kenya and Uganda. She is a champion of connections and strives to build bridges between concerned world citizens and people living on less than $3 a day.
As the founder of Street Business School, she works to empower women to start their own businesses and transform their lives. Forever. She and her team believe economic empowerment holds the key to lifting millions of people out of extreme poverty. Honed over years in the field, their transformational business training gives people the tools they need to build successful small businesses, ensure a hopeful future for their children, and find their voices to lead community solutions that will change the world.
Meet Devin Hibbard
- Founder of Street Business School
- More than 17+ years experience working directly with women living in extreme poverty
- Board member of InterAction, the largest alliance of international NGOs and partners in the United States, representing over 200 organizations and $15 billion of private funding for international development
- Master Course Instructor of women’s leadership and poverty eradication at Watson University in Boulder, Colorado
- Mentor for Unreasonable East Africa in Kampala, Uganda
- Author of “Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions,” a textbook on international issues.
- Advocated for foreign assistance to developing markets as part of The Better Safer World Campaign
- Promotes strong ties between Europe and the U.S. as an American Marshall Memorial Fellow
- Poverty eradication expert and international speaker
Awards:
- 2018 System Innovator Award, Segal Family Foundation
- 2017 Hero Award for best Non-Profit, from the 14 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates of Peace Jam
“I believe that we can end extreme poverty in our lifetime. Through working with women living in unspeakable poverty, I’ve seen the transformational power of belief.”
Devin’s Speaking
- Denver StartUp Week 2020
- 36/86 Festival 2020 – Nashville TN
- Posner Center for International Development Keynote
- Opportunity Collaboration
- 2018 Skoll World Forum
- 2018 EVOSO Live
- 2017 Sankalp Forum, Nairobi, Kenya
- AGOA Forum Meeting – Kampala, Uganda
- Women in Coffee – Keynote Address
- Uganda Peace Corps Annual Conference
- Peace Corp Volunteer Training – Two Time Presenter
- Vital Voices Conference – Kampala
- Fashion Fights Poverty – Washington DC
- Colorado Business Women National Conference – Denver
- Social Enterprise Alliance Conference
- National Teacher Conferences: Service Learning, Social Studies, Science
- Opportunity Tour – Keynote Address
- Watson University Professor – Master Course Instructor and Mentor
“We believe in women until they can believe in themselves.”
Book Devin
The solution to poverty eradication is about uplifting the human spirit, not degrading it. Giving a handout takes away someone’s inherent belief in themself.
DEVIN AT eTOWN
Transformation lives at the intersection of belief and opportunity. Once women believe in themselves, they take the entrepreneurial training and change their lives.
