Video: One Stitch Closer: Veronika Scott empowers other women

Last month I was a guest lecturer for Stanford University’s Technology Entrepreneurship course. Now I’m bringing the lecture to you in a seven-post series. This is Lesson 3.

Shonda Rhimes — the wildly successful screenwriter, director and producer — delivered one of my all time favorite commencement speeches at Dartmouth in 2014. She told the class to “Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer.”

A hashtag is not helping. #yesallwomen #takebackthenight #notallmen #bringbackourgirls #StopPretendingHashtagsAreTheSameAsDoingSomething hashtags are very pretty on Twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing on your computer and then going back to binge-watching your favorite show. I do it all the time. For me, it’s Game of Thrones.

Sixty-two percent of Millennials believe they can make a difference in their local communities and 40% believe they can literally change the world. But not everyone is doing their part to fix some of the world’s most vexing problems. Here are two stories about two young women who saw things that were wrong and took actions to fix them. If these women don’t inspire you, I give up:

Why would a senior in college not walk away from a homeless woman who is yelling at her, but instead, take her advice and become a social entrepreneur? Because the homeless woman was right. That college student, Veronika Scott, became the CEO/founder of The Empowerment Plan, an organization that hires homeless women to make coats that transform into sleeping bags at night, for the homeless. The story isn’t really about coats — it’s about educating, employing and empowering homeless individuals to create a better life for themselves and their families while producing a humanitarian product for those in need. It’s a model that’s scalable and sustainable. (Disclosure: I am on the Board of Directors.) The story in approximately two minutes is here: