Judy Bornstein, a 1986 Hampshire College graduate, has created an endowment that will fund a Women in Business program, which may include courses, grants and research. The $250,000 endowment will also allow Hampshire College to continue an already existing course, also funded by Bornstein. Gazette file photo
Staff Writer
AMHERST — A 1986 Hampshire College graduate is putting her money behind women studying business.
Hampshire College trustee Judy Bornstein of San Francisco has created an endowment that will fund a Women in Business program, which may include courses, grants and research. The $250,000 endowment will also allow Hampshire College to continue an already existing course, also funded by Bornstein.
“The dean of faculty office will decide how to use the funds, but it will definitely be a continuation of how the pilot funds were used, so that will continue basically with the same focus,” college spokesman John Courtmanche said.
In 2012, Bornstein, 53, gave the school $55,000 — its “pilot funds” — to start a course called “Using Stories of Women in Business to Explore and Challenge Wage, Confidence, and Funding Gaps.”
The course, offered each fall, gives small groups of up to two dozen students an opportunity to learn from successful businesswomen. The students and teacher tackle issues like gender and wage inequities, while students are encouraged to enter the field or start their own ventures. In 2017, Dawn Leaks, CEO of the western Massachusetts media company Lioness Group, taught the course.
Because of Bornstein’s endowment, the class is expected to continue “in perpetuity,” according to a Hampshire College statement.
“Women have the disposition to be ideal leaders in business, because we’re conditioned to be collaborative, social, interdependent. Those skills make businesses run,” Bornstein said in the statement.
Bornstein is currently the chief financial officer of Generate Capital, a San Francisco finance company. She has also served in leadership positions at private equity firm American Infrastructure MLP Funds, private equity fund McCown DeLeeuw and Co., and InterDimensions Corp., a technology company.
“Businesses would do better with more women as leaders,” Bornstein said.
According to Eva Rueschmann, vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, at least 100 students at Hampshire College enroll in in business and entrepreneurship courses each year, and students are increasingly expressing interest in such subjects.
The endowment will promote women’s participation in the growing discipline at Hampshire College, and will also allow the school to invite successful women guest speakers and pay internship and travel funds, Rueschmann said.
According to Rueschmann, the Women in Business endowment, program and course will add to Hampshire College’s existing courses focused on women’s involvement in the workforce, including Women in Game Programming and Women’s Work in the Global Economy.
“Together these courses take a critical look at gender and wage inequities in the workforce and encourage women to develop the confidence and leadership to enter often male-dominated businesses, employing their values-driven thinking, problem-solving skills and critical perspective that are the hallmark of a Hampshire education,” Rueschmann said.
Hampshire College students already have access to the million-dollar Seed Fund for Innovation, also established by a Hampshire College alumnus, Michael Vlock, in 2013.
The fund, according to Courtmanche, is a student-managed grant program that helps new graduates with their start-up projects — to the tune of $8,000 sometimes. Courtmanche said several young women have applied for, and received, grants through the fund in recent years.
