KELLY RAMIREZ TO JOIN PROVIDENCE COLLEGE AS DIRECTOR OF THE DONALD RYAN INCUBATOR FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE ARTS & SCIENCES
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND, Providence College announced today that Kelly Ramirez, a successful, mission-focused entrepreneur and early leader in the field of social impact, will join the College as director of PC’s new Donald Ryan Incubator for Entrepreneurship in the Arts & Sciences.
Ms. Ramirez most recently was co-founder and CEO of Social Enterprise Greenhouse (SEG), a Providence-based social impact business network and incubator, which she led for 13 years. While at SEG, she built a team of over 20 people to develop and execute programs and services tailored to diverse community needs. While at SEG, she also founded the SEEED Summit, an annual national social enterprise conference that convened over 400 participants each year. She envisioned, fundraised for and launched the SEG Hub, a community and co-working space, and built strategic partnerships with both Brown University and Wheaton College to develop and deliver social enterprise fellowship programs for those institutions. She has worked collaboratively with other leaders in the RI entrepreneurial ecosystem to develop the Rhode Island Business Empowerment Network (RIBEN), the first-ever statewide coalition of Rhode Island-based business support organizations with diverse leadership.
Ms. Ramirez co-founded and built numerous other social impact initiatives including Buy with Heart, and Best for RI. A sought-after thought leader in the area of global social impact, she has been invited to lead and speak in courses and conferences at institutions and organizations such as Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, New York University, the Social Enterprise World Forum , the University of Michigan and Yale University.
“We are thrilled to have Kelly serve as the inaugural director of Donald Ryan Incubator for Entrepreneurship in the Arts and Sciences,” said Sean Reid, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “The College conducted a national search to fill this position, but our best candidate just happened to be in the same city. Kelly is a gifted educator who has deep connections and experience within the local and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem. PC’s entrepreneurship-focused programming has grown significantly in recent years. With Kelly leading this exciting new incubator, I am confident she will help us provide students and faculty even more opportunities to innovate and to make a meaningful impact beyond PC,” Reid said.
Prior to founding SEG, Ms. Ramirez was the director for social enterprise at the William Davidson Institute in Ann Arbor, MI, where she built the center’s first social impact initiative and developed the first social enterprise course at the University of Michigan Business School. Earlier, she served in the Foreign Service in Bratislava, Slovakia and as an English instructor with the U.S. Peace Corps, also in Slovakia.
Ms. Ramirez holds BA (Political Science) and MA (Public Policy/Urban Planning) degrees from the University of Michigan. She also has completed certificate and seminar programs at the Foreign Service Institute, the Ross School of Business Executive Education and the Harvard Business School. She has been recognized with numerous awards from organizations such as Citizens Bank and NBC10 (Champion in Action), Providence Business News (Excellence Award for Nonprofit), a Rhode Island Innovation Trailblazer and the U.S. Small Business Association’s National Accelerator prize.
PC established the Donald Ryan Incubator for Entrepreneurship in the Arts & Sciences with a gift from the family of Mr. Ryan ’69. It is a place where students from all academic disciplines can create and test ideas for new products, services and organizations. In addition to managing the Center’s programming, Ms. Ramirez will connect students with mentors and resources from within and outside the College, including alumni.
The incubator space is closely tied to PC’s Business and Innovation minor, which allows non-business majors to develop their skills in global engagement, applied science and design thinking while learning the fundamentals of business and entrepreneurship. PC students have shown an aptitude for product development in recent years. In 2021, students representing PC won the BIG EAST Startup Challenge for “UMeal,” a meal kit that can be assembled from ingredients in a college dining hall and prepared in a student room.
Donald Ryan, a political science major at PC, was an entrepreneur who founded several companies before he passed away in 2011. He began by developing a billing program for radiologists which he expanded and sold to a hospital. After that, he launched several walk-in healthcare centers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. He and several partners then started a mobile MRI business and eventually sold that to a hospital as well. He also founded Practice Management Associates and CareCore, a business that provided benefit management services to radiology providers. CareCore later expanded to include cardiology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, pain management, sleep apnea and laboratories.
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