Celebrating Women’s History Month - gener8tor Alumni
Women's History Month presents us with an opportunity to amplify and celebrate women’s achievements. Join us as we highlight gener8tor alumnae who have created savvy solutions to community challenges. Read about their entrepreneurial journeys and be inspired to do the same.
Tyanna Buie
gener8tor Art
Tyanna is a Milwaukee/Detroit-based artist and curator. She uses printmaking, sculpture and installations as a form of both narrative and non-narrative storytelling as a path to examine personal and family histories. Through family memorabilia and documents sourced from family members, Tyanna revisits and revives previous impressions from past events allowing a beautifully rich heritage to creatively unfold and find permanence within familial and cultural conversations.
Joanne Rodriguez
gener8tor Sustainability
After working for decades in an industry that engorged clogged landfills with waste adding toxins to the ground, Joanne left corporate America embarking on a journey to find an environmentally friendly and sustainable solution. Then, she collaborated with leading mycologists discovering a simple answer to a mounting issue: mushrooms! Fungi are a natural decomposer, and people have recently used it to clean oil spills and other contamination. So, why not clean landfills? Three years later, her company Mycocycle uses nature to help cut carbon by diverting waste, creating new value, and promoting a circular economic solution. We train mushrooms to eat trash.
Cindy Belardo
gBETA Indiana
Passionate about the environment since earning her bachelor of science degree in environmental studies from the University of Oklahoma, Cindy stumbled across a new issue: global environmental and gender equity. Inspired, she used a low-waste, reusable menstrual cup. Realizing the benefits, she led a team to India in 2018 for further research later giving a Tedx Talk on the topic entitled “Menstrual Cups for Women’s Empowerment”. Out of this, she and her co-founder, Drew Jarvis, launched Sunny in 2019. They are dedicated to delivering self-care through eco-friendly products, honest education and global giveback programs. Coming soon, the Sunny Cup and Applicator — the first menstrual cup that inserts like a tampon.
Jana Morrin
gener8tor Milwaukee
Necessity was truly the mother of invention for Jana when she created Speakfully, a software that gives employees a safe, private way to document harassment, mistreatment or other workplace incidents. Born out of her own harrowing experience with mistreatment in the office, Jana wanted to ensure that no one else would feel voiceless in such situations. Speakfully not only allows employees a place to record such violations, it also gives organizations real-time data and analytics to be more proactive about the incidents and prevent them from becoming bigger issues.