Part of helping people thrive is making sure the neighborhoods where they live are thriving too. For the past 25 years, Urban Neighborhood Initiatives has focused on serving the people and places within a 1.4-square-mile-area of the Springwells neighborhood in Southwest Detroit. 

The students met with Detroit entrepreneurs and energy experts to understand the most pressing energy needs in the city. Those meetings helped them create how-to guides on how Detroit business owners can make their business “greener” and obtain funding through the Inflation Reduction Act to make changes.

To make sure their business solutions are targeted toward Detroit small business needs, community engagement will take a center role in the course like never before.

Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneur’s Project +Impact Studio for Local Business is an interdisciplinary summer internship where undergraduate students from the Ross School of Business and several other schools and colleges at the University of Michigan partner with a portfolio of Detroit entrepreneurs to help expand their businesses.

Faculty awardees work includes the Doctors of Tomorrow program, diversity, equity and inclusion recruiting and teaching methods, diversifying library materials, participatory filmmaking and using mindfulness to address social injustice.

“Throughout my time at Michigan, I developed a unique tool box of technical and cultural skills, and grew a diverse network of relationships that undoubtedly prepared me for the work I am called to today.”
~ Leseliey Welch, MBA ’12

“I think that people have realized that fine dining is not a fad. It’s not a trend. Fine drinking is not either, so I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere.”

~ Dave Kwiatkowski, owner of the Sugar House in Corktown

Lily Hamburger says that DNEP’s presence in Detroit has generated trust and new projects, such as the DNEP+Impact Studio for Local Business, which helps entrepreneurs pivot in the post-pandemic economy.

“To maximize our impact, each team is focusing on one specific area of need so we can address that same problem in multiple companies and develop expertise in that area. As a result, we have eight teams: four focusing on marketing problems and four focusing on operations.”
~ Michael Willard