Mario J. Gabelli School of Business junior selected for fellowship program that integrates student leaders into Rhode Island’s entrepreneurship scene.
BRISTOL, R.I. – If you recently bought a Boston Celtics ticket on the secondary market there is a good chance that you purchased it via student entrepreneur Amanda Calderon. In less than a year the junior marketing major has built a profitable business in the booming secondary ticket industry with her site Courtside Broker.
One might think it beginner’s luck, but the native of Morris Plains, N.J., has been churning out her own small businesses from an early age, making enough bucks with the recent endeavor to forgo further work-study assistance (she worked the Annual Fund Phonathon one year) or the typical college-student job.
Now she’s helping foster the same entrepreneurial spirit among her peers at Roger Williams University and other colleges across Rhode Island as a 2016 Changemaker Fellow. It’s part of a unique statewide effort led by Social Enterprise Greenhouse and the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation to increase awareness and resources for student entrepreneurs in the Ocean State. A marketing major with minors in web development and graphic design communication, Calderon was selected as a fellow for her leadership in the University’s professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi – Nu Sigma, and for her interests in social enterprise and entrepreneurship; she also serves as the advertising chair on the University’s Multicultural Student Union and has previously played intramural sports and written for the student newspaper, the Hawk’s Herald.
From her passion for inspiring entrepreneurship in others to leveraging her Changemaker Fellowship, Calderon recently sat down for a Q&A with PDQ@RWU.