Creating Social Enterprise in Your Region through Empowering the Powerless: An Entrepreneurship with a Mission

The Rev. Becca Stevens is founder of Magdalene residential communities for women, a 12-year-old organization based on the simple premise that love changes lives. Magdalene consists of five residential communities of women who all have criminal histories of drug abuse and prostitution. Each woman, without ever having to pay a cent, shares in this community of recovery for two years, receiving housing, food, medical aid, therapy, education and job training. As a supplement to recovery and job training, Magdalene residents participate in Thistle Farms, a cottage business of Madgalene. The women hand-make nationally distributed natural bath and body care produces.

Stevens is a writer and serves as Episcopal priest and Chaplain at St. Augustine’s Chapel at Vanderbilt University. To date she has raised $9 million and received numerous awards, including the Frist Foundation’s award for "Innovation in Action," the Academy of Women in Achievement, and "Tennessean of the Year" by The Tennessean in 2005. She has written three books: Finding Balance, a women’s Bible study; Sanctuary, named one of Christianity Today’s top five inspiration books of 2005; and her latest, Hither & Yon: A travel Guide for the Spiritual Journey.

Thistle Farms products have been featured on CNN News, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN Headline News with Nancy Grace, Cosmopolitan.com, United Hemispheres Magazine, Health, The Dr. Keith Ablow Show, Southern Living, Naomi Judd’s Morning Show on Hallmark and Rosie among others.

Admission is free. The Alma and Clifford Pearson Distinguished Speakers Series is presented by the Center for Leadership and Values in the School of Business.