Global Youth Empowerment & Entrepreneurship Programs
















Upcoming Programs
Prior Global Programs
Youth Startup Accelerator &
Leadership Workshops Fall 2023
Kakuma Refugee Camp
Kakuma, Kenya
US Embassy
Nairobi, Kenya
US Embassy
Lisbon, Portugal







Wisdom Accelerator for Youth
Wisdom House Davos
January, 2023
University of Chicago
Paris, France
November, 2022
Youth Leadership & Entrepreneurship Workshops
US Embassy, American Corner
Marrakech, Morocco
December, 2019
Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
August, 2019
















Impact in Morocco
Silicon Valley, California-based National Institute for Mentoring Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs (NIMBLE) brought its top-rated entrepreneurship and leadership programs to Marrakech in December 2019 in partnership with the US Embassy.
The programs enable young women and men (college-bound high school students and college students) to learn empowering and transformational skills.
American entrepreneur, French speaker and afrophile Mariette Wharton, founder and CEO of NIMBLE, will lead the NIMBLE Girls Leadership Workshop.
Topics in the NIMBLE Girls Leadership Workshop include:
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Assessing strengths
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Traits of successful leaders
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Ethical decision-making
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Negotiations
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Tips for self-advocating
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Cultivating your personal brand
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Your personal pitch
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Networking tips
Mariette was joined by NIMBLE Program Manager Bethel Endawoke, who was born and raised in Ethiopia and has also been trained in design thinking, for the NIMBLE Entrepreneurship Workshop.
The NIMBLE Entrepreneurship Workshop addresses:
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Where entrepreneurial ideas come from
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How to validate ideas in the market
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An introduction to the world-renowned design thinking process
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The lean business model canvas for business planning
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How to pitch to win investors, partners, and team members
En fonction des compétences linguistiques des participants en anglais, le programmes peuvent se dérouler en français.
















Impact in Ethiopia
Five teams came up with solutions to problems they care about:
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Eureka Youth Center, an activity center to promote extracurriculars (non-existent in Ethiopia) for ages 15-25
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Bridge, a 2-sided market for graduating university students and employers (Ethiopian universities don’t have career centers)
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Ethio-Face Broadcast, a social media platform to help ease ethnic tensions (more than 80 different Ethiopian cultures)
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Phoenix Girls Center, a set of services for girls empowerment
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HI! School software management to accept payments and track student attendance, grades and other info (non-existent locally)
Ethiopian-born Bethel Endawoke, an intern at NIMBLE, Middlebury College student, and creator of the Fura Innovations project, and NIMBLE founder and CEO Mariette Wharton, developed and led a leadership, design thinking and entrepreneurship workshop for Ethiopian females ages 17-22. Ninety-four ambitious and driven students from 26 universities and high schools applied to the program.
In the words of (first female) Ethiopian President
Sahle-Work Zewde: "I see a bright future for Ethiopia,
whenever I see young girls like you.”
🇪🇹
Young Women's Empowerment: Entrepreneurship & Leadership
a Fura Innovations-NIMBLE Collaboration
August 20-25, 2019 at the US Embassy's Geneme Center in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia
Incredible experience leading an empowerment and entrepreneurship program in Bahir Dar with motivated engineering/design university students and college-bound high school students, some in a STEM Incubation center, where a few of these young women learned about TED talks. Since English is their language of instruction, Bethel and Mariette conducted 95% of the program in English, 5% in Amharic (Bethel in Amharic...). The twenty-four students in the Fura-NIMBLE program went through a week-long self-awareness, design thinking, innovation and business planning process, concluding with a Python and Scratch coding class offered by the US Embassy staff.
From zero to one, these young women are empowered and are starting these initiatives with the bootstrapped approach they learned. Job opportunities are crushingly limited, so entrepreneurial ventures are a way to create their own income but it is evident from their innovative business plans that these young women want to help others foremost.
On August 25, Bethel and Mariette led a Youth Entrepreneurship Summit that also provided networking opportunities for 60-70 for college-bound high school and university young women and men at Unison Hotel in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.