Twenty-seven years ago, Marsha Bailey established the nonprofit Women’s Economic Ventures (WEV) to help women start their own businesses, empowering participants with micro-loans and self-employment training programs.
As we sit down for lunch, I ask Marsha what inspired her to create the program. “My own personal experience growing up in the ‘60s,” she answers. “I was steered in traditional ways for education expected for a woman. A teacher or a dental hygienist was what my mom envisioned.” Plus, her parents grew up in the Great Depression, so they wanted her to make safe choices, and Michigan was in the midst of a recession when she went to college, with unemployment over 12 percent.
“It was difficult to make decisions that I knew they wouldn’t approve,” she explains, “but I still made them.” When she got her degree in fine art and sociology from Michigan State in 1972, Marsha says, “I found it hard to support myself. I wanted to do something.”