Hey everyone! I’m Hiba Mohammad, an economics major in the School of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis graduating in 2024. This summer, I’ve been working at Made for Freedom, a social enterprise small business whose mission is to help the survivors of human trafficking by providing dignified employment through the production of clothing and accessories. I have been working closely with Dawn Manske, the founder of Made for Freedom, to learn about all the inner workings of running a small business.

When I first began working at Made for Freedom, I had no idea what was in store. I figured I’d do some marketing, maybe some inventory- nothing too special. Two weeks into the internship and I’ve begun planning an online trunk show event and designing all types of graphics on Canva. Four weeks in and we’ve successfully held the trunk show and are now working towards opening an in-person shopping booth in a store called Painted Tree in Roswell, GA. I feel like I’ve done it all from packing orders, attending virtual conferences, marketing on social media, painting, and even electrical wiring, believe it or not. If you told me I would be spray painting furniture and ripping apart wires at the beginning of summer, I would have laughed, but I now realize that’s just the nature of a small business. There’s always something new and exciting everyday and it’s been wonderful being able to experience so many different facets to running a company.

Now I’ll be honest, it’s not all fun and games everyday. There’s a lot of difficulties working for a small business and even more so actually running one. Small businesses like Made for Freedom only have 1 or 2 people actually working for them, while others are just contracted occasionally. This means the founders take on a lot. Dawn often jokes about how she is CEO and founder, but she’s also CTO, CFO, COO- basically everything, so the E in CEO stands for Chief “Everything” Officer. This is a heavy burden to take and can definitely be very draining. Because it’s a small business, she can’t afford to hire lots of people either, so when I joined I definitely felt the impact of all these different responsibilities.

I’ve learned an incredible amount from this internship. When I first began working, I had no knowledge of any user platforms, but I can know use Airtable, Hootsuite, Shopify, ActiveCampaign, Promo, and so many other platforms very well.