Newman’s first student led Enterprise group makes its mark
Daniel Evans is currently studying Business at Newman University and was heavily involved in the Enterprise group at Newman before deciding he would like to take his entrepreneurship further by creating his own student led enterprise group; a first for the university.
Daniel’s aims were to encourage students to think big; give students a safe place to share business thoughts; provide resources to assist in the development of ideas; and to empower students to take their ideas further.
Since launching Daniel has created ‘NEST’ – Newman Enterprise Support Team and already hosted a number of successful events. Daniel, along with fellow Business student Natalie Siviter, has raised awareness of the group by running sessions to inspire their peers to get involved with enterprise. NEST has set up social media accounts and their following is growing fast.
Daniel comments “There has already been some great work done by the likes of Kevin Griffiths and Philip Cullen in developing enterprise opportunities for Newman students. However, we wanted to take this one step further by creating an enterprise community where students could support each other and grow their ideas.”
Most recently, Daniel’s team organised for Google Digital Garage to attend the university to put on workshops including ‘Building a Digital Marketing Plan’ and ‘An Introduction to Digital Advertising’. The workshops were open to staff and students as well as students from other universities. Daniel’s aim is to put Newman on the map for enterprise.
The workshops were great for those new to the marketing world as well as acting for a fantastic reminder for processes for those who are already involved in the marketing industry.
Simone Robinson, the Digital Garage coach who led the workshops, said “One of the main things to do is to get yourself out there, making yourself as visible as possible using what is readily available to you, a digital marketing plan will come in useful too, as you can learn ways to market yourself. See yourself as a brand and develop it”.
It was an extremely positive initiative organised by the NEST team to secure a company as large as Google to give students the encouragement and advice needed when looking to set up their own business.
When talking of his future plans for NEST, Daniel commented “We have made great progress with NEST in such a short amount of time, but the work is not over yet. Going forward we have plans in place to further develop the society into next year. We would especially like to thank all the students and staff who have supported us, this would not have been possible without them! We have begun to reach out to the other universities of Birmingham so see how we can bring them together in the name of student enterprise in order to further enhance the opportunities available for everyone at Newman University”.
