Woyneab Habte ’17

Woyneab Habte is a social entrepreneur and a business research analyst in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Mount Holyoke in May 2017 and joining the nation's most prestigious honor society-Phi Beta Kappa, Woyneab moved back to Ethiopia and started working at a growing African startup named Asoko Insight. When she is not driving investment into the continent through Asoko Insight, she also manages and advises the strategic team of On-Her-Own, a social enterprise she conceived as a sophomore in MHC.

On-Her-Own launches college businesses in which it employs and mentors low-income female university students with very little alternatives of income to help them successfully graduate with transferable job skills. Through On-Her-Own, Woyneab has introduced a nationally scalable model of work-study for Ethiopia. On-Her-Own currently runs two college businesses — a print-shop and a supermarket — and has employed 25 students of which 7 have graduated successfully to date.