Prosper Institute

Jennifer Ehlen grew up in Mexico, Missouri. She obtained a Bachelors Degree in Management and Organizational Behavior from UMSL in 1999. She then worked at Boeing as a Senior Contracts specialist from 1999 to 2003. In 2003, she received her MBA from St. Louis University. Followed by that, she worked as the Director of Leadership at KETC from 2003-2006 and then Development Director at SLU from 2006 to 2010. In 2011, she went back to St. Louis University to work as the Director of the Center of Entrepreneurship. From 2011 to 2015, she worked at Thompson Street Capital Partners as the Director of Deal Development. While a $380 million private equity firm, she helped develop relationships with various brokers to create potential acquisition targets.
At Prosper Capital, they are looking to get a return on their investment, while at the Prosper Institute, its a non-profit. The focus of the Prosper Institute is to find resources to help businesses succeed by providing education and networking opportunities. Members are chosen through an application process and once accepted, they have access to programs and mentors. There are different events to help create an environment where networking and education can happen. Some events that Prosper Institute hosts are idea brunch, office hours and office hours/after hours. They also have a variety of different mentors for each member of the program to get to know. There is also a group called Mastermind Growth Group to help provide females entrepreneurs with advice, perspective, problem solving and positive reinforcement with other female entrepreneurs, a group of 7-9 women total
Their business is trying to solve a problem that has been around for decades, specifically, inequality in the workplace and the lack of women who run their own businesses in the St. Louis area. There are a few reasons that Ehlen believes this problem exists. Her first theory is that St. Louis is a conservative region which has kept the amount of female business owners small. The second is there have been investments made in many male-dominated businesses like manufacturing and biosciences. Finally, it is difficult for women to network, especially since raising capital is not something historically that women are comfortable with. Also statistically, Men don’t want to invest in women as much. They want to give capital someone similar to them, aka a man, and a study done by Harvard proved that people are less likely to fund a woman’s venture over a man’s venture. Prosper Capital and Prosper Institute will hopefully help combat these problems present in the St. Louis