Social Entrepreneurism, Media Innovation & More with WeWork Creator Award Winner Cristi Hegranes - Top Entrepreneurs Podcast

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:26 — 21.4MB) | Embed

Cristi Hegranes, Founder and Executive Director of Global Press Institute, which uses journalism as a development tool to train and employ women in developing media markets to elevate awareness and ignite social change joins Enterprise Radio.

Listen to interview with host Eric Dye & guest Cristi Hegranes discuss the following:

What exactly is the Global Press Institute?
What prompted you to start the company?
As a social entrepreneur and someone who’s dedicated to reinventing the news to make sure it’s written by those who are from the regions they’re covering, what’s been your greatest challenge thus far?
What are some of the stories discovered by the female journalists you train and employ?
So we hear that you won a WeWork Creator Award. Tell us about that experience – how has competing in that competition and winning that financial award expanded the reach of what you’re doing?
What’s your biggest piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? Or someone with a business idea who doesn’t know what to do next?

Cristi Hegranes is the Founder and Executive Director of Global Press. A 2013 Ashoka Fellow, Cristi is an experienced social entrepreneur, a media innovation pioneer, and a renowned international journalism trainer. Global Press exists to create a more just and informed world by employing local female journalists to produce ethical, accurate news coverage from the world’s least-covered places. Global Press operates a training program, Global Press Institute, an award-winning news publication, Global Press Journal, and an innovative syndication division, Global Press News Service. GPI has trained and employed 180 journalists across 26 developing countries, including Haiti, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

After serving as a foreign correspondent in Nepal, Cristi founded GP in 2006 to demonstrate a new way forward for the field of international journalism. Cognizant of the gender disparity in media and the one-dimensional portrait of developing communities often painted by Western news outlets, Cristi created GP to provide a professional training opportunity and a global platform for trained, local journalists to report on their communities for a global audience.

Cristi has also developed a dynamic new business model for international journalism through Global Press News Service (GPNS), a state-of-the-art syndication service that enables GPI to magnify its social impact and drive revenue from the sale of GPJ news content to media organizations, corporations, and NGOs. GPNS meets a market need by providing professional, diverse, affordable international news content to its partners. All of the revenue from GPNS is reinvested into GPI trainings and GPJ content creation in order to create a holistic social enterprise.

Previously, Cristi had a successful career as a journalist for Village Voice Media in New York and San Francisco. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and a Bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Cristi also served as a fellow-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg and has taught courses in entrepreneurship and journalism at San Francisco State University and California State University, East Bay.

Recognized for developing a high-quality, sustainable model of international journalism that is rooted in the perspective of local communities, Cristi has received a wide range of prestigious social entrepreneurship and journalism accolades. She is the recipient of the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Society of Professional Journalists Journalism Innovation Prize, a New Media Web Award, a Clarion Award for Investigative Journalism, and a Lifestyle Journalism Prize. She was awarded the Distinguished Young Alumni of New York University in 2015.