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Rebecca Stockbridge

USM Student Business Plan Competition Finalist Sets Up Shop in Portland

November 14, 2007

When Maine policymakers talk about the need to reverse the brain drain by training and retaining an educated work force, they’d be hard pressed to find a better example than Rebecca Stockbridge’s experience at USM and in the Maine Center for Enterprise Development.  Stockbridge, a 24-year-old USM graduate from Scituate, Mass., runs two Web design businesses out of a Congress Street office and just bought her first house – not bad for someone who received her bachelor’s degree in 2006.

Stockbridge transferred to USM after searching for a college where she could combine her artistic talents with a business education. She chose USM for what she described as its “unique” Art and Entrepreneurial Studies degree—a program that requires art students to take classes in USM’s School of Business and intern in an art-related business.  Associate Professor of Art Jan Piribeck, Stockbridge’s academic advisor, feels that “USM can be a catalyst for the creative economy through working with and encouraging students like Becky, who is a perfect example of a creative thinker who can apply herself in a practical way – embodying the kind of person who can succeed in Maine.”

Associate Professor of Business Administration Frederic Aiello urged Stockbridge to submit a business plan she wrote as a class assignment to USM’s Student Business Plan Competition and to the Libra Future Fund, a fund that awards grants to entrepreneurs ages 18-29.  The plan was for MediCreative, a graphic and Web design company that works with members of the health care industry creating Web sites for their businesses. 

And the rest, as they say, is history.  Stockbridge received the Libra grant, and although she didn’t win the competition, her plan did place in the top five, which garnered her a rent-free year in the Maine Center for Enterprise Development (MCED) a business incubator housed at USM. (For background information on the Maine Center for Enterprise Development, see http://www.usm.maine.edu/mcr/news/releases_0506/mced.htm and http://www.mced.biz/about.html.)

MCED President John Ferland says Stockbridge progressed rapidly in a short period of time, exiting the incubator with a company that had customers and revenue that provided her with a living.

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