{"id":13998,"date":"2015-09-02T18:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T22:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/?p=13998"},"modified":"2015-09-02T18:00:47","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T22:00:47","slug":"long-road-to-clemson-drives-students-entrepreneurial-spirit-to-help-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/long-road-to-clemson-drives-students-entrepreneurial-spirit-to-help-others\/","title":{"rendered":"Long road to Clemson drives student\u2019s entrepreneurial spirit to help others"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InTheseHills-Kaitlynn_Lewis\"<\/a>Kaitlynn Lewis\u2019s journey to Clemson has been a circuitous one.
\nThrough grit, determination and generous scholarship donors, she has overcome numerous obstacles and hopes to use what she learned from the school of hard knocks \u2014\u00a0and Clemson \u2014\u00a0to help others like her move beyond the hardships in their lives.
\nLewis is a junior business management major with a nonprofit leadership minor and a concentration in entrepreneurship. Her future looks bright, but it wasn\u2019t always that way.
\nThe oldest of five children, she\u00a0experienced a tumultuous childhood, having lived a nomadic existence from Texas to Virginia. She spent a good deal of her adolescence homeless, raising her siblings, working multiple jobs while in school, and in foster care. She attended eight high schools, four middle schools and a dozen elementary schools. Lewis\u2019s 17th\u00a0birthday was marked by her mother\u2019s suicide. Through it all, her spirit and drive to help others hasn\u2019t wavered.
\nLike the road to Clemson, Lewis\u2019s experience since arriving has been atypical of most 21-year-old college students. When she\u2019s not commuting more than three hours a day to and from Greer, her day is consumed with a variety of jobs, volunteering and, of course, studying.
\nScholarships have helped her with the financial burdens of tuition, but she is still supporting herself and has had to work upwards of 50 hours a week to cover living expenses, like food, gas money and car insurance.
\n\u201cI worry all the time about my future, money and my family,\u201d Lewis said. [pullquote]\u201cHappiness for me would be not having to worry about having food to eat, a place to live or not having to sleep in my car. Without the scholarships, a lot of my career objectives wouldn\u2019t be possible.\u201d[\/pullquote]
\nOutside the classroom, she\u2019s learning and contributing to helping others less fortunate through her involvement in AmeriCorps and organizations like Youth for National Change, which advocates free college tuition for financially challenged foster children.
\nLewis sees herself pursuing an entrepreneurial career path in helping people help themselves. \u201cI see myself going the startup route in a way that will enable people in need to be able to sustain themselves and become self-sufficient on a path to stability and becoming productive members of society,\u201d she said.
\nOne startup idea Lewis is championing involves building \u201ctiny\u201d homes for the homeless, where the future inhabitants would play a role in their construction, giving them skin in the game and an accountability. She calls the concept Micro Homes for Macro Hope, and she floated the concept last fall at the Clemson IDEAS student organization\u2019s \u201cStartup Weekend.\u201d The idea received an honorable mention and won the event\u2019s social entrepreneurship award.
\n\u201cMy path to Clemson hasn\u2019t been like a lot of others here, but I\u2019ve learned from it,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cThat, combined with the nonprofit leadership and entrepreneurial track of my education here, is preparing me well to make a difference in the world.\u201d
\nAs for life after Clemson, Lewis wants to continue helping others who walked in her footsteps, perhaps through the Peace Corps.
\n\u201cI\u2019d like to work in business development in the nonprofit sector, maybe helping people start their own business, again along entrepreneurial lines.\u201d
\nTo\u00a0support students such as Lewis through your giving,\u00a0go to <\/em>clemson.edu\/giving<\/a>\u00a0or call 864.656.5896.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaitlynn Lewis\u2019s journey to Clemson has been a circuitous one. Through grit, determination and generous scholarship donors, she has overcome numerous obstacles and hopes to use what she learned from the school of hard knocks \u2014\u00a0and Clemson \u2014\u00a0to help others like her move beyond the hardships in their lives. Lewis is a junior business management […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1112,1259,2534,2850],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-13998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-these-hills","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-first-generation-students","tag-scholarships","tag-summer-fall-2015"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/08\/InTheseHills-Kaitlynn_Lewis.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13998"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}