Tucson women, rural and Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs to get federal boost | Business News

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Startup Tucson will use the $ 50,000 SBA prize money to work with agricultural partners like Mission Garden to drive job growth and education in the regional food systems.

Startup Tucson

Startups led by women and Spanish-speaking and rural food business owners are backed by federal funding of $ 100,000, recently awarded to the University of Arizona Center for Innovation and Startup Tucson.

Each organization won $ 50,000 in the US Small Business Administration Growth Accelerator Fund Competition and won two of three Arizona awards.

UACI, UA’s longtime technology-driven incubator, proposed innovative ideas to help women-led startups research and develop STEM-related innovations.

The center plans to use the prize money to hire female interns and match them with women-led startups to give them strategic insights into commercialization and help them advance the technology through federally funded projects like the state’s Small Business Innovation Research Support awards.

Nikita Fernandes, a researcher at the University of Arizona Center for Innovation member Cellstate Biosciences, works in a laboratory in the UACI-Oro Valley that focuses on the life sciences.

University of Arizona

Startup Tucson plans to use its prize money to expand its existing food and agriculture programs to entrepreneurs who have rural and / or Spanish-speaking communities in the Tucson area.

The money will also help translate startup Tucson programs into Spanish, a need identified during the launch of the food programs developed under a USDA Farmers Market Promotion grant in 2020, the nonprofit group said.

The funding will also increase funding for farm entrepreneurs through training to attract federal small business research grants and allow startup Tucson to add an “AgTech Prize” to its annual IdeaFunding pitch competition this coming April.

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