Small Biz Summit Mentor Session- Jen Martin & Teresa Tsou
Jen Martin
Jen Martin is the co-founder of Pipcorn, a snack food company reimagining your favorite childhood snacks with better-for-you heirloom corn ingredients that are whole grain, gluten-free and Non-GMO Project Verified. Backed by investor Barbara Corcoran, Pipcorn has been featured on Shark Tank and Oprah’s Favorite Things. With a background in social and human services, self-taught herbalism starting at age 14, and a love of creative directing, Jen strives to use a multi-media approach to create deeper access to community, social action, and joy. She is a founding member of the team behind Queer Soup Night, a national party on a mission to lift up queer chefs, build community, and raise funds for social justice organizations. Martin has been featured in Forbes 30 under 30, Entrepreneur 100 Powerful Women of 2020, and was crowned as one of the queer Black Women Founders to Watch By Essence.
Teresa Tsou
After growing up in Ohio and attending Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Teresa moved to New York City and worked at UBS and Morgan Stanley’s Investment Banking groups advising retail and consumer products clients likeCampbell Soup, Walmart, and Pepsi. She also spent time at TRAUB Advisors, a global investment fund and strategy and business development firm focused on growing luxury fashion and consumer brands. These experiences taught her a lot about the corporate world and that the old school way of doing this is not the way they always have to be done .Challenged to do things better, in 2012, along with her husband, Jeff Martin and sister-in-law, Jen Martin, Teresa started Pipcorn, a Brooklyn-based snack food company dedicated to reinventing their favorite childhood snacks using heirloom corn. Not only does Pipcorn focus on making products that taste amazing with the highest quality real ingredients, the company also cares about treating people, plants and the earth with respect!