Discourse

Rhea Alexander, founder of the Parsons Entrepreneurs Lab and co-director of the Impact Entrepreneurship Initiative, completed “Strategies for Starting Up in a Multiverse” in 2023 with co-authors, distilling years of testing startup methodologies through a design-inflected approach aimed at Gen Z, alphas, and creatives who think differently. The guide moves from mindset to mission to methods to multiplicity, arguing that design strategy can make deep and profound change while building in community and social-environmental justice. Driven by her own difficulties starting up as a woman, Alexander has consistently created pathways for underserved entrepreneurs—creatives, people of color, women—and her current research investigates why female founder funding dropped to 1.8% by 2025, using strategic design methodology to prototype and test systemic interventions.