Spanish Vocabulary to Describe Entrepreneurs

by Ann Abbott

When I teach social entrepreneurship to my students, one of the first things I need to do is get rid of the mental connection of "Donal Trump" with "entrepreneur." Yes, he is an entrepreneur, but he represents many of the negative connotations of entrepreneurship that our students reject.

It helps to give them many alternative examples. I like to giving them examples of real-world social entrepreneurs. Examples of commercial entrepreneurs with a sense of corporate social responsibility. And examples of entrepreneurs that come from countries outside the US.

But I also find that students need some new vocabulary to be able to talk about this different type of entrepreneur. (I suspect that this is the case just as much in English as it is in Spanish.) We need to replace words like greedy, corrupt and egotistical with other words like responsible, socially-committed, mission-focused.

One of the reasons I really like the video above and the blog post where I found it is that he gives students of Spanish many, many words to describe the entrepreneurial spirit. In my future classes, students will watch this video and do vocabulary activities based on it.

I often find inspiration for my teaching (and for my own entrepreneurial projects) at Mujeres de Empresa.

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