Virtual Startup School That Has Helped Female Entrepreneurs Launch Hundreds of Mission-Driven Companies Kicks Off Summer Session on Monday, June 28

Brit + Co and Office Depot today announced that Office Depot will continue to provide opportunities for female entrepreneurs with the company’s sponsorship of the fourth cohort of Selfmade, Brit + Co’s 10-week virtual startup school for women. The course is hosted by Brit + Co founder Brit Morin, with over a dozen other notable female founders, experts and investors signed on to help teach, including Katrina Lake (founder and CEO of Stich Fix), Toni Ko (founder of NYX), and Arlan Hamilton (founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital) and includes highly personalized skill development to enable each student to start or grow her own business.

To help drive educational change, Office Depot's sponsorship will enable the course to be made free for up to 200 women, focusing on women of color, women from underserved and underrepresented communities, and women in need of support to help them trailblaze.

The spring Selfmade session saw a number of mission-driven companies, with 17.7% of the students’ brands dedicated to women’s empowerment, 10.2% focused on mental health-related issues, and 5% addressing environmental issues.

“We’re happy to continue our collaboration with Brit + Co to help provide women an opportunity to turn their passion projects into businesses and take their existing businesses to new heights,” said Wesley Brinkhurst, vice president of marketing for Office Depot. “We’re so inspired by the participants’ desires to change their own lives, as well as the lives of others, and encourage female entrepreneurs to register for the next Selfmade program session to help make their dreams a reality.”

“The women of the last cohort were incredibly dedicated to facilitating positive change, founding and growing companies that are both improving the world and improving their lives--from helping to treat mental health, to making the world safer for women, to supporting working moms,” said Morin. “After the difficulty of the past year and a half, they still took a leap of faith and signed up for Selfmade, and with the support of our group and one-on-one coaching, inspiration and advice from our guest teachers, they have hustled their way to finding their passions, launching companies, and earning revenue. I have been so impressed by the drive and ambition of our alumni.”

Office Depot-sponsored student Jhanelle Elissa founded Jiive, a new type of events platform for real-life community & live experiences born out of the isolation she felt during the pandemic as someone living on her own. She recognized that others were also struggling with their mental health during this challenging time, and Jiive was born out of this, as a way to connect people through live events.

"My hope in signing up for this course was to gain a sense of community with fellow entrepreneurs who were also in the early stages of founding their companies and also to learn about new funding resources to explore,” said Elissa. “The ladies running Selfmade were not only so generous with their time and supportive, but also transparent and provided a realistic view of the entrepreneurship journey. I'm excited to continue building my company and bringing these newfound connections and relationships into this next phase of getting my ‘big vision venture’ off the ground."

Features and benefits of Selfmade include:

• 15+ hours of live instruction in all facets of how to start a company
• 1:1 coaching and group chats with like-minded entrepreneurs
• Customizable templates for financial statement presentations, proposal decks, marketing assets and more
• Access to world class experts in tech, finance, marketing, sales, and investing

Selfmade registration is currently open and class will kick off on Monday, June 28. For more information on Selfmade visit, TrySelfmade.com and click here to hear from past program participants.

About Brit + Co

Founded by Brit Morin, Brit + Co is on a mission to give women the courage and creativity to live life at their fullest potential. Through our inspirational content, educational online classes and useful products, she is enabled to shape her future. Over the past nine years, Brit + Co has become one of the largest digital brands for women, now reaching an engaged community of over 115 million monthly users across its website and platforms. It is a top 5 global publisher on Pinterest, has garnered over a billion video views and has produced more than 60,000 pieces of content. The brand extends offline as well, with permanent retail experiences, classes, events, and physical products sold at mass retail stores nationwide. Visit Brit.co for more information.

About Office Depot

Office Depot, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of The ODP Corporation (NASDAQ: ODP), a leading provider of business services and supplies, products and digital workplace technology solutions to small, medium and enterprise businesses, through an integrated business-to-business (B2B) distribution platform, which includes world-class supply chain and distribution operations, dedicated sales professionals and technicians, online presence, and approximately 1,100 stores. Through its banner brands Office Depot® and OfficeMax®, as well as others, the company offers its customers the tools and resources they need to focus on their passion of starting, growing and running their business. For more information, visit news.theodpcorp.com and follow @officedepot on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The ODP Corporation and Office Depot are trademarks of The Office Club, Inc. OfficeMax is a trademark of OMX, Inc. CompuCom is a trademark of CompuCom Systems, Inc. Grand&Toy is a trademark of Grand & Toy, LLC in Canada. ©2021 Office Depot, LLC. All rights reserved. Any other product or company names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

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