Creating a Sustainable Business among South Africa’s Poor ’One Bite at a Time’

When she worked on Wall Street launching IPOs Alicia Polak helped generate new wealth. Now she is working to build wealth in the dirt-poor black township of Khayelitsha 30 minutes down a dusty road from Cape Town South Africa. Two years ago Polak founded The Khayelitsha Cookie Co. which now employs 11 women from the sprawling shantytown to bake high-end cookies and brownies that are distributed to top hotels restaurants and coffeehouses throughout South Africa. Working in conjunction with the Societal Wealth Generation program in Wharton’s Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center which explores ways to apply entrepreneurial business models to social problems such as healthcare education and unemployment Polak says her ultimate goal is to change the lives of the women she employs ”using this company as the vehicle.”

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