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Marga Fripp, Founder Empowered Women International

Marga Fripp is the Founder and President of Empowered Women International.

The award-winning social entrepreneur, and international consultant in art marketing and entrepreneurship with a focus on women, is a former journalist and a native of Romania with over 17 years of experience in solving social problems through the arts, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Fripp is passionate about training, coaching and inspiring women artists, artisans and creative entrepreneurs to pursue their passions. She worked with thousands of women in the US and internationally, and helped them to start up or grow businesses that fuel innovation, opportunity and social change.

In May 2002, Marga created Empowered Women International to give voice and create entrepreneurial opportunities for immigrant, refugee and other marginalized women. Over the past ten years, Marga’s effective and passionate leadership turned EWI from a volunteer-run program to an award-winning organization with more than 3,500 supporters, over 2,500 women beneficiaries, and more than $1 million generated in donated services.

Empowered Women International was named “one of the best small charities in the Greater Washington region“ by the Catalogue for Philanthropy.

Marga and her work have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Alexandria Gazette, WETA and have appeared on The Voice of America Television and WUSA 9News, among others. She received many awards including Living Legends of Alexandria, (Nominee), 2011, Arts Build Communities Award 2010 by the Virginians for the Arts, Alex Awards 2009 by Alexandria Commission for the Arts, the Enterprise Award, Catalogue for Philanthropy 2008, Virginia House and Senate Commendation, 2006, Making a Difference Award, Soroptimist International, Arlington, 2006, the Cultural Affairs Award, the Alexandria Commission on Women, 2005, and the Governor of Maryland’s Award for Service and Volunteerism, 2003.

About Empowered Women International

Empowered Women International is an award-winning nonprofit organization that channels the entrepreneurial drive and creative talents of high-potential immigrant, refugee, and low-income women in the Greater Washington DC Metro Area into micro-businesses that create jobs, provide sustainable incomes, and allow them to integrate into the community and pursue the American Dream.

We offer a holistic model of empowerment and use the power of the arts to bring people together, empower women, and build multicultural understanding. Art has exceptional storytelling and healing qualities and transcends language, cultural, and economic barriers.

Economic and self-empowerment are powerful tools to liberate and transform each woman, so she can achieve independence and self-sufficiency. EWI’s strategy is to empower the whole woman, not only teaching her the skills she needs to launch and grow a business, but using peer-to-peer relationships, a mentor family and a network of support that helps women build confidence, connect in the community, and recognize their power as changemakers.

Check out our monthly series of women entrepreneurs who are not afraid to dream big, embrace chance, and overcome adversity. If you know someone who can benefit from our services, send her our way. To reach me, email Marga C. Fripp, EWI founder and president at margacfripp@ewint.org.

Entrepreneurs willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.”

– Victor Kiam

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.”

– Basil King

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

The goal of Life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature.”

– Joseph Cambell

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

If it really was a no-brainer to make it on your own in business there’d be millions of no-brained, harebrained individuals quitting their day jobs.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

Confidence is the most important thing you can teach someone… if you can teach them confidence, you don’t have to teach them anything else.”

– Vin Diesel

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leon Joseph Suenens

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

A man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.”

– Chinese Proverb

Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

– Christopher Robin to Pooh

Many people prefer to play it safe when it comes to business matters. Are you willing to take risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurial success?”

– Steven Schussler

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

– Robert Frost

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

– Marcel Proust

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

Do not say, ‘why were the former days better than these,’ for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”

– Ecclesiastes, 7:10

Our deepest wishes are whispers of our authentic selves. We must learn to respect them. We must learn to listen.”

– Sarah Ban Breathnach

Education is an admirable thing to have, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”

– Oscar Wilde

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.”

– Cecil B. DeMille

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

Look at everything as though you were
seeing it either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”

– Betty Smith

‎That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”

– Steve Jobs

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

The best hobbies are the ones that take us furthest from our primary occupation.”

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of inkandescent terror.”

– T.S. Eliott

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

A truly forgiving person is someone who experiences all the anger merited by injustice and still acts with fairness and compassion.”

– Martha Beck

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

– Napoleon

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

– Thomas Edison

My job is my hobby. I come to work to play.”

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International