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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.

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

– Oscar Wilde

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

– Jimi Hendrix

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

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

– Robert Frost

Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

– Martha Beck

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

– Steven Schussler

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

– Annie Dillard

Don’t wait for someone else to lead you to your right life; that privilege—and responsibility—is yours alone.”

– Martha Beck

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

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

– Jesse Jackson

No longer talk at all about the kind of man a good man ought to be, but be such.”

– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

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

– Leo Jozef Suenens

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

– J.G. Holland, novelist

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

– JFK

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

Don’t follow your dreams. Chase them.”

– Richard Dumb

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.”

– Andrew Carnegie

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

– Brian Tracy

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

– Joseph Campbell

My task is really not to change myself but to become familiar with who I am.”

– Maureen Cook

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

– Mary Oliver

Let us seize the day and the opportunity and strive for that greatness of spirit that measures life not by its disappointments but by its possibilities.”

– W.E.B. Du Bois

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

– Bruce Lee

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,
 what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The journey is the reward.”

– Greg Norman

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

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

– Dr. Evelyn Vogel, Dexter

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

‎Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.”

– Booker T. Washington

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

– Andrew Carnegie