Starting today, Claudia Seidenberg is the new executive director of 100state, Wisconsin’s largest coworking community dedicated to providing education resources, events, mentorship, and more to the Madison area business and arts communities.
“I want to grow these great initiatives we have going on here at 100state and continue to create equitable entrepreneurship and continue to position 100state as the center of the entrepreneurial community and entrepreneurial innovation in this city,” Seidenberg tells Madison365. “I want to keep growing this space in the community, really double down on some of the community efforts we’ve been working on and to also take on a few initiatives independent of that.”
Seidenberg has been overseeing operations at 100 state where she focused on maintaining 100state’s operability and ensuring that all members are able to connect with the community and grow their businesses. She worked very closely with former executive director Greg St. Fort, a pioneering entrepreneur who’s last day as executive director was last Friday.
“Yeah, it’s definitely bittersweet. I’m lucky enough to have him not just as an amazing boss but as a friend,” says Seidenberg. “I really want to continue on with a lot of the work that he’s done and really add my own twist to it.”
St. Fort says that he’s eager to be starting a new chapter and he’s happy to be transitioning on his terms. St. Fort has played a huge role within the city’s growing tech and startup community.
“I’ve accomplished some personal goals that I’ve had and there have definitely been some great organizational goals that have been accomplished,” St. Fort tells Madison365. “I’ve met so many great people through the work and that’s been amazing.
“For sure, there will be many things that I will miss but I will stay connected enough. Physically, I won’t be there but I will be really connected with people regardless and I’m excited to see how relationships will evolve as I move forward in my next chapter,” he adds.
Immediately, that new next chapter will involve lots of travel. “All over … the Caribbean for a little bit and then I’m going to be in Africa for a bit,” he says.
His company Let’s Keep Building will be a lot more active, he says, and he will be launching another tech start-up. “It’s still early, so I’m not ready to give too many details on that,” St. Fort says. “But it’s going to be awesome.”
St. Fort says that he will be still working with people in Madison in a variety of capacities and on his new start-up.
“It’s been fun being one of the leaders in Madison’s start-up community. There are not a lot of people of color who occupy that space in the start-up community in any city,” St. Fort says. “There are a lot of cities that struggle with that. For me to occupy that space in the Madison start-up community, I’m really proud to have accomplished that. Hopefully, that becomes an inspiration to others to pursue these kinds of opportunities.”
In early 2017, St. Fort led the charge to move 100state into their current space on West Washington Ave. – almost 11,000 square feet – that gave 100State more room to stretch and grow … almost twice the size of its old place on the Capitol Square.
“Making that new space happen was awesome,” St. Fort says. “The physical space created even more space for the diversity to set in where we could have more partners that have office space and have more new programming and more activities.
“Just seeing all of the start-up and tech activity that is going on in the city overall – let alone 100state – and playing a role in that … that’s something that I will look back fondly upon,” he adds. “It’s pretty cool to look back at where the start-up scene was three years ago and where it is today. Three years is not a long time, but a lot has happened.”
100state is now up to 300 members thanks to the hard work of St. Fort and Seidenberg. St. Fort says he’s excited to see Seidenberg take over at the helm.
“Claudia is a community-builder. I think she’s the perfect person to take over at 100state,” he says. “She believes in the mission and has really great ideas in terms of how she can improve the organization and take it to another level … which she should. I think it’s hard to find somebody at that level of energy, passion, and skill. I think she’s going to do a great job and I’m excited to watch and see what happens over the next year.”
Seidenberg says that diversity and inclusion have been a consistent thread in everything she and St. Fort did working together and that is something that will continue.
“It’s something that’s really, really important to the team, the board, and the community now. Greg and I’s friendship was founded on discussions about social inequity and steps that we need to do that to bring diversity to this world,” she says. “We didn’t like what we saw and we wanted to fix it and that’s been the driver of many of the things that we have done here at 100state.”
The executive leadership team is made up of all women now.
“We’re excited about that. I’m the first female executive director 100state has ever had and Meg [Brewer] is the first [community relations] director, as well,” Seidenberg says. “It’s really exciting to have an all-female team. It will give a different perspective to the space. She and I both came of age through the organization. We’ve been here a long time.
“I’m really excited to see the perspective that Meg brings,” Seidenberg adds. “She and I work very differently and solve a lot of problems for one another. It’s really cool that we have two women leading Wisconsin’s largest co-working community and entrepreneurship that is generally very male-dominated.”
That being said, Seidenberg says she is aware that it is two white women and her next goal is to diversify the team.
“That’s high on our radar to expand and diversify our team and board and work to combat that current state of whiteness that dominates entrepreneurship,” she says.
