Abigail_Gabbard
Abigail Gabbard
My Business Training
Maryam Bunte Adamu
About Maryam Bunte Adamu
Maryam Bunte Adamu is a passionate and determined woman from Bauchi State, Nigeria, with over ten years of experience in the hair care industry. She dreams of launching her own salon, ZISTAR Hair Studio, a professional and welcoming space that reflects her skill, creativity, and resilience.
Rooted in strong community values, Maryam’s vision is to offer high-quality beauty services that help clients feel confident and cared for.
Her ultimate goal is to build a stable and prosperous future for her family while using her business to inspire and uplift others in her community.
Maryam Bunte Adamu
Business Goals
Maryam’s business will be built on values of honesty, resilience, creativity, and community support. Raised by parents who emphasized hard work and integrity, she plans to carry those values into ZISTAR Hair Studio.
More than a salon, it will be a space of empowerment for women in her community. Maryam wants every client to feel proud, valued, and treated with care.
The salon will offer a full range of beauty services, sell hair products, and specialize in bridal styling and hair extensions. Its colorful, energetic design will reflect Maryam’s vibrant personality and deep commitment to her clients.
Maryam Bunte Adamu
Obstacles
Maryam has over ten years of experience in the hair care industry, beginning formal training in 2010 and learning under several skilled stylists.
She specializes in braiding but also offers hair washing, drying, stretching, nail fixing, wig installation, bridal styling, manicures, and pedicures. Maryam is confident in her ability to deliver top-quality salon services.
Her greatest obstacle is lack of funding. Without money for equipment or a shop, and no smartphone to promote her work, she cannot grow her business. Despite recent family hardships, she remains focused on building a better future for herself and her loved ones.
Maryam Bunte Adamu
Our Partnership
Maryam is seeking support from Leadership Initiatives through funding, mentorship, and essential salon equipment. Her startup needs include a shop, generator, wash basin, mirrors, customer chairs, towels, combs, hair dryers, stretchers, pedicure machines, sterilizers, and shelves.
She also hopes to gain training in recordkeeping and financial management. Maryam believes this support can turn her dream into reality.
Her goals include enrolling her children in better schools, helping her husband start a barbershop, and completing their home. She plans to train young women and eventually run a large, modern salon with multiple branches and a passionate, skilled team.
My Grant Proposal Presentation
As part of the International Leadership and Business Internship, I collaborated with top development experts to help grow and strengthen my business partner’s brand.
At the end of the program, my team presented our final proposal to a panel of judges from the Leadership Initiatives Grant Committee. This formal pitch allowed us to apply our entrepreneurial skills, showcase our strategic plan, and advocate for meaningful change in our partner’s business.
Our team was awarded a grant that will fund the implementation of our business partner’s plan, providing life-changing support that will expand operations, improve financial stability, and create new growth opportunities. Over the next year, this grant will help transform the future of their business and improve the quality of life for both the entrepreneur and their community.
My Grant Proposal
Throughout the program, we worked closely with Maryam Bunte Adamu to gain a clear understanding of their business goals. Though Maryamhas leveraged their skills and years of experience to create their business, they face obstacles hindering the expansion of their work.
Guided by their vision, we crafted a proposal detailing the marketing materials that would support the growth of their business. We devised a plan that would allow Maryam to optimize their business through a new branding strategy.
Investments in a logo and marketing materials, such as signs and flyers, are also vital for establishing a strong brand identity and expanding the customer base. These visual assets help create a consistent and memorable image that builds trust and recognition among potential clients.
Internship Highlights
Our business development journey began with a one-on-one Zoom meeting with our partner, Maryam Bunte Adamu, and our Nigerian project coordinator. This initial conversation laid the foundation for strong collaboration and helped us better understand Maryam’s background, family, goals for the business, and the specific challenges they were facing.
Hearing directly from Maryam gave us the insight we needed to begin brainstorming practical, personalized solutions. Each morning, our team held focused discussions to refine our ideas, reflect on expert advice from the day before, and adjust our timeline to move our plans forward efficiently.
Throughout the process, on-staff project coordinators and business development experts guided us, helping us ask the right questions and turn our ideas into meaningful, actionable strategies.
I had the unique opportunity to visit the Polish Embassy, where I gained insight into the role of diplomacy in fostering strong relationships between Poland and the United States.
The embassy functions as a center for international collaboration, working with partner countries and global organizations to address pressing issues such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change. Through this visit, I learned how diplomats engage in meaningful dialogue and policy development to create sustainable, people-focused solutions.
Officials from the Polish Embassy shared how they partner with local communities to identify needs and implement programs that empower individuals and strengthen long-term development. This commitment to community-driven impact inspired my team and me as we worked to develop our own business proposal focused on creating lasting change.
Throughout the internship, our team had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with top experts in business and economic development from Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
One of the highlights was a session with Gerald Gangaram, a decorated Apache helicopter pilot & leadership expert. He gave us a crash course in leadership and decision making, breaking down the key elements of what makes an effective leader. His insights helped us think bigger and more strategically about how to position our partner’s business for success.
With support from Mr. Gangaram and other global leaders, we sharpened our ideas, refined our strategy, and built a powerful pitch deck to present at the end of the week.
To further enhance our presentation and proposal, our team had the unique opportunity to partner with a business and development mentor with immense experience in the fields of finance, development, business management, and more.
With support from our mentor, we were able to craft key questions for our business partners that enabled us to design an effective SWOT analysis that guided our work throughout the week. Following the completion of the SWOT analysis, our mentor worked alongside us to hone our ideas and proposal recommendations that would provide funding and new marketing materials for our partner.
At the end of the week, our mentor supported our slide deck design and gave us instrumental feedback as we practiced pitching our ideas and proposals. This feedback directly contributed to our receiving support from the Leadership Initiatives’ Board of Directors and Guest Judges to implement our microgrant and marketing designs.