Here are just a few RIC entrepreneurs who created Rhode Island-based businesses. They run the gamut from fitness to fashion. Some have partnered with others to launch their ventures and others have gone it alone; but none could have achieved what they have without a bold belief in their ideas and in themselves. These are their success stories.
Samantha Sousa, a finance major, was entering her junior year at Rhode Island College, working part time as a bank teller and taking classes full time when she decided to start a business. In 2021 she partnered with Katie Massarone and Trinity Greene to open Up & Away Balloons R.I., LLC. Sousa was 20 years old. The three women had often bounced around the idea of starting a balloon business of their own when they worked together at a retail store. Their job there was inflating balloons.