Business for Good: Penji
May. 30, 2019
Khai Tran was four-years-erstwhile when, in 1994, his family unit left Vietnam and moved to Camden. "Coming from a third-globe country, Camden was amazing," Tran says. "We didn't even know Camden was considered a 'bad' neighborhood until a whole decade after."
Whereas in Vietnam the economy was still recovering from the state of war and jobs were scarce, in New Jersey his extended family unit institute piece of work at chicken and sewing factories, employment that ultimately helped put Tran through Rutgers University-Camden, where he studied science and psychology.
Supportive as his family was, subsequently graduation Tran didn't have the luxury of wanderlust. "I needed to find a task, not notice myself," he says. With YouTube as his guide, he taught himself spider web blueprint, then started hustling for clients. As business took off, Tran settled nearby in Philly and so Delaware. His career thrived, but Tran felt a call to return to the place that had nurtured him.
The biggest misconception nigh underrepresented communities is that their population is unemployable.
He'd recently met a like-minded soul, another Rutgers alum named Johnathan Grzbowski, and in 2022 the duo decided to launch (and self-fund) Waterfront Ventures as a vehicle to stimulate business development and job opportunities in Camden. Its endeavors would include a co-working space, events, and support for startups.
Just later an early Waterfront-run conference, Tran and Grzybowski got valuable feedback: If they wanted to lure businesses to Camden and create employment there, they'd have to do more than cheerlead, and really practice what they preached. So in 2017, they started Penji equally a sort of startup experiment within Waterfront Ventures, a fashion to model working in, and hiring from, Camden. It's an on-demand graphic blueprint solution that gives clients unlimited services for a apartment monthly charge per unit. For businesses, that fee is $369; for nonprofits, it'south a mere $1. "That way, they can get their bearings together, put together improve proposals, and accept a ameliorate journeying fundraising and applying for grants," Tran says of the determination to steeply disbelieve services for 501(c)3s.
The social impact spirit also guides hiring practices. Employees come up largely through Hopeworks , the South Jersey nonprofit that has steered hundreds of young people away from poverty and violence and towards grooming and jobs in coding, design, and web development. While interns come from Temple and Penn besides, Tran says that local hires oft bear witness the most dedication.
"The ones that are actually from Camden tend to be some of the hardest working and most committed individuals, because people tend to overlook them," he says. "They're not used to getting a chance, or getting an opportunity, like other students would be, so when an opportunity is given to them, they tend to take it much more seriously."
Now, Penji has become a assisting business in its own right, employing 45 people; its clients number more than 800 and include Reebok, Pep Boys, Express and 1-800-Flowers.
Here, Tran proves that— Thomas Wolfe be damned—yous can go domicile.
JESSICA PRESS: What motivated you to return to Camden, and not flee the proverbial nest, as many ambitious peers in your position would do?
KHAI TRAN: It was because of the backwards psychology I was seeing. My parents, my grandparents, who worked and then hard to buy me an teaching, they couldn't leave Camden—they're poor. That's merely the edgeless truth of it. They just don't accept the education or ability or the finances to go where I could get. I had a very hardworking family, who worked iii, 4 shifts just to make ends meet and provide me with a reasonable education. I realized that if I moved to a major city to notice a task, and later on reached a sure indicate in my life where I wanted to give back and make my customs better, the backward logic is that I was the one who made it bad in the offset place without realizing it, past leaving! Of course my family absolutely wanted me to leave and pursue a better life, there's no question about that—merely by me and so many other millennials leaving the cities that nurtured us, what happens to those cities? The populations that are left behind are going to exist my parents, my grandparents, and those who are merely scraping by. And so every bit a effect, I acquired a problem that I'm [going to] attempt to solve subsequently.
JP: And past staying….?
KT: If more people like me stay, then naturally it's going to concenter more retailers, more restaurants, more than entertainment, and more people into the surface area. And over fourth dimension, that, in a way, combats gentrification.
JP: What do you retrieve the biggest misconception about Camden is?
KT: The biggest misconception about underrepresented communities is that their population is unemployable. But when you drive through Kensington, or you bulldoze through Camden, you're non seeing the father who's working three jobs correct then to support his family. You don't see him, because he'south working. You lot don't encounter the kid who'south at home studying his or her ass off to go to Harvard. You don't meet the people who are working to have a better future. When yous drive through these neighborhoods and yous see the people who aren't working, information technology gives a skewed representation. And to condemn an entire community and non requite them funding, or not back up the people there just because of a few people you meet on the street, that'south the result of misconceptions.
By me and so many other millennials leaving the cities that [nurtured] us, what happens to those cities? The populations that are left behind are going to be my parents, my grandparents, and those who are just scraping by.
JP: Can you talk more nigh Penji'due south strategy of hiring from within Camden, and not necessarily seeking out, say, grads from the Ivy League or the most prestigious pattern schools?
KT: Nosotros believe that people deserve a 2nd chance. And communities deserve a second chance. And so when we rent people, we're not looking for the best talent in the world—you don't have to exist the best—merely y'all should at to the lowest degree aspire to be pretty good. And so we're ever willing to give people a chance, fifty-fifty if they don't possess everything that we need to work at our visitor nonetheless. We too don't believe that we are IBM or Microsoft—we're not the company that you're going to be with for the residuum of your life. Now, should that be the case, that's cracking; we're non against that. But nosotros see ourselves as a stepping stone for a lot of people. We see ourselves as the first step, or the first employer that is giving them a chance, or the first one that helps them build a amend portfolio.
JP: And then how practice yous determine an applicant's potential? What do you lot pay attending to when you interview job candidates?
KT: In our hiring procedure we ask two questions. Number one: What is your dream? What is your passion? What practise you want to do? Don't say yous want to work for Penji forever because that'due south not your dream. No ane has that dream. What do you actually want to do? Practice y'all want to be a vocalizer, do yous want to own your own restaurant, practise you desire to own your own agency? We want you to have an ambition much greater than the states. And then if they tin can reply that question with any level of enthusiasm, we honey that.
And and then the second question nosotros ask is: How can we help you get there? Nosotros want to brand sure that we're relevant and we also desire to brand sure that by being with the states, they're able to become closer to their ultimate goal.
JP: What is your vision for the time to come of Penji and Waterfront Ventures?
KT: Ultimately nosotros want others to view underrepresented communities and the people there differently. If we can get more people to become to these communities, and build headquarters there, provide jobs there, stay in that location, and give these people a second chance, so I call up that'southward ultimately our goal.
JP: Why the name Penji—does information technology mean something, or what were you hoping it would connote?
KT: Well, it does mean something. When we came up with that name, we thought it was obvious what it means, but nobody knows what it means! And then this summertime we're going to launch a competition online asking people to guess and offering prizes.
JP: Is information technology a play on, I dunno, pen ninjas?
KT: [Laughs.] No.
This interview was edited and condensed.
Photo via Penji 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/business-for-good-penji/
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