How-To Business Stories from Minnesota Immigrants

By Tea Rozman Clark

"This book gives us a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurialism in our region." -- Johnathan Weinhshagen, CEO and President of Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce

Green Card Entrepreneur Voices: How-To Business Stories from Minnesota Immigrants is a collection of essays and digital narratives from twenty immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs living in Minnesota. Written in the tellers’ own words, these stories offer insight into immigrant entrepreneur expertise: how they did it, why they did it, and what they learned in the process. 

These storytellers, who come from nineteen different countries, describe their childhoods, the reasons they left their homes, their first moments in a strange land, and the ways they’ve contributed to their new home. They've build multi-million-dollar companies, founded community arts organizations, developed products that support their home countries, and designed new organizations in the US based on their cultural traditions. They are social entrepreneurs, company founders, and everything in between. Immigrants are among the most entrepreneurial individuals in our nation. They create new companies, provide jobs, and contribute to the American economic landscape. This book, along with its accompanying video narratives, memorializes these contributions. 

Green Card Entrepreneur Voices is an inspirational resource and how-to guide for anyone who wants to know what it takes to succeed as an (immigrant) entrepreneur in our nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Card Voices
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781949523096

Tea Rozman Clark

Tea Rozman Clark, PhD is the founding Executive Director of Green Card Voices. Previously, she has worked for Reconciliation and Culture Cooperative Network, a New York City non-profit working with immigrants from the Former Yugoslavia. She is an NYU graduate in Near and Middle Eastern Studies and has a PhD in Cultural History, specializing in oral history from the University of Nova Gorica. She is a first-generation immigrant from Slovenia and 2015 Bush Leadership Fellow.

Book preview

1Tashitaa Tufaa

Tashitaa Tufaa

From: Aloo, Ethiopia

Current City: Champlin, MN

Current Business: Metropolitan Transportation Network

metrotn.com

I wasn’t always an entrepreneur, but I was a fast mover, an action-taker. My friends and parents always told me I was too fast.

I was born and raised in a village in Ethiopia. My parents had fourteen children. We lived on a farm, so as a young boy, I worked on the farm, then went to school, and then came back and worked on the farm some more. I also played soccer. When I was in junior elementary school, we had to move to another village, and for high school, I had to go to the city. I went back home during the weekends and worked on the farm some more; that is how it was.

Growing up on a farm is challenging. You start working at a very early age and only have two hours a day to go to the field and play soccer. I learned the value of hard work; you have no choice but to finish what you’re given. For example, my responsibilities started when I was six. I had to look after goats and sheep. They were easy to take care of. One day a fox came and ate a baby sheep while I was sitting there. The fox undermined me, and knew I couldn’t do anything to her. I hid this from my parents when I headed home. I was punished when the baby sheep was gone; they thought I couldn’t take care of it.

Ethiopia was a communist country at the time. Not many opportunities were available. My extended family sponsored my education at an American college in Zimbabwe. I went to that school and finished my bachelor’s degree there. Then I went back to Ethiopia and worked at the Seventh Day Adventist High School as a history and English teacher for a year. I went to another school, the Yemen Arab Community School, and taught there for another year prior to coming to the United States.

There was great unrest in Ethiopia when I decided to move to the United States. I was a very politically oriented, educated young man. I strongly disagreed with the regime. I never agreed with the Ethiopian government, past or present. The country was operated by an oppressive, dictatorial government, and still is. I knew from the very beginning that I did not have any place there. I got a United States visa, and I knew when I left that I was not going to come back. I came to Minnesota and settled here.

I knew the United States was a place where there were so many opportunities. There were people from other countries and from my own country. I didn’t think there was any better place. I came to Minnesota because my older sister was here, as well as my cousins and other extended family.

I left Addis Ababa on August 16, 1992. I spent a night in Frankfurt, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It was the first time I saw a developed Western city. Going from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the airport, I loved it. I still would like to go back and see it again. I went from Frankfurt to Chicago; then I had to travel from Chicago to Minneapolis the same day.

Back home in Ethiopia, there is group life and many people have a lot of time to waste. When I came back there from Zimbabwe, I had to live in the city, where you could just walk around after you came back from work. But when I moved to the United States, there was no time to do that. You can’t really waste your time here. You have to focus and plan your future, and that is exactly what I did.

I arrived in Minneapolis in August 1992 at 1401 Portland Avenue South, Apartment C 201. I lived in a low-income apartment building downtown. My place was the most beautiful apartment I had ever seen. I had never seen an apartment like that prior, so I knew that America was