Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is a 25 year old entrepreneur who loves bees. Yes, you read that correctly. Bees. She is a fourth generation beekeeper who grew up on a farm in North Carolina. While she was in college, she was unsure about whether she wanted to continue her family’s business or pursue a different career. However, one day while she was studying abroad, she read an article about the decline in bee populations. She was astonished that this was a problem that affected not only her own country, but the whole world as well. She realized that she wanted to be a part of a solution that saved bees all across the world, while continuing her family’s legacy.

Bonner was able to take her family’s beehive business to the next level by creating Bee Downtown. Bee Downtown is a company that installs beehives on the grounds of large corporate headquarters. Its mission is to help save honeybee populations which ultimately helps agriculture. For example, Burt’s Bees, Chick-Fil-A, and Delta are among the many companies that have already signed up to contribute to this mission. Each company that partners with Bee Downtown will host numerous beehives on the properties of their headquarters locations. They will host these hives without doing any of the hard work that normally comes with beekeeping. Instead, Bee Downtown will train each company’s employees to maintain the hives as part of a corporate perk. This corporate perk has not only shown to raise morale of employees, it also helps to foster an environment that promotes social impact within companies.

According to Bonner, surveys have shown that 85% of employees who work at companies that have partnered with Bee Downtown have said that the hives have caused them to feel proud of the companies they work for. Another 95% have said that beekeeping was their favorite employee engagement activity each year. Bonner has successfully found a way to make a profit while also providing a way for people to become involved with a sustainability initiative.

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is an inspiring millennial entrepreneur. She incorporated her background, passion, and talents into a sustainable business that encouraged social impact. If other millennials looked to Bonner as an example of a successful entrepreneur, they would be inspired by her story and may even want to turn their own passions into a business. I believe that with Bonner’s ambition and work ethic, she will be able to expand Bee Downtown all across the globe.