Murdoch Business School Director of Entrepreneurship André deSouza has returned from a three-week visit to the United States after being selected for the U.S. Department of State's all-expense-paid International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), taking part in the inaugural "Freedom 250 Initiative" alongside delegates from around the world. 

IVLP is a prestigious long-running program with alumni including prime ministers and Nobel laureates. Typically, a small-scale single theme program, this year was very different, and André was one of 185 participants chosen from 90 countries for the program, coinciding with America’s 250-year independence celebrations, which paired international visitors with American institutions across eight themes, from innovation and government to culture, entrepreneurship and agriculture. He travelled as part of a twenty-member group focussed on small business development, entrepreneurship and innovation, with stops in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Akron and Philadelphia between June and July.

"We were given to understand it was one of the most competitive years to get into the program," said André. "But what stood out wasn't just the access to policymakers and institutions — it was seeing how differently cities and communities approach the same problem: how do you back entrepreneurs, and how do you use business to rebuild a community?"

In Washington, the group was briefed on federalism and small business advocacy by organisations including the National Federation of Independent Business and heard from the State Department on the diplomatic value of programs like IVLP itself. In Los Angeles, the group visited Homeboy Industries, the local chapter of an international gang-intervention and re-entry program, where enterprises like its bakery and café exist to employ former offenders rather than the other way around. Surrounded by ex-gang members convicted of violent crimes was extremely confronting, but seeing their transformation through programs and support and hearing from the founder was truly transformational.

"That was the moment that's stayed with me the most," André said. "It's a model built around people first — dignity, community and a second chance — and the businesses grow out of that, not the other way around." He added, speaking about the Founder Father Gregory Boyle, that “Father G, as he affectionately known, and Homeboy Industries is well-known in the state, and his quote – we don’t hire people to bake bread, rather we bake bread so that we can hire people – will stay with me forever.”

The group also spent a week in Akron, Ohio, a former centre of global tyre manufacturing now reinventing itself through business incubators like Bounce Innovation Hub and community marketplaces such as Northside Marketplace, which lower the barriers for first-time entrepreneurs to test products and reach customers.

André said the parallels to Western Australia were hard to ignore, where WA aims to diversify its economy, pointing to a question posed by a local mayor in Youngstown, Ohio — a city rebuilding its identity after the decline of steel manufacturing — about what a region markets itself on once its founding industry fades.

"It's exactly the conversation we should be having here," he said. "What is our identity, and how do we back the next generation of small businesses and entrepreneurs to build it?"

The program concluded in Philadelphia, where the group presented on their experiences at a Freedom 250 plenary before touring Independence Hall and the National Constitution Centre. André said he now hopes to bring several of the models he encountered — including community marketplaces and university-backed accelerators —into conversations with local business and government contacts in Western Australia.