Crafting Opportunity

PhD in Entrepreneurship Student Shelley Cameron Creates Jobs to Bring Families Together

For nearly two decades, Shelley Cameron has worked alongside Haitian artisans and families to explore how entrepreneurship can create opportunity, preserve dignity and help keep families together. As founder of Papillon Marketplace, a social enterprise centered on “orphan prevention through job creation,” Cameron has worked with more than 300 families while gaining firsthand insight into both the possibilities and complexities of using business to address social challenges. Now a student in the PhD in Entrepreneurship program at the University of Louisville College of Business, she is stepping back from her day-to-day work to study the questions those experiences have raised.  

Cameron recently shared with us more of the journey that brought her to Haiti, the lessons that shaped her work and how she hopes to transform nearly 20 years of experience into research that can guide future entrepreneurs. 

College of Business: What first drew you to Haiti, and how did your experiences there lead you to establish Papillon Marketplace? 

Shelley Cameron: I was first drawn to Haiti as a young mother exploring the idea of international adoption. I wanted to expand my family through adoption, so being curious and wanting to see the situation firsthand, I traveled to Haiti and spent a week in an orphanage. While I was there, to my dismay, I learned that almost all of the children (90%+) in the orphanage who were available for adoption had living parents who just weren’t able to take care of them. 

My heart was immediately drawn to the plight of mothers and fathers who were faced with the heartbreaking decision to leave their children at an orphanage simply so that their basic needs could be met. I kept thinking about what it would feel like to have to give my children away just so that they could live. This paradigm shift changed my life forever. I immediately began to look for a way to empower parents to keep their children and raise them in the same way I would want to be able to raise my own. Nine months later, I moved to Haiti and lived there full time for the next decade. That passion ultimately led to the creation of Papillon Marketplace, a social enterprise focused on creating quality, dignified jobs for parents in Haiti so they can support their families and keep their children. 

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College of Business: How has Papillon Marketplace’s mission of “orphan prevention through job creation” shaped your understanding of entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social change? 

Shelley Cameron: I've always been business-minded. I started my first business when I was 17 years old, so when I began thinking about how to help families in Haiti, it felt natural for me to look for solutions that involved business and could hopefully become sustainable.  

Aid is crucial in a crisis, but it rarely creates lasting solutions. After the 2010 earthquake, I saw enormous resources used to help people survive temporarily, with little investment in opportunities that could become sustainable or self-perpetuating. I found that if you can create meaningful employment or give someone the tools and opportunity to build a business of their own, it has a higher chance of creating a generational break out of poverty. Helping people realize their own ability to provide for themselves and make their own decisions for their families felt honoring to the families and also felt like it could have potential for lasting change. 

College of Business: What have the Haitian artisans and families you’ve worked with taught you about leadership, partnership and building sustainable solutions? 

Shelley Cameron: One of the biggest things I've learned from working alongside Haitian families and artisans is that collaboration begins with curiosity. It starts with learning by listening and resisting the assumption that you have all (or any) of the answers before fully understanding the complexities of their culture. Most of the time, the Haitian people I work with already know the answers to the problems they face. What they may lack are the resources, access or opportunities necessary to turn those solutions into reality. For things to be sustainable, Haitians have to feel like they are working on real solutions collaboratively in order for it to “stick.” While I have led in many ways, I have also learned to follow, understand and turn what I have learned into plans for sustainable solutions. I’ve tried instead to see myself as a partner and, at times, a bridge – advising on where market opportunities are, working collaboratively to design products that would be attractive to the most potential buyers and helping get products to market via a website and warehouse managed from the United States.  

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College of Business: As you reflect on Papillon Marketplace’s growth, what aspect of its impact has been most meaningful to you?

Shelley Cameron: The most meaningful part of Papillon's impact has been raising my children alongside mothers and fathers who were also trying to raise theirs. I've been doing this work for almost 20 years now, which means I've had the incredible privilege of watching a generation grow up. I've watched children stay with their families, go to school and grow into young adults while their parents have had the dignity and opportunity to provide for them. 

When I first went to Haiti, I had this dream of finding a way to help keep families together by creating opportunities for parents. At the time, it was simply a dream and a hope that maybe that could be done for a handful of families. Nearly two decades later, having worked with more than 300 families, getting to see the fruit of that dream in the lives of real people is incredibly meaningful to me. Businesses measure success in many ways, but for me, those families, and the children I've watched grow up within them, will always be the most important measure of Papillon's success. 

College of Business: What inspired you to write “The Orphan Gospels” and “Shelley in Haiti,” and how has storytelling complemented your work as an entrepreneur? 

Shelley Cameron: I lived through the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and I came away from that period of my life with so many stories and experiences that I didn't want to lose. My first book, “Shelley in Haiti,” was really a gift to myself and a way of recording those memories, but it also became a way to begin sharing some of what I had learned about how non-governmental organizations and mission focused organizations could potentially do better. 

My second book, “The Orphan Gospels,” was really a continuation of that conversation: How do we do better? How do we preserve dignity? How do we empower people rather than unintentionally creating dependency on aid and charity? What does the transition from charity to independence actually look like? Are poverty orphans really orphans?  Storytelling has complemented my work as an entrepreneur because both are ultimately about trying to answer the same question: How can we help in ways that leave people stronger, more empowered and more independent than when we began? 

College of Business: How did you become involved in the documentary “Poverty, Inc.,” and what perspective did you hope to bring to the film? 

Shelley Cameron: In the year or two following the 2010 earthquake, Haiti became a major focus for reporters, celebrities, politicians and international organizations. Papillon had become fairly well known within that community as an organization approaching post-earthquake development through sustainable business and job creation. Through some of those connections, the directors of “Poverty, Inc.” learned about our work and invited me to participate in the film. 

The perspective I hoped to bring was that charity itself can become a business, and sometimes the incentives within that system can unintentionally put the cart before the horse. For example, an orphanage depends on funding to operate, and that funding often depends on having children to care for. When financial incentives become tied to the continued existence of the very problem an organization is trying to solve, it can become a slippery slope.

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What I was seeing through job creation was a very different model. Instead of continually meeting the same needs through aid, we could invest in businesses and employment that allowed people to meet those needs themselves. A sustainable job has the potential to eliminate the need for aid not just today, but for years to come. That experience reinforced my belief that the ultimate goal of development should be to work toward a future in which help is no longer needed – where people have the opportunity to move toward independence, self-determination and dignity.

College of Business: After years of building and leading a social enterprise, what made pursuing a PhD feel like the right next step, and what made this the right time to pursue your degree?

Shelley Cameron: After working in the field for almost two decades, I've realized that there are still significant questions that I have. In many ways, I have more questions now than when I started.

Years of working alongside entrepreneurs and families in Haiti have given me a tremendous amount of practical experience, but they've also raised questions that experience alone can't necessarily answer. I wanted the opportunity to step back from the day-to-day work and explore some of those questions more deeply and systematically. A PhD felt like the natural next step because it gives me the tools to turn nearly two decades of observations and questions into a clear research direction. My hope is that some of that research I do can eventually help pave the way for future entrepreneurs who want to use business to address social problems, particularly in difficult and fragile environments. After spending so many years doing the work, I'm excited to have the opportunity to study it.

College of Business: What drew you to the PhD in Entrepreneurship program at the University of Louisville?

Shelley Cameron: To be honest, I didn't know very much about Louisville when I began this process. What ultimately drew me to the program were the people. I felt an immediate connection with Dr. Daniel Bennett and also with Donna Zinser Clark, who was already familiar with my work through the film, “Poverty, Inc.” I began to feel that the University of Louisville was a place where my professional experience and the questions I wanted to explore would be genuinely valued and wanted. I felt incredibly well received, and that sense of connection made me believe Louisville would be a great fit for me and for my family who moved here with me.

College of Business: What areas of entrepreneurship are you most interested in studying, and how have your professional experiences shaped those interests?

Shelley Cameron: I'm naturally drawn to social entrepreneurship, particularly understanding what makes some social entrepreneurs and social enterprises successful while others struggle or ultimately shut down. During my years in Haiti, I watched many well-intentioned social enterprise initiatives start and eventually fail. The fact that Papillon Marketplace is still operating after so many years makes me curious about what we did differently, what we did right and, just as importantly, what we could still be doing better. 

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Another area I'm particularly interested in exploring is the emphasis many social entrepreneurship initiatives place on women and mothers. Many programs are designed exclusively for women, and there are valid reasons behind that approach. At the same time, I'm curious about the broader effects on families and communities when sustainable economic opportunities are primarily available to women. How does that affect relationships, roles and family dynamics when one parent is given access to economic opportunity while the other is not?

College of Business: Looking ahead, how do you envision bringing together your work as an entrepreneur, author, researcher and educator?

Shelley Cameron: I hope that these different parts of my life don't exist separately but instead continue to build on one another. My hope is that the research I do during the program will become a catalyst for even more questions and research – work that can ultimately make its way back into the field and be useful to people who are doing the hard work of social entrepreneurship. I'm excited about bringing all of those experiences into the classroom as an educator. I've found that people remember ideas differently when they can connect them to a story. Theory can sometimes feel abstract until you see what it looks like in the life of a real person, organization or community. After nearly two decades of entrepreneurship and work in Haiti, I've accumulated a lot of stories – stories of success, failure, resilience and lessons learned. I hope that as a professor, I can use those experiences to make theories come alive for my students and help them see not only how entrepreneurship works on paper, but what it can look like in the complexity of the real world.

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