August 2015 Honoree
Alexis Dent
Founder and editor-in-chief,
The Miss Information (TMI)
Alexis Dent has accomplished a lot since her graduation from Ithaca College in 2014 with a bachelor of science in integrated marketing communications. She worked as an account executive for Jackson Parker Communications and started her own business. She is founder and editor-in-chief of The Miss Information, a web publication aimed at young women. According to TMI’s mission, “you won’t find meaningless click bait or the type of thigh gap junk that makes you feel badly about yourself here. Rest assured that you won’t find articles telling you about 72 hot ‘new’ ways to please your man either, because that’s an old narrative and we’re bored with it. . . The media landscape for women needs to change, and it is our unwavering mission to be a catalyst in empowering young women through media.”
This native Buffalonian was inspired to start The Miss Information after looking through a women’s magazine and realizing she’d like to see a publication “that covered everything – from politics to celebrities – without pigeonholing readers into this narrow ideal of a young woman.”
TMI got a kickstart through Dent and her team’s participation in the Buffalo Student Sandbox program, which ran from June 2015 to the end of July 2015, and included a $2,000 seed grant for each business and a weekly stipend per team member for the duration of the program. This eight-session version of the University at Buffalo’s Startup CEL course partnered with the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus’s d!g and Ignite programs. Alexis, with team mates Amanda Limardi and Jillian Weidner, used their time in the Sandbox to refine their content strategy, expand their target market, and tweak their brand.
Alexis is proud of what she has accomplished, “There are a couple of things that readers should know about The Miss Information. The first is that I designed, formatted, and currently maintain the website. I think it’s really important for more girls to pursue STEM careers, and I want young women to know that coding – even at a very rudimentary level – is a great skill to have.”