Dr. Mere Tari-Sovick is an interdisciplinary scholar-practitioner, researcher, writer, storyteller, community outreach, and social change agent from Vanuatu. Known for her scholarly and practitioner work on women’s economic participation, Dr. Sovick’s work is primarily concerned with the success of female small business owners by exploring the strategies successful businesses used to stay in business longer than 5 years in the U.S.
Her work also focuses on the success of women’s participation in small businesses, social entrepreneurship, and traditional economy (subsistence economy) in the Pacific in order to drive, and impact positive social change in their communities and in their lives. She has keen scholarly interest in how women in the Pacific, especially in Melanesia use their traditional economic practices as a form of resilience, and a framework to organize, manage, and sustain their small businesses and lifestyles that are empowered and relied solely on receptacle exchange of social capital in a little or none cash economy. Doctor Sovick’s work also looks at how businesses, organizations and nonprofits can drive positive social change (PSC) to impact policy change.
She is the founder and executive director of Melanesian Women Today, a non-profit organization (MWT), an international indigenous women-led non-profit that aims to empower and improve the well-being of women, girls, and youth alike in the areas of entrepreneurship, education, and health in the Melanesian subregion of Oceania in the SouthWestern Pacific Ocean. As an academic and research practitioner of business and social entrepreneurship; she has over a decade of work experience in international business, entrepreneurship and running a non-profit organization and has extensive knowledge on how institutions, businesses and nonprofits can drive positive social change (PSC) that can impact policy changes. Equipped with over a decade of work experience in international business, social entrepreneurship, management, and leadership for social change; she has developed a strong work ethic and background knowledge to support her research and advocacy efforts and community engagements.