Alumni create networking platform

Tens’ story starts with founder and CEO Ingrid Eskeland-Adetuyi. Before she became an entrepreneur, she was a professional screenwriter, one who was able to achieve a life-long goal that revealed to her a problem she was determined to find a solution to. 

After Eskeland-Adetuyi sold one of her screenplays to “X Men” producers, she found herself at an all-time high in her career, but she also felt she had hit a wall. She wanted to advance in the film industry, but struggled.

“I did not have the network around me to take me to the next level,” Eskeland-Adetuyi said. “Hollywood is so male-dominated, and I really lacked a supportive community of women around me. I didn’t know how to meet other women in film in this male-dominated space.” 

When Eskeland-Adetuyi became aware of the lack of a community of women in Hollywood, she became “obsessed” with solving the issue, she said. After researching and looking for already-existing solutions, she was disappointed. Many so-called solutions were expensive memberships filled with fake promises, she said, and just weren’t the thing she was looking for.

Her determination to find a solution to such a big problem brought her to campus as part of the Iovine and Young Academy to acquire a masters in integrated design, business and technology. It was in one of her electives that she met Francesca Diliberto, eventual co-founder of Tens.

Eskeland-Adetuyi and Diliberto graduated from Iovine and Young in 2022. During their time at the University, Eskeland-Adetuyi presented her new-found problem to Diliberto, and so Tens came to be.

Tens is a social media platform dedicated to helping women foster growth by providing them with a supportive community curated to their goals and interests. The platform aims to give women the resources they need — such as matching them with people with similar goals — to make meaningful connections that will help them achieve their dreams.

The name itself was used as a way to take the expression “she’s a ten” and give it a new meaning — that of a supportive woman who pursues her goals. With that in mind, Eskeland-Adetuyi and Diliberto began working on Tens, which launched last year, along with its mobile app, which is set to launch in November. 

Throughout the past year, the pair has been hosting events and running a blog, Tens of the Tenth. The blog is the website’s dedicated space to spotlight women and capture their success stories.

Erica Der Mesropian, USC alum and founder of EmpoweredByStretch — a program dedicated to empowering athletes — was Tens’ November spotlight. Mesropian met many of the people at the University, including Ingrid, online through her master’s program.

“When I saw she was doing Tens Social, I immediately fell in love because I’m all about female empowerment,” Mesropian said. 

Tens Social’s dedication to empowering women manifests in different ways. One of them is friendship.

“There’s always going to be a need for you to find someone to help you achieve your goal whether that’s through emotional support … through mentorship or guidance or giving their own advice,” Diliberto said.

This strong connection to finding friendships is one that Eskeland-Adetuyi and Diliberto wanted to share with a niche audience, which they discovered after speaking at USC’s Women’s Conference. After sharing her story to students, Eskeland-Adetuyi said she had many students approach her, asking for a solution.

“They wanted a community where they can go and find that engaged group of supporters who will mention their name in a room full of opportunities, who will help them identify their goals,” Eskeland-Adetuyi said.

After the conference, Eskeland-Adetuyi and Diliberto wanted to expand Tens even further. With a mobile app, a website and active social media already part of Tens, the pair knew they wanted more. 

“We wanted to do this because there are very urgent stakes right now,” Eskeland-Adetuyi said.  “The World Economic Forum is saying that it’s going to take 132 years … for the world to achieve gender parity. That’s a very serious problem.”

And so Tens University was born, a new club coming to campus in Fall 2023. The club will aim to push students to embark on unique pathways, create a supportive community and build friendships along the way, Diliberto said. 

This is just one way the pair says they are passing on the torch to students at the University. 

“We really wanted to give back all that we’ve learned through looking at this problem and the solutions needed for women to have that engaged support system,” Eskeland-Adetuyi said.

Eskeland-Adetuyi said a lot of her undergraduate and graduate experiences have allowed her to reflect on the lessons she wants to pass on. 

“Sometimes your life takes you in different directions and it’s based on really staying true to your heart and knowing what’s the right goals for you to be setting for yourself … it makes your life richer,” she said. 

As Tens University gets ready to launch full-swing this semester, Eskeland-Adetuyi said she hopes the club will communicate similar truths she wished she had learned earlier. The new launch is something the Tens community is in full support of. 

“I hope that when Tens launches on campus, it gets a lot of traction because … it will definitely be something that’s good for all women and girls on campus,” Mesoropian said.