Toward Greater Inclusion: Research Meets Entrepreneurship

How do you manage to earn a doctorate, build a business, work as a content creator, and still pursue a clear social goal all at the same time? Pauline Langhals shows that this is indeed possible—with a lot of passion, courage, and the desire to make a difference.

Pauline Langhals, a former RPTU student in special education, chose a path after graduation that didn’t follow the traditional model. After earning her master’s degree, she decided against immediately beginning her teaching internship and is instead pursuing several projects all at once, each with a common goal: greater inclusion in society, particularly in the workplace.

Pauline is currently pursuing her Ph.D. as an external doctoral candidate at RPTU in the Department of Educational Sciences. Her research focuses on inclusive business startups and the question of how people with disabilities can be more fully integrated into startup processes and the labor market.

Her desire to translate academic findings into practical applications ultimately led her to found her own company. Together with her partner, Pauline Langhals is building the social enterprise Incalor, which not only addresses inclusion but also exemplifies it.

In addition, she works part-time as a marketing manager and content creator, producing content for organizations such as Aktion Mensch and MoveRLP. From the outside, this daily routine might seem almost impossible to manage. Pauline sees it differently: “These are all my absolute dream jobs. I feel privileged to have built a lifestyle where I enjoy every single activity so much.”

Questions of Social Participation

Even during her studies, Pauline engaged intensively with questions of social inclusion. After earning her master’s degree in special education, the next traditional step was actually on the horizon: her teaching internship. But while many of her fellow students embarked on this path, Pauline asked herself a fundamental question: Why do people with disabilities still have significantly worse opportunities in the job market despite numerous efforts? Her conclusion: “People with disabilities are often not perceived as an economically relevant target group. As a result, their potential is frequently underestimated.”

Doctoral Dissertation on Inclusive Startups

This observation ultimately became the starting point for her doctoral research. In her cumulative dissertation, she examines various aspects of inclusive startups. In the long term, she hopes her research will help create concrete guidelines for inclusive startups. But theory alone wasn’t enough for Pauline: “If I’m convinced that something needs to change, why not try it myself?”

“If I’m convinced that something needs to change, why don’t I try it myself?”

Her company was born out of this line of thinking. At first glance, the business idea sounds surprisingly simple: personalized candles. In reality, however, there’s a larger social concept behind it. The inspiration originally came from her personal life. Pauline enjoyed giving custom-designed candles to friends and noticed how personal and special such gifts were perceived to be.

Today, Incalor produces personalized candles in collaboration with various regional partner businesses. The ceramic holders, for example, come from a family-owned business in the Westerwald region that also operates inclusively.

What stands out about her business is its understanding of inclusion: “People with disabilities shouldn’t automatically be assigned the simplest tasks,” she says. “For me, inclusion means putting skills to use where they shine the most.”

“To me, inclusion means putting skills to use where they shine the most.”

One example of this is her employee Joshua. Among other things, he supports the company with IT issues, video editing, and technical tasks. Pauline is adamant: “It would be a waste of potential if someone with these skills were making candles.”

Startup Office and EXIST Women Grant Provide Vital Support

On her journey to starting the company, Pauline received extensive support from the startup office at RPTU and Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences. On the recommendation of her doctoral advisor, Professor Marcel Veber, she first attended a startup breakfast. There, she made initial contacts that proved crucial for the further development of her idea. This was followed by regular consulting sessions, support with the crowdfunding campaign, connections to networks, and opportunities to present the company to the public.

The EXIST-Women grant, which supports women in academia with startup projects, also helped her further develop her idea. “Without this support, many things would have been much more difficult,” Pauline says in retrospect.

Success on Social Media Through Authenticity

In addition to research and entrepreneurship, Pauline is also active on social media. She originally started using it to raise awareness for Incalor and built a large community within just a few months. Her most important lesson from this experience is one thing above all else: authenticity. People are interested in genuine personalities and unique traits. Nevertheless, she also views the mechanisms of social media with a critical eye. Reach often depends on algorithms that are virtually impossible to influence. Still, in her view, the benefits of raising awareness of important issues like inclusion outweigh the drawbacks.

Her tip: Not every step has to be perfect

The journey hasn’t always been easy for Pauline. The crowdfunding campaign to finance Incalor, in particular, was an intense time. Presenting the project to the public, maintaining a daily presence, and hoping that enough people would support the idea was challenging. “When the campaign was over, I felt like someone had pulled the plug,” she recalls. Still, she had to keep going. The company was built—an opportunity for which she remains grateful to this day.

Today, she looks back on that phase with calm. One important lesson she’s learned since then is that things don’t always have to go perfectly. For her, quieter phases and setbacks are now just part of the process, and her expectations of herself have eased: “I used to put a lot more pressure on myself. Now I know that not every step has to be perfect.”

What drives Pauline can be traced back to one central idea: responsibility. She is convinced that her privileges always come with an obligation to use them for good. “If you have the opportunity to make a difference, you should seize it,” she says.

This idea shapes her research, her company, and her social engagement. She has clear goals for the future. In the long term, Incalor aims to establish itself as a stable company and demonstrate that inclusion can be economically successful. At the same time, Pauline wants to continue her academic work and support companies in building more inclusive work structures. This creates a path that brings together research, entrepreneurship, and social responsibility.