DINNER WITH WORLDCHANGERS

They eat problems for breakfast!

Our most popular event series is back! DWWC hosts an award winning social entrepreneurs where students have a rare opportunity to meet successful social entrepreneurs and have an intimate conversation with them to learn more about their experience launching their initiative, changing systems, failing and iterating.  Past speakers include thought leaders and awardees ranging from Forbes 30 Under 30s, Echoing Green, White House Fellows and Shark Tank Winners.

This year’s speakers are in support of CMCs Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America. Our speakers are award-winning social entrepreneurs working on the frontlines, who are ‘committed to the full and equal promise of our nation’s constitutionally protected freedoms.’

 

SPRING 2023

Daniel Tellalian
FOUNDER/CEO
ANGEL CITY ADVISORS

TUESDAY, JAN 31
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B
REGISTER HERE

ABOUT ANGEL CITY INVESTORS

Angel City Advisors facilitates the flow of capital and expertise to expand opportunity, elevate community-generated ideas, and achieve equity. We place a premium on market-oriented solutions to social challenges, and take pride in executing our vision at the highest levels with integrity and humility.

We provide a broad portfolio of services that help family offices, fund managers, foundations, municipalities and other market participants connect to social enterprises and emerging community voices.

ABOUT DANIEL

Daniel brings over two decades of experience in impact investing, entrepreneurship, business mentoring, financial transactions, and place-based economic development. He was a founding board member of the Center for Place-based Initiatives and the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, and sits on numerous corporate boards, investment committees, and commissions including the Los Angeles Water Quality Board. Daniel is also a licensed California attorney and CPA, and a 1998 Echoing Green Fellow.

JENNA NICHOLAS
CEO
IMPACT EXPERIENCE

TUESDAY, MARCH 7
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B
REGISTER HERE

ABOUT IMPACT EXPERIENCE

Impact Experience catalyzes investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and community leaders to build strategic partnerships and develop solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges in marginalized communities throughout the United States and abroad. Impact Experience works toward a four-step process: studying a community’s needs with the help of local partners; bringing investors and local partners together to identify challenges and opportunities; building trust and developing actionable commitments; and following commitments through to completion. The end goal is to drive environmental and social regeneration in marginalized communities toward a more equitable and inclusive society. 

ABOUT JENNA

Jenna is an award-winning social entreprenur who previously worked with Calvert Funds, after which she set up her own consultancy, Phoenix Global Impact. She was a project manager at Divest-Invest Philanthropy, a coalition of over 170 foundations representing over $10 billion in assets under management, divesting from fossil fuels and reinvesting in new economy solutions. Jenna graduated from Stanford University with an international relations honors degree and also received an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She is a PD Soros Fellow and recipient of the Stanford Social Innovation Fellowship. Jenna has received extensive press coverage, including in the Financial Times, on PBS television, and in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She regularly speaks at conferences and universities, and gave a TEDx Talk in Portland. She is an active member of the Baha’i Faith, which is the source of her inspiration. Jenna is a 2018 Echoing Green Fellow.

DOMINIC KALMS
CEO
B GENEROUS

TUES, APRIL 18
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B
REGISTER HERE

ABOUT B GENEROUS

ABOUT DOMINIC

Dominic Kalms is a multi-venture backed entrepreneur and philanthropist with an expertise in Financial Technology (FinTech), Nonprofits, Donor Advised Funds (DAFs), and digital fundraising. He has raised over $120M in venture and philanthropic capital during his career and has been featured in an array of media publications (e.g. NBC, Forbes, CBS, Entrepreneur, BBC, Yahoo etc.) where he discusses philanthropy and impact. He was most recently profiled on the front page of Entrepreneur.com, as well as in the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy web series, and he recently guest lectured a course on Philanthropy at MIT. His latest opinion piece on corporate giving can be found on Forbes.com.

FALL 2022

WILLIAM EVANS
FOUNDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NEIGHBORHOOD BENCHES

TUES, SEPT 27
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B

ABOUT NEIGHBORHOOD BENCHES

Neighborhood Benches educates people on leadership and good practices that break cycles of youth violence and incarceration, making it easier to focus on leadership roles, educational studies, and next steps. Neighborhood Benches achieves this mission by engaging some of the hardest-to-reach people from underrepresented communities, and by implementing initiatives that teach young people to act as leaders for finding solutions and implementing them. The process and solutions are roadmaps for directly impacted people to model changed behaviors and for building community with both resident leaders and the next generation of leaders organizing for change.

ABOUT WILLIAM

William Evans is the founder and president of Neighborhood Benches, an organization increasing the presence of leadership to focus on youth violence and incarceration. Prior to Neighborhood Benches, William worked at the Fortune Society as an “alternative to incarceration counselor” and community liaison and then joined the I-CAN (Individualized Corrections Achievement Network) Discharge Planners on Rikers Island. William believed that by returning to his community with a specific plan to recruit individuals and helping them understand the need for change, the role they could play in inspiring others and implementing solutions, great changes would come. Knowing these extraordinary individuals had a tremendous impact on how youth live today, on how their society functions, and on what values young people hold, William resigned. They were the leaders who “made a difference,” and he wanted to recruit them to create long-lasting changes that would improve the quality of life and decrease rates of violence and incarceration. William figured a good strategy would be an effective alignment between benches in the courts and benches in the “hood,” focusing on systematic changes. William is a 2019 Echoing Green Fellow.

BRIGITTE VICENTY
FOUNDER
INNER CITY GREEN TEAM

TUESDAY, OCT 25
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B

ABOUT ICGT

The Inner City Green Team is creating a sustainable, scalable, and replicable recycling infrastructure at New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) with job creation and environmental protection at its core. Its unique service-based approach provides residents an accessible and engaging experience with recycling. It ties together resident education, convenience in the form of a door-to-door pickup service for recyclables, and rewards to effect behavior change. Its program will assist over 400,000 residents in diverting their recyclables from landfills, saving taxpayer dollars and providing paid work that can lead to a lifetime of employment and civic engagement for NYCHA residents.

 

ABOUT BRIGITTE

Brigitte is a lifelong New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) resident, and the founder of the Inner City Green Team. She has led the fight for herself and fellow residents in their “Right to Recycle” for a decade. She created ICGT when she learned that NYCHA’s recycling program was nonexistent and there were no other options. She envisioned a convenient way for residents to recycle that could create jobs in communities with some of the highest unemployment rates. As a teen, Brigitte observed her mother’s passion for caring about her community and witnessed the effects it had on others. Brigitte hoped to serve in a cause that would be impactful beyond where she grew up. With her passion for the environment and appreciation for its life-giving power, Brigitte wants others to join her “green ministry.” In 2018, she won the NYCx Co-Lab Challenge and was honored at the Zero Waste in Shared Space Recognition Ceremony. The project was recently featured on New York’s PIX11 and News12 as well as by Politico. Brigitte is a 2020 Echoing Green Fellow.

BRIGIT BLOTE
FOUNDER/CEO
FOMENO

TUESDAY, NOV 29
6:30-8P
CENTER COURT MOD B

ABOUT FOMENO

Fomeno is the recipient of the Hult Prize, the biggest social impact college competition in the world. FOMENO is on a mission to positively impact the planet one thrifted clothing item at a time. we want to give everyone the opportunity to express their unique style in the most sustainable way. we inspire shoppers to wear what already exists. we are committed to giving clothes a second chance by connecting them to their next home. together, let’s wear clothes that make a difference.

ABOUT BRIGIT

Brigit Is the co-founder and CEO of FOMENO — a tech company that is dedicated to making thrifting simple. She is a 2020 winner of the Global Hult Prize, the largest college start-up competition in the world. She is a National Udall Scholar, and a previous D1 track athlete at the University of South Dakota! She’s particularly passionate about finding innovative & sustainable ways that we can bring dignity back to the fashion industry. In her free time, you can find her dreaming about national parks while (more than likely) sipping on an iced mocha 🙂

Spring 2022

Practice Makes Perfect is a B-Corp that partners with k-12 schools to narrow the achievement gap and create greater equity in the world. Since 2010, this has been done through our flagship summer program that has been recognized by global leaders, national news outlets and local politicians for providing low-income children with access to programming that has historically only been accessible to their middle class and affluent peers. Today, we partner with schools to deliver services to drive academic outcomes that help students realize their full potential.

About Karim

Karim is CEO of Practice Makes Perfect (PMP), a Public Benefit Corporation that partners with K-12 schools to help narrow the opportunity gap. He received over a quarter million dollars in scholarships to make his education possible. Karim founded PMP at 18. He is an author, a TED Fellow and Echoing Green Fellow. At 23, he was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in Education, and at 24 was named to Magic Johnson’s 32 under 32 list. In 2016, he was ranked in the top 3 most powerful young entrepreneurs under 25 in the world. Karim’s TED Talk was named one of the 9 Most Inspiring Talks of 2017 and his Forbes day-in-the-life feature is Forbes’ most viewed video of all time, collectively garnering over 5 million views. He graduated in the top 10% of his class from Cornell University and has a Master’s in Education Policy from Columbia University.

Claire Baker
Founder/CEO
Toothpick Project

Tues, April 5
6:30-8p
Register here

The Toothpick Project delivers innovative biotechnology to smallholder farmers. Striga, a weed that affects nearly 40 million farms in sub-Saharan Africa, can completely ruin a farmer’s harvest. By selecting for specific strains of the fungus FOXY, farmers can use our biological solutions, instead of chemical herbicides. When crop yields increase, farmers are able to feed their families better and improve their lives. 

About Claire

Claire Baker oversees programs and projects relating to agriculture biotechnology with particular attention to the Striga FoxyT14 Fusarium oxysporum project for maize and sorghum in sub-Saharan Africa (proof-of-concept funded by a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Exploration grant). Called The Toothpick Project, the emphasis is on accessible technology transfer to smallholder farmers. 

Fall 2021

B-360 utilizes dirt bike culture to end the cycle of poverty, disrupt the prison pipeline, and build bridges in communities. Through STEM education, community engagement, career preparation, and events, we equip youth and young adults with the skills to secure educational and career opportunities, while changing the negative perception of dirt bike riders.

We repair and build relationships in the community, uncover new and unique career opportunities, provide and enhance career skills, bridge the STEM gap, and create events that unite communities in a safe and fun way.

About Brittany

Brittany Young is a West Baltimore native who believes those closest to the problem are the solution to solving it. She also strives to elevate Black talent, genius, and culture. It is her hope that she can help reimagine city planning and government best practices, along with providing a model for culturally relevant programming and curriculum.

She wants the natural genius and talent hidden in our cities to be recognized, appreciated, and to be given opportunities highlighting their passions and interests. She sees herself as a “socio-economic” engineer by working to connect talent and passion with resources and opportunity.

Drawing on her experiences as a kid from Baltimore who watched dirt bike riders in Druid Hill Park on Sundays, Brittany was reminded that street riders are natural mechanics who fix and repair their bikes, and they utilize riding as a way to relieve stress. Understanding this, she viewed these riders as assets, not only to culturally relevant education, but to being the link needed to build better community relationships.

Brittany has a diverse background in STEM and education that includes developing medical devices, planning satellite explorations, working in higher education, and teaching K-8 Technology all while being an advocate for the greater Baltimore community.

She currently is Echoing Green Fellow, OSI Baltimore, 2020 TED FellowBaltimore Business Journal’s 2019 40 Under 40, and MD Leading Women. Currently, she serves as co-chair of Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott’s transition committee.

Kristin Adair
Founder/Creative Director
Unchained Stories

Tues, November 2
6:30-8p
Register here

Unchained Stories’ mission is to amplify the voices of those most impacted by systemic injustice and mass incarceration. We’re not just telling stories, we’re also providing training and employment opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated creatives and hiring directly-impacted people on every crew, for every project.

We’re committed to disrupting traditional production models by centering collaboration, building diverse, majority-female teams and bringing transformative justice principles into our process.

About Kristin

Kristin is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia artist with a background in law and non-profit advocacy and a lifelong passion for justice work. She is deeply committed to collaborative media-making and storytelling that centers the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people. She founded Unchained Stories with an array of creative and advocacy expertise, from visual storytelling to campaign strategy, fundraising and movement-building.

After leaving her job as a non-profit lobbyist in 2011, Kristin helped create a mindfulness and arts program for incarcerated youth. She saw firsthand the combined power of art, healing and storytelling in the juvenile justice space, and and returned to graduate school to hone her skills as a photographer and storyteller and study film production.. In 2018, she released a documentary entitled Becoming Free, which looks intimately at the experience of young adults coming home from prison after years or decades behind bars.

Kristin’s work has been featured at venues around the world, including IA&A at Hillyer Gallery, By The People Festival, Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, Washington Project for the Arts, Busboys & Poets, Awareness Film Festival (Los Angeles), the Women’s Film Festival (Philadelphia) and the Santa Fe Film Festival, among others, and has been published by the Washington Post, NPR, Yoga Journal and numerous non-profit organizations.

She was selected for the inaugural 2017-2018 cohort of the Halcyon Arts Lab social justice arts fellowship and is currently a fellow at Echoing Green and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Kristin has a BS from Georgetown University where she graduated magna cum laude, a JD with honors from George Washington University, and an MA in New Media Photojournalism from Corcoran School of the Arts and Design.

Academic Year 2020/21 – Innovator in an Hour Workshop Series

 

UNLEASH YOUR INNER INNOVATOR

Unleash your skills in creativity and bold innovation from award-winning social entrepreneurs who are disrupting their industries and improving the lives of people around the globe. INNOVATOR IN AN HOUR is a 5-workshop series where you will learn tools and frameworks to be innovative in all aspects of your work, life and purpose! Drop in to one, or come to all! 

 

Gemma Bulos
Director, Kravis Lab for Social Impact

INNOVATION: Unleash Your Inner Innovator

Tues, Sept 15
6:30p

REGISTER HERE

Don’t think you can be innovative? Think again! Gemma and team will lead you through a fast-paced, interactive, energetic hour to unleash your creativity and innovation! These tools can be easily applied anytime. Anywhere!

About Gemma

Donnie is a serial award-winning social entrepreneur. She is currently the Inclusionist Strategist for Virgin Hotels and the co-founder of Camp Equity, her most recent entrepreneurial venture. Launching in the fall of 2020, Camp Equity is a 12 week virtual camp where students entering 5th – 12th grade engage with today’s most pressing social justice topics from nonprofit leaders who are creating a better world. Our camp combines inspiring presentations with intimate discussions about how topics relate to each individual’s life, allowing our campers to form close connections with youth from around the country.

Donnie received numerous accolades for her work in the nonprofit sector including: an Open Society Foundation Black Male Achievement Echoing Green Fellowship (’14), National Alliance for Media, Arts & Culture Creative Leader (NAMAC), the “Courage Award” from New York University’s Hip Hop Education Center and she was selected as a 2016 Ebony Magazine Ebony Power 100 Honoree. Lastly, Donnie was selected by Michael Jordan’s Mother Deloris Jordan for the Deloris Jordan Excellence in Community Leadership Award.

INNOVATION: Defining Your Purpose

** NEW DATE!!!
Tues, Oct 6
6:30p

REGISTER HERE

In a time when entrepreneurship and social innovation is seen as the new frontier, we often see people entering the space with mixed intentions and/or solutions they are trying to fit to a problem they have yet to define. In this session, you will clearly define your “why” as an innovator by composing your leadership story and rooting yourself in a problem or cause that is meaningful to you. 

About Samantha

Samantha Pratt graduated magna cum laude from New York University with a B.S. in Applied Psychology as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. She served as a Teach for America (TFA) 2015 corps member in Miami-Dade County where she taught 5th grade science for three years. While teaching, in 2017, she participated in an incubator as part of a partnership between Venture Hive Miami and TFA where she cultivated the idea for KlickEngage. In 2018, she was part of the first cohort for Miami EdTech and went on to win 3rd place in the Miami Herald Business Challenge and 1st place in the pre-pilot track of the Social Innovation Award. Most recently, she became a 2019 Camelback Venture Fellow, a finalist in the Harvard HIVE Pitch Competition, a Kravis Lab Moonshot Fellow, a graduate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a Ed.M in Education Policy and Management, an NPR How I Built This Fellow, a Forbes 30 under 30 Lister, and an AT&T Aspire Fellow. She believes that the key to educational equity is creating psychologically safe and supportive environments for kids.

Donnie Belcher
Inclusionist Strategist, Virgin Hotels
Co-Founder, Camp Equity

INNOVATION: Branding Equity

***Wed, Oct 21
6:30p

REGISTER HERE

As a result of arguably one of the largest Human Rights Movements in response to the killing of George Floyd, companies no longer have the option of opting out of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. DE&I postings rose 50 percent in June on Glassdoor, the largest percentage increase over a four-week period since January 2016. In this Innovator in an Hour session, we’ll explore our favorite brands learning tools to help companies be better at branding equity!

About Donnie

Donnie is a serial award-winning social entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of Camp Equity, her most recent entrepreneurial venture. Launching in the fall of 2020, Camp Equity is a 12 week virtual camp where students entering 5th – 12th grade engage with today’s most pressing social justice topics from nonprofit leaders who are creating a better world. Our camp combines inspiring presentations with intimate discussions about how topics relate to each individual’s life, allowing our campers to form close connections with youth from around the country. 

Donnie received numerous accolades for her work in the nonprofit sector including: an Open Society Foundation Black Male Achievement Echoing Green Fellowship (’14), National Alliance for Media, Arts & Culture Creative Leader (NAMAC), the “Courage Award” from New York University’s Hip Hop Education Center and she was selected as a 2016 Ebony Magazine Ebony Power 100 Honoree. Lastly, Donnie was selected by Michael Jordan’s Mother Deloris Jordan for the Deloris Jordan Excellence in Community Leadership Award.

INNOVATION: Robots for Humanity

*** NEW DATE
Monday, Nov 2

6:30p

REGISTER HERE

Many robotics solutions are tailored for high-resource environments or scenarios with high infrastructure availability. In this exercise, we will challenge you to develop and deploy robotics-based solutions for environments and communities that are under-resourced and very highly-constrained.

NO EXPERIENCE IN ROBOTICS, ENGINEERING OR DESIGN REQUIRED!

About Solomon

Solomon King Benge is passionate about education, design, business and technology.

In 2011, he founded Fundi Bots, an education non-profit with a mission to accelerate science learning in Africa. Fundi Bots aims to promote better learning outcomes, improved career prospects and real-world technological advancement in African schools and communities through training and experimentation in hands-on, project-based and skills-oriented science disciplines, starting with robotics.

Through his work with Fundi Bots, he was selected as a 2014 Echoing Green Fellow and a 2014 Ashoka Fellow. In 2017, Solomon was selected as an African Visionary Fellow by the Segal Family Foundation.

Antionette Carroll, founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab

INNOVATION: Equity Centered Design

*** Tues, Feb 9

6:30p

REGISTER HERE

Systems of Oppression, Inequality, and Inequity are by design. Therefore, they can be redesigned. Youth have the power and right to challenge racial and health inequities. Learn tools that will help you design a more equitable community!

About Antionette

Antionette Carroll is founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a TED fellow, an AMEX/Ashoka Emerging Innovator, 4.0 Schools Fellow, Camelback Ventures Fellow and Echoing Green Fellow. Her team has pioneered a social justice form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design that is the definitive tool for racial justice.

Syed Abrar Ahmed, Founder and CEO of Liber Health

INNOVATION: Blockchain for Social Good 

***Tues, March 30
6:30p

REGISTER HERE

What is blockchain? How does it work? It’s much more than just cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin). It can be used to reduce poverty, promote inclusion, fair trade, pandemic readiness, etc. Learn how you can use this powerful platform for social impact.

About Syed

Syed Abrar Ahmed is the founder and CEO of Liber Health, an organization that uses blockchain to democratize healthcare and put power in the hands of patients. He is also a Nest I/O Incubator Alumni, Global Good Fund Fellow 2021, awarded Outstanding Entrepreneur at Global Entrepreneur Summit 2019, hosted by the U.S. Department of State. 

Damon Packwood, Co-founder and executive director of Gameheads

INNOVATION: Be a Video Gamechanger

***NEW DATE

Tues, April 13, 6:30 pm

REGISTER HERE

The video game industry is experiencing a dramatic shift! The diverse audience is reimagining gaming more broadly to merge both the fun, competitive and experiential with the educational. Join us and learn how to innovate the games we play!

About Damon

Damon Packwood is the co-founder and Executive Director of Gameheads, an organization that trains low-income and first-generation students ages 15-24 in video game design and development to prepare them for careers in the entertainment and tech industries. He is the winner of the Game Awards and an Echoing Green Fellow. 

Julia Kumari Drapkin, Founder and CEO of ISeeChange

INNOVATION: Community Climate Change Action 

Tues, April 27, 6:30 pm

REGISTER HERE

Last year broke records in the most billion dollars weather disasters ever recorded. As each year’s weather grows more aberrant, we can’t afford to ignore climate data or community voices. Learn how impact stories can be used to formulate solutions. 

About Julia

Julia Kumari Drapkin is the CEO and founder of ISeeChange, an organization working to locally connect individuals to global issues of climate change. She also serves as a consultant for NASA and was recognized by the Obama administration’s Climate Data Initiative, as well as being a 2018 MIT Solver, a 2019 Grist 50 Fixer, and a 2019 Echoing Green Fellow. 

PAST DINNER WITH WORLDCHANGERS SPEAKERS

Spring 2020

Amy Vreeland, True School

Feb 11

 

Expand the innovation potential of frontline educators by partnering with schools, districts, and organizations to enable educators to redesign classrooms, schools, and systems.

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TrueSchool Studio builds student-centered schools and education tools by leveraging the ideas and innovation potential of frontline educators. We do this by facilitating professional learning experiences for educators to design, test, and scale solutions that solve real problems in schools. TrueSchool Studio’s process is grounded in continuous empathy work with students. New school models and tools are created and refined based on feedback, observations, and interviews with students. By developing and empowering frontline educators to lead student-centered systems-change, TrueSchool Studio unlocks the potential for schools to be transformed from within – and for the experiences and needs of students to be the driving force.

ABOUT Amy
Amy Vreeland is the founder and chief executive officer of TrueSchool Studio. Amy began her journey in education at a nonprofit start-up in Boulder, Colorado supporting first-generation students towards successful college graduation. She then transitioned to another start-up – this time to a new high school as an Algebra I teacher and Teach For America corps member in the unprecedented charter school movement in New Orleans. Amy next traveled to South Africa, where she advised young professionals and community members in the design of community-led, human-centered social enterprises. While living in this small, rural community, Amy was reminded constantly of her students and kept seeing the intersection of what she was doing with the needs and potential for her students in the U.S. Inspired by the possibility for bottom-up, grassroots innovation to engender truly student-centered schools, Amy left graduate school at Princeton University and returned to New Orleans to launch TrueSchool.

Anita Shankar, Global Trauma Project

Feb 25

 

Global Trauma Project builds capacity for healing, empowerment, and transformation by training, mentoring and certifying community providers to prevent and treat complex trauma and compounded stress.

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ABOUT Global Trauma Project

GTP’s unique model provides capacity-building support to both organizations and community-based workers, ensuring the change happens on both systemic and local levels.

We work with organizations to strengthen their outcomes, through program assessment, technical assistance, staff support (vicarious trauma/ burnout/ deployment assessments/ self-care), mentoring, curriculum design, training and supervision.

We also support to local providers such as: community/ religious leaders, child protection staff, teachers, police, coaches & community health workers- people who are already trusted and supporting others in their communities. We do this by offering training, mentorship & wellness sessions to ensure that those working with the most challenging issues are well supported so that they can have the greatest impact possible.

GTP utilizes a cutting-edge, evidence-based framework- “Trauma-Informed Community Empowerment” (TICE.) The TICE framework underpins policy and practice in the field, supporting local partners to take the lead in their own healing, and strengthening community level resilience.

ABOUT Anita

Anita Shankar, MPH, believes access to relevant mental health resources is a social justice issue. As Senior Director of the Global Trauma Project, she utilizes the Trauma-Informed Community Empowerment (TICE) Framework to build the capacity of community leaders and government officials. Ms. Shankar’s 20 years of public health experience is influenced by the fields of popular education, youth development, harm reduction, and positive sexuality. She earned her Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of North Carolina, USA and Bachelor’s in International Development from the University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Adebayo Alonge, RxAll March 10

 

From Coma to Co-Founder. Learn about how being on the receiving end of counterfeit drugs led him to create a drug authentication system for the developing world.

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ABOUT RxALL

Adebayo co-founded RxAll in 2016 after working for 8 years with Sanofi, Roche, BASF, BCG in market development and strategy consulting. Through, RxAll, he aims to provide a means for patients in the developing world to authenticate their medicines. His career in pharma is driven by a passion to eliminate fake drugs, as he almost died as a child from a counterfeit medicine. RxAll’s AI spectrometer and cloud-based algorithm ensures that all drugs sold through its platform and through its network of offline pharmacies are of the highest quality. He has led RxAll to achieve a $5M valuation in 2 years and ramp up sales of over $140K in its first year. He also led its market entry into East Africa- Kenya & Uganda, West Africa- Nigeria & Ghana, SE Asia- Malaysia & Singapore and the Americas-Canada, USA and Columbia.

Representing RxAll, he spoke on the healthcare investing panel at the 2015 US-Africa Business Conference at Yale. He also spoke at the 2018 Katapult FutureFest in Norway, leading RxAll to win the FutureFest’s 2018 Global start-up award. Additionally, he received the Mandela Washington Fellowship from the US state department for outstanding contributions to business and entrepreneurship in Africa.

ABOUT ADEBAYO

He has a Masters in Advanced Management (private equity concentration) from the Yale School of Management and an MBA (strategy and finance) with distinction from the Lagos Business School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Pharmacy First Class Honours from the University of Ibadan. He speaks fluent English, Yoruba, West African Pidgin English. He is conversational in Hausa and French. He loves traveling, blogging and public speaking. He is a golf, jazz and wine aficionado and codes neural networks using R, Python and TensorFlow.

Brandon Anderson, Raheem AI

March 24

 

Build a world free of police violence on American soil by eliminating barriers to reporting police misconduct through easily accessible mobile tools and data that measure the impact of policing in real time.

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ABOUT Raheem AI

Raheem is an independent service for reporting police conduct in the United States.

We work to translate the lived experiences of people impacted by police violence into effective policy, officer accountability, and new narratives about how we keep our communities safe. Partners in our work include community-run oversight structures, public defenders, and advocacy organizations.

We engage communities who’ve been directly impacted by policing to hear their stories about officer conduct that usually go unreported. Then we use this information to help local, independent investigators hold police officers accountable and support community-led oversight structures advance policies that end police violence.

Raheem uses data to identify places with the highest rates of police violence in the country. Then we partner with community oversight structures in these areas to collect firsthand reports of police conduct and help people file formal complaints that can lead to officers being held accountable. Our digital outreach and organizing strategy enables us to reach people who’ve been recently impacted by policing and connect them to oversight boards, organizations, and advocacy campaigns that can help them seek justice and accountability for police violence.

ABOUT Brandon
 
Brandon D. Anderson, Founder & CEO, founded Raheem after police killed his partner during a routine traffic stop. He is a U.S. army veteran, 2019 TED Fellow, and Smithsonian Ingenuity Award Nominee. Brandon graduated from Georgetown University in 2015.

Laura D’Asaro, Six Foods/Chirps Chips

April 7

 

Reduce environmental degradation caused by livestock farming by encouraging mainstream consumption of insects.

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ABOUT Six Foods

Who’s Destiny? What happened was in 2013 three college friends ate bugs at the same time on opposite sides of the planet. One bit into a caterpillar in Tanzania and exclaimed, “This tastes like lobster!” The other lost a bet in China and popped a skewered scorpion into her mouth, muttering to herself, “Mmm shrimpy.” Meanwhile in New York City the third friend came across some cheese-flavored worms she remembered from her 10th-grade chemistry class.

After a few months of doing whatever college students do when they’re studying abroad, our founders returned to their classes, cafeteria lunches, and their crammed dorms. But wait, keep reading because one day Laura came across a report by the United Nations promoting edible insects for food security and sustainability (classic Laura).

Was it destiny this time? No, WHO is destiny?? Laura shared the article with her friends, unaware of the similar formative experiences they too had abroad. And with that, a fiery desire to bring edible insects mainstream was ignited. Piece of (cricket) cake.

From breaking the world record for the world’s largest nachos (with a crickety twist) to making a deal with Mark Cuban on Shark Tank, we’ve come a long way from those early days when even our friends wouldn’t try our products. And now? We’re committed to changing the landscape of the food industry, one cricket chip or smoothie at a time. But don’t just take our word for it (we’re biased).

 

ABOUT Laura

Laura D’Asaro is the co-founder and chief operations officer of Six Foods, a company that works to normalize insect consumption as a sustainable source of protein. Laura’s journey in social entrepreneurship began at age fifteen, when she raised $14,000 through her lemonade stand to build a playground for her community. At nineteen, she co-founded Wema Inc., an education nonprofit in Kenya, and co-founded Six Foods at 23. Laura’s inspiration for Six Foods stemmed from the fact that she has been an off and on vegetarian her whole life, struggling with the moral and environmental aspects of eating meat. She first ate a caterpillar from a street vendor in Tanzania and realized that insects could be that sustainable protein she was looking for. Laura sent an article to her college roommate (now co-founder), and a few escaped crickets in her dorm room later, Six Foods was born. In addition, Laura has broken multiple world records, including the longest book domino chain and fastest time to crawl one mile. She is a 2013 Harvard college graduate.

Sissy Trinh, Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA)

April 14

Hear her tell her story here

Empowering Southeast Asian communities to create an equitable society.

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ABOUT Southeast Asian Community Alliance

Through SEACA’s innovative organizing with youth, SEACA used land use policy reform to take on the City of Los Angeles and a new wave of gentrification slated for Chinatown that was proceeding with no meaningful input from residents. SEACA brought together land use experts (both traditional and unconventional in her youth members), moving the policy through City Hall. Through SEACA’s mentorship, the youth learned about the content and context of the zoning plan, its impact on access and how be powerful advocates to advance a comprehensive vision of social, economic and racial justice. In Sissy’s words, “a scrappy little youth group helped to create what the L.A. Times’ editorial board called a ‘Model of L.A. Planning,’” that will shape the neighborhood for decades to come, and deep and meaningful involvement of residents made the difference.

ABOUT Sissy

Sissy is the founder and Executive Director Sissy Nga Trinh is the Founder and Executive Director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance (SEACA), whose mission is to build an empowered Southeast Asian community through leadership development, education, advocacy and organizing. Prior to her position at SEACA, Sissy served as a Policy Advocate and Community Education Coordinator, focusing on local and federal policy issues of universal access to health care for children, welfare reform, workforce development, and immigrant and refugee rights. She has also worked as a workers’ rights advocate and organizer with Vietnamese janitors and Asian and African-American hospital workers. Sissy received her bachelor’s degree in English and World Literature from Pitzer College.

FALL 2019

EBELE IFEDIGBO
THE HOOD INCUBATOR

SEPT 30

 

Build political and economic power for people of color in the legal marijuana industry through community organizing, policy advocacy, and economic development.

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ABOUT The Hood Incubator

The Hood Incubator was formed in Oakland in response to the wave of cannabis legalization happening in California and across the country. The Hood Incubator seeks to mobilize communities of color around the disproportionate impact of the war on drugs. The Hood Incubator advocates for policy reform on the local, state, and federal level from a perspective that centers low income communities and communities of color, and they provide direct support to individuals and communities most impacted by the war on drugs to ensure they receive the maximum positive economic and political benefits from drug policy reform and cannabis legalization.

About Ebele

Ebele Ifedigbo is co-founder and co-director of the Hood Incubator, a social impact organization creating pathways to ownership in legal cannabis for people of color. Ebele’s passion lies at the intersection of racial and economic justice, and Ebele is committed to using business to foster innovation and racial equity in cannabis. Prior to the Hood Incubator, Ebele founded a Black youth leadership organization called Ambassadors for Africa. Ebele has also worked with the NAACP to develop federal and state policies and programs aimed at closing the national Racial Wealth Divide. Other professional experiences include working as an financial analyst at Ameriprise Financial and a legal and compliance analyst at Goldman Sachs. Ebele received a joint B.A. in economics and philosophy, with a minor in African studies from Columbia University, and a MBA from Yale University.

CONNOR KRONE, MONEY STUDY

OCT 14

 

Research shows students left over $2.9 billion in available federal grant money on the table last year. Money Study helps students navigate Financial Aid and trains students to plan for a future of financial health.

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ABOUT Money Study

Research shows students left over $2.9 billion in available federal grant money on the table last year. Money Study helps students navigate Finanical Aid and trains students to plan for a future of financial health.

The most impactful consequence of Money Study is leading students to better financial aid packages. Research shows U.S. high school graduates left over $2.9 billion in free federal grant money on the table last academic year. 47% of all 2013 high school graduates didn’t complete this required first step that could’ve earned them Pell Grant money, which unlike student loans, does not need to be paid back. In California, our first market, over 100,000 seniors — about the entire population of high school graduates in New Jersey — could have qualified for Pell Grants if they filed their FAFSA. Students here lost $396,401,205 in Pell Grant dollars. We provide simple counseling to fill what amounts to a knowledge gap in completing this obscure step in college applications.

ABOUT Connor

Connor is the founder of Money Study, a coalition of companies, non-profits, and municipal entities tackling financial insecurity through technical solutions. Right now, Money Study’s main focus is reducing student debt through a web application to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. In the past Connor has led a youth innovation lab in Singapore and directed entrepreneurship programs for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

ELIZA HARRISON, PHYTA

OCT 28

 

Phyta designs new strategies for seaweed cultivation to promote plastic substitutes, climate resilience, and economic development.

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ABOUT PHYTA

Phyta is a coastal water seaweed cultivation initiative designed to provide a sustainable ingredient for various consumer products. Simultaneously, commercial-scale seaweed cultivation could prove a powerful strategy for nutrient removal from the marine environment. By demonstrating the viability of seaweed cultivation in warm water conditions, Phyta will expand the range and improve the productivity of the aquaculture industry, meet growing demand for environmentally responsible products, and reduce pressures associated with traditional resource extraction.
In addition to its applications as a strategy for alternative consumer products, seaweed could also prove an extremely effective method to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and remove excess nutrients. For example, seaweed is 5x more effective at sequestering carbon than any other land-based plant and grows 30 to 60 times more quickly. Similarly, the removal of excess nitrogen and phosphorous from coastal waters could form the basis for national nutrient recycling permits – thereby supporting global efforts to  mitigate the effects of climate change.
Current forms of animal feed are grain-based and rely on toxic pesticides to be produced at demanded yield rates. As these harmful products accumulate, humans face greater risk of exposure to toxic chemicals and their associated unknown health impacts. In an effort to improve public health, seaweed could reduce environmental stress induced by agriculture while simultaneously improving food security. Additionally, some species of seaweed have recently been shown to reduce overall methane emissions from animals, which could further support global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. In Phase II, developing technology will allow us to isolate compounds necessary for alternative plastics production and sell the residual high-nutrient seaweed to livestock farmers to increase their product’s value and sustainability.

About Eliza

Eliza Harrison is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. degree in Environmental Health Science from the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Notwithstanding her evolving career aspirations, she is determined to devote her intellectual and creative capabilities toward mitigating the effects of climate change. Whether through public health, marine science, or ecosystem economics, she aspires to serve an institution or organization that will help shift global society towards a more sustainable future. Separate from her academic studies, she has spent the last two and a half years developing Phyta — a venture that has designed innovative strategies for seaweed cultivation to provide a sustainable ingredient for various consumer products, as well as a offer strategy for marine conservation. Additionally, she has spent fifteen months working with Ocean Rainforest, which is among the largest seaweed harvesting and processing organization in the Western Hemisphere. As the natural landscape allows, Eliza enjoys telemark skiing, whitewater kayaking, and backpacking.

ANNA KAZLAUSKAS, TOCA

NOV 11

 

Creating jobs for the bottom of the pyramid by issuing micro-tasks to train AI. TOCA is an app that allows people in developing countries to do digital work on budget smartphones. TOCA works with limited internet connection on devices that cost as little as $20, which are now common in developing countries.

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ABOUT TOCA

TOCA is an app that allows people in developing countries to do digital work on budget smartphones. TOCA works with limited internet connection on devices that cost as little as $20, which are now common in developing countries.

Instead of generating training using laptops and work centers, TOCA is able to do the same work using a decentralized workforce, significantly lowering the cost to AI developers and providing access to scalable work for people who need it most.

ABOUT Anna
 

Anna is building Toca, a platform for budget An-droid users to do digital work from their phones, starting in the Philippines and East Timor. She re-cently graduated from MIT where she studied com-puter science and economics. She previously co-founded Iambiq Tech, a machine learning backed by Y Combinator that came out of automating doc-ument sorting processes at the World Bank. She is also working on Celo, a platform for stable digital payments in emerging markets.

SARA MINKARA, EMPOWERMENT THROUGH INTEGRATION

POSTPONED TIL SPRING 2020

 

Foster social awareness and support for disability rights of visually impaired youth by providing inclusive educational and recreational programs that encourage students to explore and pursue career goals.

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ABOUT Empowerment Through Integration

ETI promotes the achievement of a genuinely inclusive society through the recognition and elimination of stigma against disability, acknowledging and rejecting bias, and elevating respect for individual value.

ETI advances its mission through groundbreaking initiatives that challenge stereotypes about people with disabilities, elevate marginalized voices and viewpoints, and promote a robust and authentic respect for individual value through the organizations.

Our programs shift the collective narrative around disability and marginalization from one of denigration and helplessness to one of empowerment, inclusion, and diversity. Our holistic, grassroots approach focuses on youth, parents, and communities in social, work, family, community, educational, and policy spaces.

ABOUT Sara

Sara Minkara, founder and chief executive officer of Empowerment through Integration (ETI), has focused her life’s work on disability rights and integration of the disabled. In 2015, Sara was a Visiting Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University and the Operations Manager at the Disability Rights Fund. At age seven, she lost her vision; however, despite that deeply frightening experience, Sara knew that all of life’s opportunities could still be afforded to her. The U.S. public education system paired with the love and tenacity of her family enabled her to attend Wellesley College and Harvard University. Trips to Lebanon painted a very different reality. Lebanon’s culture often fails to recognize the potential and human rights of the blind. This inspired her to create Camp Rafiqi, which later evolved into ETI. Sara has also received the Clinton Foundation, Outstanding Commitment Award, Davis Peace Project Award, Emily Bultch Peace and Justice Award, MIT IDEAS Award, and a finalist for the Harvard President’s Challenge Award.

Spring 2019

CHRISTINA ASQUITH, FULLER PROJECT

FEB 21

 

Groundbreaking reporting on women in the world’s leading news outlets.

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ABOUT FULLER PROJECT

The Fuller Project is a non-partisan, non-profit news organization reporting globally and in the US on the issues that most impact women. Women are persistently underrepresented in news. Our reporting addresses this gap in coverage through investigative, explanatory, and solutions-driven reporting. We publish our reporting with the world’s leading news outlets, including locally.

About Christina

As co-founder of The Fuller Project for International Reporting, Christina leads a team of journalists reporting on women in the Middle East and region, with the goal of bringing expertise to a subject traditionally overlooked. Christina was also the director of Public Radio International’s Across Women’s Lives.

 A life-long journalist, her articles, op-eds and videos have appeared in The New York Times, ELLE Magazine, Foreign Affairs Magazine, TIME, CNN, VICE, Washington Post and many others. She’s been executive producer of two short documentaries on Syrian and Turkish women, shown in the NYTimes and ELLE.com, and her current film project, Dying to Divorce, was featured at Sheffield Film Festival.

Christina has also authored two nonfiction books, Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family and Survival in the New Iraq; and The Emergency Teacher, about America’s failing inner city schools. She is a co-founder of Solutions Journal.

She’s appeared as an expert speaker on women in foreign affairs on ABC News, Fox News, Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan Show, NPR’s Here and Now,, NPR’s Morning Edition, PRI’s The World. Speaking invitations include: The US State Department, Harvard University, Boston University, Northeastern University and lots of fantastic book clubs.

She has a BA from Boston University and an MA from London School of Economics, and was a 2007 Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

CLAIRE SANDS BAKER
THE TOOTHPICK PROJECT

Feb 28

 

An alumna of Scripps College ‘93, Claire Sands Baker works with subsistence farmers in Kenya and NGOs to target a parasitic weed called Striga through The Toothpick Project.
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ABOUT The Toothpick Project

The Toothpick Project started with the end-user in mind, when Baker’s uncle volunteered in Kenya and noticed patients’ concerns of a parasitic weed, Striga. Through the biocontrol of Striga with the FOXY T14 toothpick technology, their goals are to reduce labor and increase crop yield for smallholder farmers. Claire Sands Baker co-founded this project with the aim for this technology to improve health through more nutritious, diversified crops; increase income by providing enough yield for both family use and sale; and provide greater access to education. Because the vast majority of maize farmers are women, these results will also impact women’s empowerment, which will be reflected in a Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (USAID, Feed the Future) study that evaluates independence, literacy, time use, domestic violence, land ownership, and other measures of empowerment. Their aim to build partnerships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are already reaching farmers with training and inputs. The Toothpick Project team is made up of experts from Africa, Europe, and the US; including experts on plant pathology, microbiology, agronomy, literacy, and community organizing. Toothpick Project Website

ABOUT Claire

Claire Sands Baker is the director of The Toothpick Project, based in Bozeman, Montana (with on-the-ground operations in western Kenya). The Toothpick Project uses an innovative biocontrol technology to kill Striga, a parasitic weed depleting crops on 40 million African smallholder farms. Her co-founder is her father, a plant pathologist at Montana State University. Claire has 25 years experience in non-profit management ranging from the arts to education to conservation to biotechnology: PATHS (Pathways to Agriculture and Native foods, Tribal Health, and Food Sovereignty – a USDA program with Montana State University and Tribal College students); the Tributary Fund (species preservation and mining reclamation in Mongolia and Bhutan); Self Enhancement, Inc. (an inner-city youth development agency, Portland, Oregon); MSU College of Arts & Architecture; Portland Art Museum; Big Sky Youth Empowerment. BA Scripps College. MassChallenge Finalist 2017. Blackstone Launchpad 406Labs. Co-author on the Frontiers Biocontrol of Striga paper.

Baker credits her involvement at Scripps as critical to her current nonprofit work. Holding two internship positions as well as various leadership roles, including student board representative and senior class co-president, Baker helped enact policies that shaped student life and community involvement during her years at the College. Through her cross-continental collaboration, Baker also realizes the role technology plays in connecting partners worldwide.

Claire lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her husband, two daughters, gigantic Labrador, and a broody red hen. She carves out time to coach Destination Imagination, raft, and ski.

TOBI NAGEL
PHAGES FOR GLOBAL HEALTH

March 7

 

What if genetically modified viruses could be applied to kill bacteria themselves? Dr Tobi Nagel, PhD, founded Phages for Global Health which facilitates the application of phage technology for underserved populations.
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ABOUT Phages For Global Health

Phages for Global Health aims to bring phage expertise to the developing world, through two main programs. They conduct laboratory training workshops and product development projects to facilitate the application of antibacterial phage technology. With two major projects, based in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo respectively, the organization has brought together two teams of international collaborators to co-develop phage products for important public health applications. As the founder and president of the organization, Dr Tobi Nagel goal is to decrease the 2050 estimate of 10 million deaths each year from antibiotic resistant infections, especially in the developing world. Phages for Global Health Website

ABOUT Tobi
Dr. Tobi Nagel is Founder and President of Phages for Global Health, a non-profit organization that facilitates the application of antibacterial phages to combat antimicrobial resistance in developing countries. Before launching Phages for Global Health, Tobi had 15 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry (including Novartis, Silver Creek Pharmaceuticals and Genentech/Roche), where she worked with international teams to co-develop products that have been tested in over 80 clinical trials worldwide. She previously completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the American Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, partnering with the University of California at San Francisco and Baylor College of Medicine. Tobi is currently a member of the Fulbright Specialist program, focusing on building scientific infrastructure in developing countries. She is also a Scientific Advisory Board Member of the Phagebiotics Research Foundation and was selected as an Advisory Panel Member for the Phages for Human Applications Group Europe (P.H.A.G.E). Over the past 10 years she has served as a Scientific Consultant for both Global Strategies for HIV Prevention and CRDF Global, facilitating capacity development and technology transfer in international settings. Tobi holds a PhD in Medical Engineering from the joint Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.

LAURA D’ASARO
CHIRPS

April 4

 

Laura D’Asaro first ate a caterpillar from a street vendor in Tanzania during a study abroad program, and realized that insects could be that sustainable protein she was looking for. A few escaped crickets in her dorm room later, Chirps was born!
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ABOUT CHIRPS
Chirps (formerly, Six Foods) works to normalize insect consumption as a sustainable source of protein. Famous for their cricket flour chips, Chirps believes in their mission of aiming to get people excited about eating bugs, one delicious cricket chip at a time.

ABOUT LAURA

Laura’s journey in social entrepreneurship began at age fifteen, when she raised $14,000 through her lemonade stand to build a playground for her community. At nineteen, she co-founded Wema Inc., an education nonprofit in Kenya, and co-founded Six Foods, now Chirps, at 23. Laura’s inspiration stemmed from the fact that she has been an off and on vegetarian her whole life, struggling with the moral and environmental aspects of eating meat. She first ate a caterpillar from a street vendor in Tanzania, during a study abroad program, and realized that insects could be that sustainable protein she was looking for. Laura sent an article to her college roommate (now co-founder), and a few escaped crickets in her dorm room later, Chirps was born. In addition, Laura has broken multiple world records, including the longest book domino chain and fastest time to crawl one mile. She is also a 2013 Harvard college graduate.

KATYA CHERUKUMILLI
GLOBAL WATER LABS

April 11

 

What is a problem that affects more than 200 million people in the world? Katya Cherukumilli, Founder of Global Water Labs, designs affordable and scalable technologies to purify fluoride contaminated drinking water to underserved communities
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ABOUT Global Water Labs

Everyone deserves equal access to clean drinking water as a fundamental human right to achieve good health, dignity, and prosperity. Children living in impoverished communities globally are disproportionately affected by numerous debilitating diseases caused by unsafe drinking water.
Over 200 million people worldwide rely on fluoride-contaminated groundwater as their primary drinking water source. As a result, they are at risk of developing detrimental health affects such as irreversible crippling skeletal fluorosis, mottled enamel, and anemia. Existing defluoridation technologies have proven to be cost-prohibitive and complex to operate and maintain in resource-constrained settings.
Global Water Labs is collaborating with established international mission-driven NGOs to pilot and commercialize the novel Scalable and Affordable Fluoride Removal (SAFR) process in low-income regions. We provide technical expertise to our field implementation partners with the aim of establishing effective material supply chains for water treatment and water quality testing.

ABOUT KATYA
Katya Cherukumilli is the Founder and CEO of Global Water Labs and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Washington College of Engineering. She received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences and PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Katy specializes in water quality engineering and treatment, and water purification technologies. She is a UC Irvine Designing Solutions for Poverty Competition Winner, National Science Foundation Fellow, VentureWell E-Team grantee and third place winner of the 2018 OPEN Minds Showcase.

MIA PERDOMO
AEQUALES

April 18

 

Mia Perdomo, co-creator of Par, the first corporate Gender Equality Ranking and the community of companies that advocate for gender equity, will speak about her work to close the gender gap.
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ABOUT Aequales

Aequales is a gender equality consultancy firm based in Colombia and Peru that works throughout Latin America. It has won several entrepreneurship prizes (Ventures 2014, PUCP 2015, In-Pactamos 2016, UN ODS) and is currently a stable and profitable growing business. Aequales created PAR, a Corpoate Gender Equality Ranking, a one-of-its-kind measurement tool that promotes gender equality conditions in corporations. Aequales delivers data for the creation of evidence-based public-policy for gender equality through our public sector and academia allies. Aequales created Comunidad PAR, a community of corporations that promote gender equality in our countries, committed with measuring and increasing gender equality indicators and sharing good practices.

ABOUT Mia
Mía Perdomo is an entrepreneur and activist. Co-founder of Aequales, a consulting firm that advocates for the closing of gender gaps in organizations and female leadership in Peru and Colombia. Co-creator of Par, the first corporate Gender Equality Ranking and the community of companies that advocate for gender equity. Mia is a psychologist from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia and a Master’s graduate in human rights from the London School of Economics. She is a Global Competitive Leadership Program Fellow at Georgetown University. One of the 100 most successful managers of 2017 according to the Gerente Magazine. One of the 100 transforming women of Colombia according to La Silla Vacía.

MADI GREEN
OTLET

April 25

 

When Tony met a kid who didn’t want to go trick or treating because he couldn’t find a super hero that looked like him, he started WEP to leverage the most powerful tool in history- media- to empower, inspire and combat media exploitation.
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ABOUT Otlet

Earth holds an estimated 8.7 million multicellular species, and countless additional unicellular organisms, many of them unidentified, unexplored, and understudied. Globally, scientists are working to understand the natural world, an effort requiring biological samples. Such samples hold the key to nature’s most complex questions. Daily, thousands of researchers are collecting biological samples from every corner of the globe – an expensive and time-intensive pursuit.

Biological samples, often reusable for multiple studies, are housed in freezers and boxes awaiting collaborative projects. Furthermore, research scientists looking to grow their work, spend time e-mailing colleagues and spend money re-collecting samples in the field. This ineffective system leaves key samples buried away, and studies curtailed by too few samples.

The Otlet database houses an index of biological research samples, made available by the broad community of researchers worldwide. Specifically tailored for biological research scientists working with plants and animals, Otlet seeks to overcome the existing haphazard system of e-mails and chance opportunities. By building a network to connect fellow scientists and provide them with the samples they need, we can accelerate what and how we study the natural world.

ABOUT Madi
Madeline Green, more often known as Madi hails from a small, land-locked country town in Victoria, Australia. Her friends and family thought she was mad to pursue a career in marine biology, however her headstrong nature ensured Madi chased after her dreams of becoming a shark scientist. Madi graduated with honours from James Cook University with a duel degree in marine biology and environmental science and is now completing her PhD at the University of Tasmania assessing reef sharks populations in Australia and Papua New Guinea. During her time in research Madi noted how much wastage and missed collaborative opportunities were occuring with biological samples taken for scientific research. It was at this point Madi and her co-founder came up with the idea of Otlet. Madi is the CEO and co-founder of Otlet, a biological sample-sharing platform helping scientists to share, source and request biological samples from laboratories around the world. Otlet was selected as one of Australia’s top female led technology companies for 2017, landing pre-seed funding and a place for Madi in the Australian VC BlueChilli ‘She Starts’ accelerator program. Madi can be described as aggressively ambitious and passionate about her work, she plans to dedicate her life and career to understanding and conserving the natural world around her.

FALL 2018

Brittany Martin Dejean, AbleThrive

September 27

 

When Brittany was a kid, her father loved dancing. But after a tragic car accident leaving him a quadraplegic, that stopped. When she was planning her wedding, she found a choreographer who specialized in working with people with disabilities and helped her father dance again. She saw how happy it made her father and how he came alive, she was inspired to create an online platform for people with disabilities offering them valuable resources that would help them thrive.
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ABOUT ABLETHRIVE

AbleThrive empowers people with disabilities and their families to overcome challenges and negative stereotypes by providing a support network of crowdsourced how-to videos and information. With this free and accessible community-based resource, we reach even the most isolated geographic areas. Our platform leverages technology to filter and sort content by user details and interests – everything from basic tasks to adapted sports – connecting users in a peer-to-peer learning model that accelerates the path to living well with a disability. Users exchange experiences and innovations in an ever-evolving, customizable resource that unites a global community and redefines living with a disability.

ABOUT BRITTANY

Brittany (Martin) Dejean is founder and executive director of AbleThrive, a user-generated, how-to video and information support network that helps people with disabilities adapt their lives. After her father was paralyzed in a car accident, Brittany saw that learning from others facing similar challenges helped her family adapt to their situation, and she envisioned using technology to replicate such support globally for all disabilities. In 2007, she was accepted into the Harvard Kennedy School’s Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory, where her venture received recognition from Harvard Business School Pitch for Change and Ashoka YouthVenture. A 2008 Harvard University graduate, Brittany also volunteered with disability communities in China and Africa, giving her a sense of the common struggles for people with disabilities across geographic areas. Brittany co-founded and developed SPINALpedia.com, a pilot resource serving the paralysis community, as a side project for seven years, publishing her work in Huffington Post and in disability magazines. In 2013, she left her job as a teacher and coach to devote herself to uniting and empowering a global disability community.

Antoinette Carroll, Creative Action Lab

October 4

 

Moved to action after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Antoinette founded CRL, equipping youth to lead movements combatting racial and health inequities in their communities.
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ABOUT CRXLAB

Creative Reaction Lab (CRXLAB) is creating a youth-led, community-centered movement and professional pipeline challenging racial inequities in the education, media, health, and government sectors. Through real-world, project-based educational programs, Black and Latinx youth apply a health, racial equity, and design lens to community challenges impacting the quality of life and life expectancy of both races. Changing the way youth (and people in general) address systemic oppression, CRXLAB has pioneered a social justice form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design. CRXLAB’s vision is a world that embraces the humanity, rights, and power of Black and Latinx people.

ABOUT ANTOINETTE

Antionette D. Carroll is founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab. Antionette has worked for nonprofits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. As a former resident of Ferguson, Missouri, the death of Michael Brown Jr. changed her from a typical 9-to-5 graphic designer to a social entrepreneur and equity designer. Antionette was named the founding chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force of AIGA: The Professional Association of Design in 2014. She is the chair emerita of the task force working on long-term strategic initiatives such as the Design Census Program with Google and the national Design for Inclusivity Summit. At the local level, she is the president emerita of AIGA St. Louis and co-founder of the Design + Diversity Conference. Antionette sits on several awards and programming committees for local and national nonprofits. She is a TED Fellow, AMEX/Ashoka Emerging Innovator, 4.0 Schools Fellow, and Camelback Ventures Fellow.

Zach Latta, Hack Club

October 11

 

Zach dropped out of high school because he wasn’t getting what he needed. He built the coding class he wished he could take, and has formed hack clubs in hundreds of high schools across the globe.
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ABOUT HACK CLUB

Hack Club is building a national nonprofit that brings coding clubs to high schools nationwide. Students who love music can join band; students who love sports can join an athletic team; but students who want to code have had to go home and do it alone – until now.  Hack Clubs are student-led groups dedicated to fostering the hacker culture in high schools. In meetings, students learn to code through building real-world projects like websites, apps, and games.

ABOUT ZACH

Zach Latta is the founder of Hack Club, a non-profit network of computer science clubs dedicated to fostering student hackers. It is now in 2% of US high schools and has doubled in reach every year since launching in 2016.

In high school he helped develop Football Heroes, a popular arcade football game with 1M+ users. After his freshman year, he dropped out and moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco to become the first engineer at Yo with 4M+ active users. He was awarded the Thiel Fellowship after dropping out of high school when he was 17, the youngest in his class, and was later included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list when he was 18 for his work with Hack Club.

Adebayo Alonge, RxAll

October 25

 

From Coma to Co-Founder. Learn about how being on the receiving end of counterfeit drugs led him to create a drug authentication system for the developing world.

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ABOUT RxALL

Adebayo co-founded RxAll in 2016 after working for 8 years with Sanofi, Roche, BASF, BCG in market development and strategy consulting. Through, RxAll, he aims to provide a means for patients in the developing world to authenticate their medicines. His career in pharma is driven by a passion to eliminate fake drugs, as he almost died as a child from a counterfeit medicine. RxAll’s AI spectrometer and cloud-based algorithm ensures that all drugs sold through its platform and through its network of offline pharmacies are of the highest quality. He has led RxAll to achieve a $5M valuation in 2 years and ramp up sales of over $140K in its first year. He also led its market entry into East Africa- Kenya & Uganda, West Africa- Nigeria & Ghana, SE Asia- Malaysia & Singapore and the Americas-Canada, USA and Columbia.

Representing RxAll, he spoke on the healthcare investing panel at the 2015 US-Africa Business Conference at Yale. He also spoke at the 2018 Katapult FutureFest in Norway, leading RxAll to win the FutureFest’s 2018 Global start-up award. Additionally, he received the Mandela Washington Fellowship from the US state department for outstanding contributions to business and entrepreneurship in Africa.

ABOUT ADEBAYO

He has a Masters in Advanced Management (private equity concentration) from the Yale School of Management and an MBA (strategy and finance) with distinction from the Lagos Business School. He graduated with a Bachelor of Pharmacy First Class Honours from the University of Ibadan. He speaks fluent English, Yoruba, West African Pidgin English. He is conversational in Hausa and French. He loves traveling, blogging and public speaking. He is a golf, jazz and wine aficionado and codes neural networks using R, Python and TensorFlow.

Leonard Medlock,  Playback Worldwide

November 1

 

Leonard Medlock is the chief executive of Playback Worldwide! He designs and constructs technological tools using pop culture to try and bridge the opportunity gap for Black and Latinx students.
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ABOUT LEONARD

In the summer of 2013, Leonard served as designer-in-residence for the ESI School Design Fellowship, a New York City Department of Education initiative to rethink high schools for at-risk black and Latino males, which launched three new public high schools in the Fall of 2014.

Leonard developed his learning design skills a coach and lecturer at the Stanford d.school and a research assistant at Stanford’s Project Based Learning Lab, where his work on global teamwork and collaboration was published in the International Journal of AI & Society. He moonlights as a coach and advisor for organizations such as Camelback Ventures and the Aspen Youth Leadership Fellowship, supporting social venture founders and projects through the lens of human-centered design.

Leonard holds a MA from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in Learning, Design, and Technology and a BS in mechanical engineering from Duke University.

ABOUT PLAYBACK WORLDWIDE

Leonard Medlock is chief executive officer of Playback Worldwide, a design and technology firm that creates informal learning apps and opportunities at the intersection of popular culture, social justice and education. He was previously a founding team member and director at EdSurge where he built products and services to help K-12 administrators find and select education technology.

Dustin Claretto and Sunny Williams, Tiny Docs

November 8

 

Were you scared of going to the doctor when you were a kid? Sunny and Dustin produce CAREtoons that are revolutionizing pediatrics and helping kids cope and heal faster.
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ABOUT TINY DOCS

We started Tiny Docs in 2015 to bridge the communIcation gap between doctors, kids, and families. We can’t measure success in just dollars and cents because a child’s health is far too important. So instead, we dream big and measure our impact in smiles and health outcomes. We provide children and families with the tools to make informed, empowered healthcare decisions. It’s changing the world with cartoons for any child in any language.

ABOUT DUSTIN AND SUNNY

SUNNY

I’m a professional dreamer. In a not so past life, I was a big law attorney in Chicago. Every day I woke up and dreaded going to work. Some of you are probably familiar with the feeling. Ever since I can remember, I envisioned living not just a good life, but a meaningful one. In order to do that, however, I needed to be passionate about where I focused my energy. I was not passionate about the law so I had two options: continue practicing law and give up on living a big grand life or do something else–something that I was passionate about. I chose the latter. I found my passion in Tiny Docs and helping kids and their family’s. And with Tiny Docs we aim to solve a global problem. With your help, we can help kids educate kids all around the world about health issues in a language that they can understand.

DUSTIN

Dustin spent his childhood traveling around the world and dreaming of being an NBA player.  When his 5’8″ frame put a stop to those plans, he went to Indiana University, majoring in business and minoring in English. Proof that the road to being a social impact entrepreneur can take some crazy turns, Dustin taught high school geometry, consulted for hospitals, managed DJs and rappers, taught little kids in Korea how to read, and helped big kids in Chicago learn the ACT/SAT.  When co-founder Sunny Williams told Dustin about Tiny Docs, he immediately fell in love with the vision and has been the COO ever since. The Tiny Docs team is small, so each person has the opportunity to wear many hats, but Dustin’s main focus has been coordinating all of the moving pieces it takes to make an episode. In his free time, you can find Dustin at a park with his three-legged rescue dog friend, Nelly, she’s from the Lou and she’s proud.

 

Tony Weaver, JR. Weird Enough Productions

November 15

 

When Tony met a kid who didn’t want to go trick or treating because he couldn’t find a super hero that looked like him, he started WEP to leverage the most powerful tool in history- media- to empower, inspire and combat media exploitation.
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ABOUT WEIRD ENOUGH PRODUCTIONS

Weird Enough Productions is a new media production company dedicated to creating positive media images of black men and other minority groups. By creating programming with a focus on diversity, Weird Enough produces profitable content that appeals to critical demographics, while also directly combating media misrepresentation. Through media literacy education, Weird Enough academically addresses the problem and empowers young people with the knowledge to analyze, evaluate, and create their own media. Weird Enough endeavors to combine artistry and activism to revolutionize the media industry with content that’s not normal, but just Weird Enough.

ABOUT TONY

Tony Weaver Jr. is founder and CEO of Weird Enough Productions, a new media production company dedicated to creating positive media images of black men and other minority groups. After training with the Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts, the Youth Ensemble of Atlanta, and the Acting Program at Elon University, Tony recognized that there was a severe lack of positive roles for black men. Volunteering with black males in his local community showed him how widespread this misrepresentation was, and the devastating effects it was capable of having on minority groups. With the intention of changing the media narrative of black men, Tony founded Weird Enough Productions at age 20. Tony has been the recipient of the Leadership Prize and the Black Excellence Award, and participated in the NBCUniversal Fellowship Program.

Anurag Gupta, Be More America

November 29

 

Did you know that bias is an algorithm of the mind. And we can break bias? BMA eliminates the unconscious biases in healthcare and business that perpetuate racial inequities.
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ABOUT BE MORE AMERICA

BE MORE trains professionals to reduce and eliminate the influence of unconscious bias in their decision-making through in-person and online trainings. They are developing an online training to train healthcare professionals in evidence-based mindfulness strategies that reduce unconscious bias and track a reduction in their unconscious bias via the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The organization’s mission is to bridge the information gap between leading scientific findings and on-the-ground practices that create and sustain racial inequities. Its aspiration is to revolutionize human relations and enable a society where one’s appearance and ancestry do not dictate one’s life opportunities and experiences.

ABOUT ANURAG
Anurag Gupta is CEO and founder of BE MORE. Anurag has dedicated his career to innovating solutions to society’s intractable challenges. He developed a program to foster critical thinking among Burmese youth; supported women’s groups from around the world to express their grievances to international treaty bodies; designed a research project that identified the root causes of race-based disparities in America; provided counsel to various criminal justice reform projects at the Vera Institute of Justice; published academic articles on triple-bottom-line corporate structures such as Benefit Corporations; and served as a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in rural South Korea. Anurag is a Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow and a grantee of the Brooklyn Accelerator. His work has been profiled in the Huffington Post, the International Institute of Education, and #BKLive, as well as at numerous venues such as Cavendish Global, ACGME, and The Middle Project. Anurag has a JD from NYU School of Law, a master’s from Cambridge University, and a bachelor’s in international relations and Islamic studies from NYU. Trilingual, Anurag enjoys hiking and teaching yoga.