3rd ANNUAL IMPACT-A-THON

Win $2500 for Your Big, Bold, Audacious Idea to Change the World!

April 8, 2023

Challenge TBA

Do you have an idea that will improve the lives of millions of people around the globe? Then this challenge is for you!

Compete in Kravis Lab’s third annual Impact-a-thon, a social innovation challenge requiring NO TECHNICAL BACKGROUND OR EXPERIENCE. This year’s challenge will be announced in the Spring 2023.

CMC alumni will be hosting workshop sessions and 1-1 mentorship sessions to provide expert advice and help you throughout the process. Pitches will be conducted in small teams of 2-3 people assigned by the Kravis Lab team; you are welcome to register individually or indicate a partner you want to work with (they must sign up separately as well!).

1st Prize – $2500

2nd Prize – $1500

3rd Prize $500

2nd ANNUAL KLAB IMPACT-A-THON
Win $2500 for Your Regenerative Solution That Will Have a Net Positive Impact in the World!
April 8-9, 2022

WINNERS

Impact-a-thon Throwing Out the Landfill 1

1st Prize 21500
REINVENTING LANDFILL
Marta Lazowska ’24
Basil Loyd-Moffett ’24

Converting waste in to water, energy and products!

2nd Prize $1500
FORESTSIGHTS
Min Hyung Lee CMC ’23
Sam Sangyoon Kim CMC ’21

Solar powered fire surveillance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to fight forest fires.

3rd Prize $500
SMARTSTREETS
Adrian Flynn CMC ’25
Henry Long CMC ’25
Josh Morganstein CMC ’25

Ultra white painted roads reducing temperatures to address climate change.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

OPENING KEYNOTE:
Kayalin Akens-Irby ’18, Chief of Staff at Planet FWD

Sustainability is Profit

We have reached a new era of business. Being sustainable and creating positive social and environmental outcomes are now the more profitable things to do. What does that mean for innovation? What does that mean for students preparing to enter the workforce? What does that mean for our future? Kayalin will share an exciting overview of how social innovation and impact-oriented companies are shaping today’s markets, where the industry is headed, and how her time at CMC shaped her career from that point forward leading to a life of purpose.

ABOUT KAYALIN

Kayalin Akens-Irby is an impact-oriented strategist who has spent her career working with investors and companies to improve business operations and capitalize on new opportunities within an evolving market which increasingly values transparency, sustainability, and business ethics. Kayalin is currently Chief of Staff at Planet FWD, the leading carbon management platform for consumer companies to tackle climate change. She also serves as a Board Member for the Upcycled Food Association and a Climate Fellow for Amasia VC.

Previously, Kayalin was an early employee and helped build Malk Partners into the leading environmental, social, governance (ESG) investment advisory firm for private markets, advising on over $500B in AUM. At Malk, Kayalin led due diligence assessments on over 100 investments typically ranging from $25 million to $2 billion in enterprise value and worked directly with portfolio companies to identify and capitalize on ESG opportunities to create value as they scale. Kayalin was selected to lead a new business vertical at Malk as Head of VC and Growth Equity and started Malk’s climate initiatives including building the climate strategies for leading funds such as Vista Equity Partners and Hellman & Friedman.

Kayalin frequently lends her voice as a thought-leader in climate speaking at conferences across the world. During the pandemic, Kayalin built an online community of over 25,000 investors, founders, and individuals focused on Climate Tech on Clubhouse. The success of the club was largely due to Kayalin’s focus on equity, inclusivity, and solutions, wanting everyone who left her club to feel empowered and inspired to find their role in tackling the climate crisis.

Kayalin graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 2018 where she majored in Environment, Economics, and Politics as a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Interdisciplinary Science Scholar.

CLOSING KEYNOTE:
Zach Weisman ’08, Founder/CEO of The Impactful

Tackling Big Global Challenges

Zach has spent the last 15 years working in many areas of social impact. After studying finance and working at PwC, Zach promptly quit the finance sector to join the front lines of the environmental movement. Full of twists and turns, Zach’s extremely passionate about helping equip the next generation, and anyone really, with the motivation, support, and help we need to tackle big, global challenges.

ABOUT ZACH

The Impactful is an ecosystem comprised of a collective, community, and educational tools to help support everyone in their positive impact journeys. The Collective brings together leaders, freelancers, and consultants in the areas of branding, strategy, and design to work with clients around the world. The Community supports and motivates all those making changes day in and day out. Our courses are aimed at helping you align your purpose and impact.

For the last 15 years, Zach has worked at the intersection of social impact and branding collaborating with global businesses. He has had the amazing opportunity to work on climate change, innovation, and healthcare with companies like Google, Virgin, IKEA, MD Anderson, Sabin Vaccine Institute, GreenWave, the NBA, and many more.

Zach also serves as an Executive Board Member on the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) who work with med schools and med students around the world to protect the public’s health through assessment, credentialing, and testing.

In his spare time, Zach spends a lot of time playing hide and seek, “daddy be a horsey”, twirlee’s, spooky ghost, and tickles with his 3-year-old and 1-year-old sons. He is a big advocate of horizontal parenting and is married to fellow CMC Alum, Kevyn Klein.

Designing Lean Impact Measurement Systems for Social Impact

Spencer MacColl, Director of Impact
Kiva Microfunds

This workshop will focus on how best to ensure that social enterprises collect and measure the social impact they create for the world. Topics will include: designing a theory of change, setting up lean data collection, and leveraging impact evidence when pitching to impact investors.

ABOUT SPENCER

Spencer is the Director of Impact at Kiva Microfunds, a website that allows anyone to invest in financially excluded entrepreneurs and social enterprises worldwide. Since its founding in 2005, Kiva’s two million lenders have lent more than $1.6 billion to 4.3 million people in 94 countries. He is responsible for estimating the social impact of Kiva’s potential investments, conducting research studies with Kiva’s partners, and leading Kiva’s outcome measurement strategy. He previously worked at the World Bank’s Gender Innovation Lab, implementing impact evaluations in East Africa.

Climate Related Investments

Lauren D’Souza ’18,
Sustainability Project Manager at Renewable Resources Group

This interactive workshop explores what impact investors look for in climate-related investments, particularly focusing on the growing sectors of regenerative ag, carbon measurement, agtech, and climate tech. You will get the perspective of a large private equity investor and a practitioner who builds partnerships with emerging solutions providers, constructive feedback on your ideas, and a forum to brainstorm freely.

ABOUT LAUREN

Lauren D’Souza is a sustainability project manager at Renewable Resources Group (RRG), a private equity and asset management firm with over $3B in assets under management. At RRG, Lauren works on sustainable agriculture, fair farm labor, climate commitments and measurement, sustainable water management impact reporting, and habitat conservation. Lauren manages ESG and impact programming at the corporate level and implements sustainability initiatives for RRG’s diverse portfolio of global assets. She works daily with RRG’s deep network of impact partners, including on the innovative impact investing partnership RRG has built with The Nature Conservancy. She brings prior experience in smallholder agriculture and urban sustainability in Cape Town, utility-scale biomass energy for indigenous tribes in Arizona, habitat restoration in Southern Arizona, and graphic design and marketing expertise. She graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a B.A. in government and history and a focus on environmental policy.

Capital Plans for Decarbonization

Barry Hooper, Senior Green Building Coordinator at San Francisco Department of the Environment

This workshop will illustrate mechanisms to not just mitigate, but solve, some of the most important consequences of climate change. With a focus on housing policies, students will learn about energy audits and capital plans for decarbonization, so that buildings can compare their performance over time to themselves and to the market. Students will learn how to implement sustainable climate policies while promoting racial equity and economic justice.

ABOUT BARRY

Barry Hooper manages the Existing Buildings Energy Performance ordinance, which motivates improved energy efficiency through benchmarking and energy use disclosure for commercial and multifamily buildings, and requires commercial buildings to prepare an actionable plan for improvement. Barry leads development and supports implementation of San Francisco’s codes and regulations requiring new buildings to be all-electric, install solar photovoltaic or living roofs, provide electrical infrastructure for vehicle charging, and meet credible 3rd party green building standards including GreenPoint Rated or LEED. Barry is an active contributor to Bay Area Regional Energy Network Codes & Standards program, and is active in the C40 Cities Private Buildings Efficiency Network.

Perspective on Working in Sustainability

Jesse Rebello, Independent Management Consultant

This workshop will be mostly interactive. Jesse will give an overview of career paths in the sustainability space. He will provide useful context to think about mechanisms to design new business models.

ABOUT JESSE

Jesse is currently an independent management consultant specializing in strategic planning, mergers, acquisitions & partnerships, go-to-market execution and organizational culture with a focus on the sustainability and clean technology space. His clients range from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Previously he was the Chief Strategy, Innovation & Culture officer of ENGIE Impact – the sustainability solutions division of ENGIE (a global energy conglomerate). Earlier in his career he held positions across financial, legal and operational/P&L ownership roles. Jesse is CMC’ 03 grad where he majored in Economics-Accounting. After CMC he received his JD and MBA from Villanova University and is also a registered CPA.

JUDGES

Kayalin Aken-Kirby CMC ’18

Jesse Rebello CMC ’03

Gemma Bulos, KLab Director

1ST ANNUAL IMPACT-A-THON
Win $1500 for your TECH IDEA to Change the World!
April 16-17, 2021

WINNERS

1st Prize $1500
MANIPULATE
Sarah Chen ’22
Tiffany Hu ’22

Manipulate is a mobile, multi-player, dynamic game based around disinformation and counter disinformation tactics. It places players in the roles of the Stag Republic Defender versus the Sage Republic Manipulator, competing in an influence warfare simulation with branching endings, to increase disinformation awareness through gamified education.

2nd Prize $750
PRAXIS
Noelle Song ’23
Sophie de Castro ’23

Within 24 hours, Sophie de Castro and Noelle Song brainstormed and developed Praxis: The Proxy App Making Spaces Accessible For All.

Reflecting on personal and peers’ experiences with inaccessible spaces on college campuses, the team formulated a crowd-sourced mobile app that functions as a guide map for accessibility features (elevators, ramps, stairs, etc.) in spaces including and beyond college campuses.”

3rd Prize $500
GLOOMSHOT
Zac Davis ’24

Gloomshot is a network of scripts that automatically edits together highlight compilations from long unedited videos. It then uploads too one of 51 highlight channels or sends the highlight back to the creator. It aims too allow smaller creators to focus on creating content, not hoping to match teams of editors.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

OPENING KEYNOTE:
Chris Ategeka, Founder/CEO, UCOT
Friday, April 16 10-10:30a

Unintended Consequences of Technology

Humanity is at a crossroads. The explosion of technology and its exponential advancements are reshaping what it means to be human. As technology continues to expand, its incredible imprint on our lives continues to deepen. Algorithmic lifestyle has become one of the most powerful arbiters in our lives. They, the technologies, make decisions about the news we read, who we vote for, the jobs we get, the people we meet, and the ads we see. Along with the benefits and victories provided by new technologies come consequences that are alarmingly detrimental to society and to our planet that’s where our work comes in. Chris will be diving further into this and more issues surrounding ‘The Unintended Consequences of Technology’ in his opening keynote for this year’s Impact-a-thon!

ABOUT CHRIS

Chris is an award-winning serial-entrepreneur, engineer, futurist, and fashion designer.. He is the founder/ CEO at UCOT Inc., a company that has created a unique model to support and fund early-stage startups creating solutions to unintended & willfully ignored consequences of technology. Chris is a TEDFellow; Forbes Magazine 30Under30, Ashoka fellow, Echoing Green fellow and most recently he has been honored by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader (YGL), and a recipient of the Muhammed Ali Humanitarian Award.

CLOSING KEYNOTE:
Liam Brennan-Burke ’21, Founder, Paysail
Saturday, April 17 11:35-11:55a

From Student to Social Entrepreneur: Taking Your Idea to the Next Level

As a student, you have access to resources and have more opportunities to connect with your dream connections that many start-up founders may not. People love mentoring students, especially when they are passionate and driven! Liam will share how he founded his start-up in his junior year at CMC, and how he harnessed his network and leveraged his status as a student to reach out to and garner support from some of the most influential thinkers, thought leaders and investors in tech.

ABOUT LIAM

Starting his very own lawn mowing business in middle school, Liam Brennan-Burke, a senior Economics and International Relations dual major, has always been interested in entrepreneurship. Throughout his time at CMC, Brennan-Burke has turned to and capitalized on Kravis Lab for Social Impact’s program offerings to stimulate this passion. Brennan-Burke’s startup, Paysail, was just accepted into the Celo Camp incubator, which is “an independent initiative run by entrepreneurs passionate about the potential for global financial inclusion, mass adoption of digital money & acceleration of startups.

WORKSHOPS

Blockchain for Social Impact

Syed Abrar Ahmed, Founder/CEO
Liber Health

What is blockchain? How does it work? It is much more than just cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin and Ethereum). It can be used for social good like reducing poverty, promoting inclusion, fair trade, pandemic readiness and possible preventions. In this workshop, you’ll learn how you can use this powerful platform to improve the world.

ABOUT ABRAR

Abrar is an expert in blockchain, and uses the technology to democratize healthcare and puts the power of individual health data in the hands of the patients. He was awarded Outstanding Entrepreneur at Global Entrepreneur Summit, hosted by the US State Dept as well as a recipient of the Roche Disruptor’s Lab Award. He is also a Nest I/O Pakistan Incubator Alum, Global Good Fellow.

Appropriate Technology for the Base of the Pyramid

Jodie Wu, COO
OffGridBox
Gemma Bulos, Director
Kravis Lab for Social Impact

As technology design has evolved, there are so many bells and whistles, and swanky new innovations, but they can often only serve the privileged who can afford them. Learn how to design ‘appropriate’ technologies that can help uplift the base of the pyramid out of poverty that will provide them with the opportunity to thrive!

ABOUT JODIE

Jodie is an expert in appropriate technology design and distribution. She has worked in Africa for over a decade designing and distributing affordable, locally made technologies for the base of the pyramid. Her first venture, Global Cycle Solutions, she designed a bicycle out of local materials which were built and sold across East Africa. As the COO of OffGridBox, a Rwandan company that brings affordable clean water and renewable energy to anybody, anywhere. OffGridBoxes are built to last 20 years, complying with international standards and have the potential to power a wide array of productive uses, from clean lighting in rural areas to desalinating water for an island in the middle of the ocean. She was named one of America’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, a Forbes “30 under 30”, an Echoing Green fellow, TED Global fellow, Ashoka Emerging Innovator, and D-Lab Scale-Ups Fellow.

Machine Learning for Social Impact

A nna Kazlauskas , Founder/CEO
Corsali

Anna will give an overview of the human and technological aspects of building machine learning applications for impact. Anna is the founder and CEO of Corsali, a company making it effortless to leverage machine intelligence using a combination of machine learning and smart young people around the world who earn crypto by labeling data on their phones.

ABOUT ANNA

Anna is an expert in AI and is a serial social entrepreneur. Upon graduating from MIT where she studied computer science and economics, she was selected for a coveted spot at Y Combinator where she co-founded Iambiq Tech that came out of automating document sorting processes at the World Bank. She also works with Celo, a platform for stable digital payments in emerging markets. And most recently founded Corsali, a platform that combines human intelligence and machine learning to answer specific questions about your data.

Design Thinking: Building a Product That Matters

Julie Gauthier, Community Game Designer
Hack Club

How do you know that your solution will work for the people you’re building it for? Well, you could just ask them! We’ll work through the Design Thinking process to determine the problem we’re solving, who we’re solving it for, what the minimum viable solution is, and how to iterate on it to make it great! Bring your ideas to work on!

ABOUT JULIE

Julie is a 28 year-old Community Game Designer at Hack Club (part community manager, part programmer, part orchestrator of silliness), a non-profit dedicated to providing a space for high schoolers who are interested in technology. She previously worked as a software engineer at Plex, adjunct professor at Pace University, and as Director of Technology Business Development at AngelHack. Julie holds a BS and an MS in Computer Science from Pace University, where she studied product development and Design Thinking in the Aalto Design Factory in Helsinki. Julie is currently pursuing every hobby that is an animal turned into a verb (fishing, birding, etc).