Fellowship Building
In January, we invited 5 MassChallenge alumni to participate in an inaugural Social Impact Fellowship who are working in systems change areas where the barriers to scale are huge. We have a hypothesis based on feedback from our alumni and experts that founders, building companies solving important yet complex problems, experience a gap in support between early-stage and getting to scale. We want to be there to help fill in that gap by connecting them to an exceptional peer community to learn from, providing highly curated executive leadership learning, and getting access to critical stakeholders.
Once the Fellows were identified, I hosted 1:1 welcome sessions with each founder and performed a needs assessment with each company to determine major gaps and pain points for driving the program agenda. Some major goals from the Fellows include raising capital, strategic guidance on cap table formation, finding and building successful partnerships, leadership, brand building, sector-specific support, and connections with academics and/or government to reach the next stage of growth.
All Fellows traveled to Boston in February for 2 days of onsite workshopping where we shared resources and more about what each was working on and their hopes for the Fellowship and how they could support each other. Workshop included a great conversation around org structures, board development, multiple paths to fundraising, capital structures, and hiring.
Guest speaker: Mark Newberg of Stockbridge Advisors, longtime MC judge and mentor, led a discussion on the ultimate outcomes of each organization, their fundamental purpose, and how all messaging even for different customer segments should all tie back to those ultimate outcomes.
Guest speaker: Steve Awtry of Nova Consulting Group who led an executive leadership coaching session with the Fellows. Topics addressed: dealing with bias and finding balance, how to wear multiple hats with limited resources, keeping employees engaged, and interpersonal skills.
Meet the Fellows:
Peace and Human Rights | Washington D.C.
Mission and Impact: Our team of subject matter experts and lived experience professionals leverages proprietary data and sophisticated machine learning to generate actionable intelligence on criminal human trafficking networks to help law enforcement successfully arrest and prosecute them.
Healthcare | Boston, MA
Mission and Impact: EatWell equips health insurers with an integrated Food is Medicine prescription for food insecure diabetics to drive sustainable behavior change and improve health outcomes.
Fintech | Washington D.C.
Mission and Impact: EQL Finance provides financial resiliency solutions for working households by impacting financial behavior change through personalized insights, access to resources, and direct discounts to support their everyday.
Education | Boston, MA
Mission and Impact: Democratizing learning and education reserved for the top 1% to US public schools and low-income countries using AI powered Holograms. Our impact goals are social impact, breaking generational cycles of socioeconomic status, reducing gender inequality, and improving quality of life of the next generation.
Public Health | Baltimore, MD
Mission and Impact: Provide data for better pest management that reduces human disease, strengthens agriculture, and protects property.
