Getting Ready for Climathon Houston 2021: A Look at Climathon 2020 Winner InnoGrid
In 2020, 11 teams gathered at Climathon Houston to develop solutions to the challenges presented in the City of Houston’s Climate Action Plan (CAP). Three teams’ ideas rose to the top; and InnoGrid’s approach to addressing the lack of energy resiliency in our city was particularly relevant in the wake of Winter Storm Uri.
Q: How has your role evolved since Climathon Houston 2020?
Ed Pettitt: During the Climathon, I contributed relative to my roles as a Third Ward resident and community organizer, as well as a public health practitioner, business owner, and urban planning student. I provided input as a member of the Houston Coalition for Equitable Development without Displacement (HCEDD), which engages in advocacy for the development rights of working class African-American residents in and around the Innovation Corridor, which we selected as the proposed site for InnoGrid. Since the Climathon, I have further delved into energy justice issues and am now an active member of the Equity in the Clean Energy Economy (ECEE) Collaborative and a Graduate Research Assistant with the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice (CECJ).
Bryan Gottfried: My background as a geoscientist has led me to advocate for the expanded use of geothermal energy resources. I am also interested in promoting the modernization of our electric grid and improving resiliency. During the Climathon, I originally suggested the development of a microgrid, although I had something like Austin’s Whisper Valley development in mind — a master-planned mixed-use residential-commercial community that uses geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling. We shifted the focus on the Innovation District to take advantage of the redevelopment and the clean-tech advancements occurring there. Since then, I’ve hosted our regular team meetings and reached out to others who could help the project. I’m looking forward to pushing things along now that we’ve gained support from crucial partners.
Paresh Patel: As a start-up founder focusing on energy poverty and a champion of sustainable energy for all (UN SDG7), I have been advancing deployment of solar microgrids and minigrids in off-grid frontier markets. In Asia and Africa, distributed renewable energy models (DREs) were enabling millions to essentially leapfrog centralized, legacy energy infrastructure. I was looking for a way to develop a microgrid closer to home. As an inaugural member of Greentown Labs Houston, I had been conceptualizing something similar, stemming from my recommendation for them to install rooftop solar panels. While it wasn’t financially practical there, I presented the idea of a microgrid for the wider Innovation District to its developer, Rice Management Company (RMC). It made sense to join up and work with the InnoGrid team. Since then, I’ve driven our partnerships with Baker Botts and Schneider Electric, and discussions with stakeholders like CenterPoint.
Q: What do you think of your impact innovation journey and progress since Climathon Houston 2020? Have you discovered anything new and/or surprising?
Ed Pettitt: Since the Climathon, we have learned a lot about the process of seeking funding and technical support for a microgrid startup. From submitting a Connected Communities grant application to the U.S. Department of Energy to partnering with Baker Botts for pro bono representation, I am very pleased with the progress we have made.
Bryan Gottfried: I echo Ed’s comments. This is an entirely new realm for me — from learning about various sources of funding to the numerous regulatory and technical challenges. I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made considering we’ve been dealing with COVID throughout the life of the project, as well as the transition between federal administrations which has had a significant impact on policies and sources of funding.
Paresh Patel: It has been a discovery process on several levels. We’ve had to gather learnings and lessons on all aspects of building out a microgrid from the ground up. Our mission-driven model has resonated. There’s consensus that we should have a microgrid in the heart of Midtown as a source of resilient, sustainable energy — it’s become even more imperative in the wake of polar vortex Uri. We’ve been able to access industry leaders and stakeholders, forge partnerships, and consult a wide range of experts. Baker Botts and Schneider have helped us complete a project qualification study scoping the potential for a microgrid in the Innovation District. That’ll give us a clearer understanding of the technical and financial dimensions of the project, and will put us in a position to seek federal funding, grants, and other capital.
Q: How has your outreach to other organizations helped InnoGrid’s progress? Are there partnerships with similar organizations that you’d like to seek? Why?
Ed Pettitt: Our outreach to the Equity in a Clean Energy Economy (ECEE) Collaborative has opened up a number of opportunities to learn from and engage in best practices related to utility program design, customer research, public participation, and regulation and policy.
Bryan Gottfried: There are numerous individuals and organizations that have encouraged us and given us ideas on ways to push the project forward. I believe FEMA’s BRIC program (Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities) fits nicely with the goals of our project and I’m looking forward to exploring that avenue further as we move along in the process.
Paresh Patel: I too joined the ECEE with Ed. I’ve also had discussions on forming an alliance with Climable, which has developed community microgrids in the Boston area. We’re mission-aligned and their proven business model can be adapted for the Houston context. RMC is a key stakeholder, and we’d like to find a way to enlist them as a partner, with the potential to add The Ion and adjacent commercial buildings as a co-anchor site.
Q: Stakeholders such as the City of Houston and CenterPoint Energy are excited about InnoGrid’s plan. What do you think the next steps should be? How do you help stakeholders like these move forward?
Ed Pettitt: One of the next steps should involve the City of Houston facilitating a signed Community Benefits Agreement between Rice Management Company (RMC) and the Houston Coalition for Equitable Development without Displacement (HCEDD) that includes a provision for affordable housing and equitable access to affordable energy (like that proposed by InnoGrid) in and around the Innovation Corridor.
Bryan Gottfried: One of our most significant hurdles is the Chicken-and-Egg situation: It’s hard to get property owners to participate in InnoGrid unless they receive incentives from the City, but it’s difficult for the City to offer those incentives without a better understanding of the scope and level of interest they’d see through property owners’ participation. Similarly, without knowing the interest from property owners and the scope and level of support from the City, it’s hard to have substantive conversations with CenterPoint about Innogrid. I believe we need to get both CenterPoint and the City to agree that InnoGrid is something they want to see happen and will incentivize property owners to participate in.
Paresh Patel: CenterPoint has been supportive, providing helpful guidance on technical aspects of interfacing InnoGrid with their infrastructure. To Bryan’s point, we want to explore specific ways to partner with CenterPoint once we have the project qualification study completed by Schneider Electric. The InnoGrid aligns with the goals of the City’s Climate Action Plan and the Resilient Houston plan. Naturally, the City’s ongoing support would be indispensable.
Q: What kinds of financing opportunities are you exploring or would help develop the InnoGrid?
Bryan Gottfried: I mentioned FEMA’s BRIC program above, and I think the Texas PACE program (Property Assessed Clean Energy) will be a resource that we can guide property owners to so they can install generation capability that can then be tied into the InnoGrid.
Paresh Patel: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes new funding streams for grid infrastructure, much of which could directly or indirectly boost microgrid demonstration and resiliency projects that we are tracking. We might also consider a crowdfunding campaign as a way to invite community buy-in and raise public awareness of the project.
Q: In your wildest dreams, what would InnoGrid’s future look like and how would it impact the Houston area?
Ed Pettitt: I envision an Innovation Corridor that supports entrepreneurism and small business development while providing stable, decentralized, and affordable energy through an innovative microgrid that contributes to job creation and equitable access to clean energy that prevents the displacement of long-term and working class residents.
Bryan Gottfried: I can’t say it any better than Ed did! I would also like the InnoGrid to become something that Houston is known for within the world of clean-tech, and have it cited as a model for other urban microgrids.
Paresh Patel: Ed captured it quite nicely. Once the initial InnoGrid site is proven, the value will become obvious to others. I’d like to see the InnoGrid evolve into a microgrid model that can be deployed to serve LMI households across Houston and beyond that are most vulnerable to energy poverty and insecurity as extreme weather events become more frequent. In sum, Equity through Resiliency.
Q: Any additional thoughts or information you’d like to share?
Bryan Gottfried: I could have never imagined that signing up for the Climathon last year would have led to this amazing experience. I’ve learned so much and met so many great people. I encourage anyone who is considering participating in it this year to do so–you never know where it may lead!
Paresh Patel: I second Bryan’s invitation. The Climathon catalyzed the random collisions and connections of ideas and innovators leading to this collaborative—and potentially transformative—project. A huge thanks to Impact Hub Houston and partners for hosting the Climathon!
The InnoGrid team has had quite a year and we’re excited to see their continued progress. We hope that their journey is an inspiration to others who want to catalyze action and make an impact. We invite everyone to join us for the Climathon 2021 Kick-off on October 25th. As Bryan Gottfried said: I encourage anyone who is considering participating in it this year to do so–you never know where it may lead!
The impacts of climate change are all around us, hitting our region more seriously and rapidly than models have predicted. We invite you to leverage Climathon Houston as a way to start ideating and innovating solutions or to continue working on and engaging people in solutions you may already be developing.
Come learn about this year’s challenges, connect with the teams, and get ready for the week! We’ll see you at Climathon!
How female founder Action Jackson impacts the face of business in Houston
Written by Impact Hub Houston Team member Camila Aguiar.
She was born Joy, but chose Action as her moniker. “After all, an idea without action is worth nothing,” she says. This intense need to turn ideas into action pushed her to open a media production company for small businesses back in 2018. It was also what brought her to Impact Hub Houston, where she found support to build a business model for her most audacious project: The Black Business Lab. Action was one of the 8 founders to participate in the Female Founders Program, an initiative of Impact Hub sponsored by Frost Bank. From May to July 2021, Action worked closely with Impact Hub’s CEO, Grace Rodriguez, and received support from additional experts to build the Black Business Lab Project business model. “The Lab” is a spinoff of the Black Marketing Initiative, which she created to help black owners thrive in business.
To understand how she got here, we must look back to 2020, when COVID hit and caught her by surprise. At that time, Action was celebrating one-and-a-half years as head of Action One Media. She wanted to change the narrative about Black business owners and started by helping small businesses communicate with clients and the community through media content, especially in video format. The company was online but got its client base from having 20-100 people come to their small studio every week and doing events outside. Action decided to close the company as soon as COVID hit. The following three months were hard. She had no clients, no revenue, and no clue where to go next. But she knew she had to do something, and she decided to start by listening.
In June 2020, Action and her team–the Action Squad–led a survey with 226 small business owners. Over a hundred of them answered they were about to close if they didn’t get online. Action soon realized the need and the urgency to do something about it. She used the data from the survey to pivot her business and offer a well-rounded marketing strategy for clients.
“In a nutshell, you can get video to show your face. You get the consulting to know where to put your video and help yourself get the clients you want. And we can also save you time by automating the process for you.”
She implemented an entirely new system to meet the unique needs of small businesses. Finally, things started getting better, but Action was still not happy. She knew from the surveys that most owners couldn’t afford the service. Action was struggling herself to put her company back in business after months without revenue.
“We realized we didn’t need just to sell the services. We could create a program and offer the services to the business through the program funded by grants, crowdfunding or anything we could pull together to help Black owners.”
Impact Hub was crucial in implementing the first pilot she did with 16 Black owners. Grace Rodriguez even participated in some of the sessions and helped shape the business training. But Action wants to go further. Her next goal is to build a Black innovation corridor in South Houston. She compares it to other Houston initiatives, such as the Energy Corridor and The Museum District. She already gathered more than 20 businesses, and they are working together to create a safe space to help Black owners get the support, the funds and the collaboration they need to thrive.
Action’s pitch sounds firm and convincing. She says this was one of the best aspects of the Female Founders Program. The constant practice and interaction helped her strengthen her case for support. Frost Bank’s advisors also helped her build some new financing strategies, especially regarding balancing her statements.
“They gave their hearts to make sure we learned. These are things sometimes we ignore as founders. I got some strategies behind changing our financial year.”
The three intense months of coaching sessions and hard work also helped her build new perspectives on her business. “We got counsel from them to build up the part we were missing. If you are a service business like us, you think you don’t need a supply chain, for example. Until you answer those questions in the assessment that they gave us. That in itself opened my eyes the most. It gave me a different perspective. And you need all the perspective you can get.”
Since we are talking about Action, we shouldn’t be surprised by how fast she is putting everything she learned in the service of her community! She is working with partners to expand the Black Marketing Initiative into the Black Business Lab. They applied for grants and are developing an asset map for the Black Innovation Corridor. The project has the support of some of her largest clients, including NANCo Aero–an aerospace company creating a “flying car”; South Union CDC–a STEM Foundation for youth and seniors with a solar co-op; and The Fish Bowl Experience–a pitch competition that gives away up to $50,000 in funding to small businesses owned by college students, veterans, and entrepreneurs with serious hustle.
“The ability to be who we are, take action on the things that matter, and impact is a blessing. We can build business models that can be used by the world to improve the world while making money. The sky is no longer the limit.”
McMac Cx creating safe and healthy environments, one building at a time
Written by Impact Hub Houston Team member Nabiha Khetani.
Founder and President of McMac Cx, a company devoted to safer and healthier buildings and environments, David MacLean shares his story behind the meaning of his mission and how Impact Hub Houston is helping to achieve his goals. McMac Cx aims to achieve SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. While SDG 11 is their primary goal, the company addresses needs that also target SDG 4: Quality Education and SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure.
David joined the Accelerate Membership Program to increase his knowledge on branding and marketing to further advance his goals for his company. His biggest challenge, he shares, is getting people to understand why they should care. Why is it important to create buildings which are above minimum code requirements?
It begins with addressing the unrealistic expectations of inhabitants and what creators can deliver with the institutional barriers getting in the way. That is where McMac Cx comes in. To minimize the sacrifices on the health and safety of citizens and maximize on impact, MacLean and his company look at first, costs of buildings while also evaluating what the social and environmental impact would be. They work with partners around the globe and use advanced social tech to have immediate implementation of sustainable improvements for a safer environment. David works diligently to change the reality of the current operation of buildings and create a standard that is above minimum code.
“The pivoting and changing conversation is all about education, and people understanding the order of magnitude of the problem.” David says.
As one of his current initiatives, David created the USGBC Texas Best Practices App as an educational tool and a way for members to connect with nonprofits and other organizations achieving similar altruistic passions. He is also the founding Board Member of the Texas Chapter of the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and created the Best Practices Committee as a platform of connection between the creators and inhabitants to work together.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about me doing something that anybody else can do” David says “it’s actually me helping somebody else over that lift so they can be more successful, because it’s about impact that we want to make, right.”
Part of the reason David was drawn to Impact Hub was because of the global Sustainable Development Goals they use as a guide and a lens for their work. Out of the 17 SDGs passed by the United Nations in 2015, IHH primarily focuses on six. David says the SDGs create a global language to articulate what is important and what more can be done. Although he strongly resonates with three or so of the goals, the Accelerate Program keeps him engaged in how the rest of the world is acting across the 14 other SDGs.
Looking ahead, David wants to keep growing his company nationally and globally. His current services are largely focused locally in Texas, but are all transferable to any other place in the world. He recently launched a global video competition to reach advocates across the world to become ‘Air Champions’ in their neighborhood. The video content focuses on why they think air quality is important. Although having McMac Cx recognized is a priority since it is a for-profit company, David prioritizes sending a certain message to his community which he is eagerly passionate about.
McMac Cx works with partners from around the globe to aggregate advanced Social Tech, allowing the immediate implementation of sustainable improvements that create positive social and environmental change. Its goal is to economically enable everyone to live, learn, work, and play in places that are safe, healthy, efficient, and prosperous. Learn more about McMac Cx and connect with David.
Our team at Impact Hub Houston is here to help you take your venture to the next level. Learn how with an Accelerate Membership.
How a female founder is impacting education quality by targeting self-esteem through technology
Written by Impact Hub Houston Team member Camila Aguiar.
When you talk to Margo Jordan it is hard to imagine that she once suffered from low self-esteem. Yet, this confident and persuasive entrepreneur says she struggled when she was a little girl back in Milwaukee, WI, where she grew up. Today, she is a successful and passionate founder who turned her own struggle into an educational company that helps students overcome low self-esteem and depression. Her entrepreneurship journey started in 2013, after 10 years in the Army and a brief experience in the finance sector. She was only 26 years old when she opened her first company, a facility in Northeast Houston to offer enrichment programs for children, including day camps and workshops.
Thanks to a combination of creativity and strong knowledge in finance, Margo was able to develop her leadership skills and grow her business. But like many founders, she had to deal with unpredictable events that tested her resiliency and leadership skills. The first big challenge came in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey destroyed her facility in Northeast Houston. Nevertheless, Margo didn’t give up and was able to raise funds to continue serving families in Houston.
Two years later, another major disruption menaced her business. COVID forced her to stop the in-person programs, but also offered an opportunity to make a greater impact and help students cope with a new reality marked by isolation and uncertainty. She pivoted and focused all her efforts on her e-learning platform, Enrichly.
Currently, Enrichly has 500 subscribers and impacts more than 10,000 students from different grade levels and backgrounds. The platform offers self-esteem-based learning workshops and curriculum, live content with teens and influencers, and mental health resources. The goal is to help members build their confidence, recognize their capabilities, and put limitations in perspective. According to Margo, having high self-esteem helps prevent depression, anxiety disorders, and even suicide. It affects all aspects of life including academic performance.
When parents and schools from countries worldwide started coming back to her for help, she realized she was dealing with a global issue and started expanding her business outside the US. Her platform currently reaches members from 12 countries, mainly parents and educators trying to help students overcome depression and low self-esteem. Margo is also negotiating with corporations and schools in countries such as Brazil and the United Arab Emirates. Her most recent contract was with the Arabian American School, which will bring a self-esteem learning program to their campus middle school students in Dubai.
The power of connections
As a visionary entrepreneur, Margo thinks it is important to take risks and learn from mistakes. She recognizes the value of connections and resources for her business. In 2021, Margo was selected to participate in a three-month support program offered by Impact HUB Houston in partnership with Frost Bank. Since May, she and seven additional Founder women had weekly meetings with advisors and mentors to refine their business model. The program has also helped them gain a deeper understanding of business and financial management, while working on their pitching and funding model.
“The amount of resources we received are invaluable. Being able to connect with Grace and Michelle has allowed me to put some of the pieces I’ve been missing together. Grace and I worked on my diagnostic and defined a lot of what my company does and gave me a more concrete plan moving forward. This was very instrumental in making sure I’m capturing my impact more efficiently,” says Margo.
Margo’s next steps include launching the Enrichly app and growing her membership program. She is also working on a side project to help students develop leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. She admits it was particularly difficult to build her reputation and raise money being a Black woman, and she wants to inspire others to believe in themselves and fight for their dreams. Considering her personal story, and the passionate way she talks about her mission, Margo is certainly a great inspiration.
Visit Youth Enrichments to learn more about Margo’s mission! Connect with them on social media and stay up-to-date with their journey: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Impact Hub Houston is here to help you take your venture to the next level. Learn how with an Accelerate Membership.
As I dig into my own research on organizations changing lives for the better, it’s only fitting this month’s UN theme be Human Rights. Uniformly, I find the businesses and charities championingnhuman rights (through economic inclusion, physical safety, or personal autonomy) and thriving put one thing at the forefront of their work.
Their humanity.
What better way to move the needle on the world’s challenges (like human rights violations) than to remember our own humanity? The more founders embrace who they are, and infuse
themselves into their work, the more traction and attention their work gets.
It’s easy to see why that’s the case. Humanizing our work builds culture and it’s culture that creates loyalists and communities invested in our success. The social capital that comes with community investment beats out tote bags and hashtags any day.
As you put your own solutions out into the world I challenge you to take the more “humane” approach to business by remembering a few things:
Lean Into the Messy
In the world of decks and pitches, there’s a ton of pressure to have all of the answers and execute. Thing is, you’ll never have all of the answers. Even worse, if you preoccupy yourself with finding answers you’ll miss some pretty interesting problems.
Move yourself and your team away from the need for certainty, and embrace the humanity of evolving. Curiosity is one of the best ways to explore empathy, and empathy is how you get to
the root of a successful solution.
Build in a student mindset and I promise you’ll start to see new ways of integrating clients, engaging beneficiaries, new solutions to thorny problems, and identify growth opportunities that fit who you are and who you serve.
Talk About Yourself
Don’t mistake this for prattling on about yourself endlessly. What draws people into adopting, supporting or not protesting solutions is understanding your relationship to, and passion for, the problem. Why is the problem so important to you and your team? How are you touched? What have you experienced?
Talking about your interest(s) in the problem creates transparency, trust, and humanizes it for the listener.
People move when they are moved.
Chunk the Persona
So listen up, we have all read the same twenty or so startup books with the same advice and mantras. So when you copy and paste these into your pitches, donor materials, or projects they tend not to stand out because we have all seen it before.
Even worse? When we co-opt based on the lens of another there’s almost always incongruency between who we say we are and what we do.
Make it easy, and be yourself. Infuse your values, mission, and vision in all that you touch. If democratic and inclusive discussion are paramount to you, your legal business structure should reflect that. If you support wealth-generation and equity, your supply chain should reflect the local economy. If you want to fundraise in a way that builds wealth and equity, really think about venture capital versus a crowd-funding approach.
If we look at a list of your dreams, mission, and vision then look at your business operations, model, and recruiting there should be alignment between the two.
Own Your Impact
The research is in, and it turns out we as humans like to be liked. There are a number of historical and anthropological reasons for this, but the bottom line is it’s uncomfortable to be different. Which is why there’s a gut inclination for some impact organizations to apologize for not fitting neatly into boxes the philanthropic, corporate, or venture create. Either squeezing themselves in or erasing their distinctive nature.
But projects solving the world’s largest challenges are complex and messy because the WORLD is complex and messy. Organizations moving the needle understand this and embrace it.
The next time you feel the need to apologize because someone doesn’t understand why you do what you do, fight the urge to apologize and translate instead. How does your business model
educate and promote more charitable behavior? What are the economics behind inclusion and mental wellness?
Don’t shrink when confronted, expand.
Create Your Own Definitions
I’ll end with saying, not everyone’s dreams will be your dreams; nor should they be. There are milestones startup media heralds as indicative of “success.” Thing is, those milestones may not work for you and what you’re doing. Organizations solving the problems others haven’t dared touch, such as human rights violations, must define for themselves what success looks like…for them.
I truly believe running a business, charity or project should never require we co-opt someone else’s experiences or discard any parts of our own. The best way to have a positive impact and move us all into forwarding change will come when you embrace that you have a perspective and experience that no one else has had or will have again. Use that to your advantage and see how much progress you make.
Impact Hub Houston thanks Erin McClarty for authoring this piece. Erin is a mix between a business coach, attorney, impact architect, and vision doula. She helps people run businesses, foundations, initiatives, and movements that are unique to the founders. In doing her work, Erin works to carve out spaces that are the truest of expressions of who they are, allowing them to heal themselves while they heal their communities. Learn more about Erin and the services she offers by clicking here to visit her website.
In continuation of the spotlights we promised in our campaign launch post, there are several passionate people behind Impact Hub Houston we want you to meet. Carlos Sotelo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosotelo/) shares how his experiences growing up and helping students as a college counselor led him to join the Impact Hub Houston launch team:
Growing up in working-class Pasadena, I learned some of my greatest values from family and friends who called this hard-working, aspirational community home. Resilience. Echale ganas. Determination.
Still, I longed to expand my horizons beyond the endless refineries located just blocks down from our family’s apartment. I wanted to honor my parents’ sacrifices by taking advantage of every opportunity I could find. As an undocumented student, sometimes that meant creating a few along the way too.
Here, I also learned about what occurs when access to opportunity is limited for those that need it the most. Immigrant day laborers robbed of promised wages. Uninsured individuals unable to afford preventive health care. Financially-stressed parents with more options for predatory payday lenders than asset-building opportunities. Residents putting up with broken infrastructure and regulation-breaking industry. Students falling through the cracks at under-resourced schools.
I took these experiences with me to college. There, I studied public policy to learn how to find solutions to social problems. Thanks to those who helped me overcome the barriers of my educational journey, I believed in the power of education as a driver for positive social change.
The ladder of social mobility needs to be widened for the future of our country. As the one making the generational leap in my own family, I wanted to address the inequities in access to opportunity for all as I began my career.
So when I began serving as a college counselor, I connected with so many of my students who aspired to be the first in their families to go to and graduate from college.
Still, advising them on how to navigate the process of obtaining a postsecondary degree/certification of any kind was not enough. Too many of our students were failing to show up to their first day of college classes. Further, data shows that far too many students of a low-income or underrepresented minority background were not graduating.
With these problems in mind, I went to my first Impact Hub event last year: Open Project Night. I had hoped to just listen to what other people’s challenges or ventures were. Yet, something else happened. I got pushed to present about the problems I faced.
After jotting notes down on paper, I nervously spoke to the crowd about the experiences of my work and students. Soon, my two minutes were up and I started talking with people who came up to me. Just as quickly, my nerves went away. The free beer probably helped too, I may add.
The collaborative energy was infectious. Everyone was friendly and encouraging. People offered helpful advice and their contacts. Feeling uplifted, I returned the favor and visited the other presenters to offer my own support.
I joined Impact Hub Houston because I got pushed. I’m glad I got pushed.
Because that’s what Impact Hub Houston intends to do for the community of problem solvers. Push them forward towards enacting solutions. Push them to connect with one another to work smarter together than harder alone. Push resources and opportunities in our paths. Push the envelope for what sustainable impact looks like. Push social entrepreneurship as a viable option for addressing our most critical issues.
Being part of the Impact Hub Houston community is an opportunity to ensure a better future for a more equitable and prosperous Houston for future generations. Now, as we get ready to launch, expand our programming, and build our community, I push anyone who cares about making a difference to support and donate to Impact Hub Houston. You’ll be glad you did.
Activists and organizers are mobilizing to end discriminatory bail practices, small businesses are providing vital space and sustenance for neighbors, and we’re all checking on one another amidst the smoke and pollen swirling around.
I’m excited about our future! I attend dozens of events weekly where I’m constantly energized by seeing people work through methods both old and new to make Houston better. Solving problems is what we do, and Impact Hub is the embodiment of that collaborative spirit.
I met Grace Rodriguez and Shiroy Aspandiar at an Open Project Night years ago. Open Project Night is a space where people collaborate to drive ideas and projects forward to make Houston a better place./em>
Shiroy and I had a shared interest in education technology since I had just left an ed tech startup. Shiroy was developing One Jump, a platform that connects under-served students to enrichment opportunities to the shorten the opportunity gap.
Seeing Shiroy tackle a major problem for schools helped me realize just how little our education system has changed despite all the new innovations we have at our disposal. It also reminded me how much power we have to change it ourselves. I’m basically One Jump’s biggest fan and I tell every student I encounter about how invaluable it is for summer opportunities.
Meanwhile, Grace was supporting Writers in the Schools as a board member. Watching Grace wield her unique amalgam of experiences for good constantly pushes me to be more creative in my own work. I’ve been hacking for Houston alongside them ever since.
I love this city and I want to see us all thrive. In my experience, thriving begins with creating robust ways to invite people into our work. Here are a few ways I want to build community and solve problems with you:
Let’s develop communities of support for educators through EdCamps
Let’s imagine and build more equitable futures by training high school innovators to become TiE Young Entrepreneurs
I shared those examples because it’s important to consider the many ways that change making is already happening in our neighborhoods, especially in communities of color. I want to connect that innovative spirit to institutional resources and knowledge that can help advance Houston.
To that end, one major project I’ll be working on through Impact Hub is to map out support pathways for social entrepreneurs. How can we better define pathways to success for problem-solvers? If you want to share the story of how you navigated this process, please reach out to me!
Also, we’ve built up quite the community of change makers over the years but we can’t do this work without partners. If your organization is solving problems in Houston, I want to know about it. We want to amplify your voice, expand your impact, and look for ways to partner with you.
Houston feels different. America feels different. Everything is changing. Can you feel it? We invite you to subscribe, volunteer, mentor, and — if you’re feeling our mission — slide us some coins for our crowdfunding campaign to help us increase our capacity for programming! Let’s shape and embrace change together. I can’t wait!
When I was finishing my second year of college, I remember getting asked how much money I wanted to make after graduation. Easy question for a business student to answer, right?
The expectation was to respond with a dollar figure. Instead, I responded, “I want to work for a company who values me and my work.”
There is so much context packed into this one statement. One, I attended college because I knew education was the only way for me to help my family move forward. Yet, I did not want to be driven strictly by money. Two, I always wanted to work for a great company, but never imagined entrepreneurship would be in my future. Three, I wanted to be valued as a person and I wanted my work to be recognized.
In 2010, I transferred to the University of Houston and started volunteering with the Hispanic Business Student Association (HBSA). The notion of giving back began growing its roots in my heart. For the first time, I had the opportunity to connect with other Latinos of a similar background as me who were driven to accomplish something bigger for themselves, their families and their communities.
Through HBSA, I helped organize career development opportunities for nearly 2,000 middle- and high-school students from low-income communities in Houston and Pasadena. The more I stood in front of other youth to share my story, the more driven I was to give back.
Shortly after my college graduation, I started my career as a natural gas and LNG analyst. Continuing my community work from college, I served as a volunteer board member for the Bauer College Alumni Association (BCAA) and the Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA). My role on these boards focused on student outreach, professional development, career advancement, and community engagement. As I advanced in my career, I spent countless hours mentoring students with efforts to close the gap between where they were and where they wanted to be.
In 2014, my husband and I decided to find a solution ourselves to barriers preventing students from accessing professional programming to advance their college careers. We pulled our resources together, formed a team, and developed a two-day professional boot camp and suit scholarship. In two years, the program impacted the lives of 50 deserving college students who did not own a suit. In 2017, building on the pillars of creativity, youth and education, we turned the suit scholarship into a non-profit organization called Creative Vida. Our mission is to educate and empower youth through creative experiences.
Over the last couple of years, I began thinking more critically about time and how little time we have on this Earth. I contemplated how I was going to write the next chapter of my life and career. On paper, I was in a prime position for my career. I worked for the first LNG exporter in the US. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was allocating my time to fully living out my values. Through prayer and mentorship, I realized the time I was putting into my volunteer efforts was insufficient to make the impactful change needed in our city. Thus, I made the decision to transition out of the LNG industry to focus full time on community work.
Now, I work to create a world where individuals who want to make an impactful change in their communities have access to the education and resources needed to best accomplish their efforts. This is why I joined the Impact Hub Houston launch team last year. I believe my unique combination of corporate and non-profit experience is a great asset to our city’s current and future social entrepreneurs. Before last year, I had never heard of the term social entrepreneur . Others words I had never heard of were social impact, social venture, impact investing, innovation ecosystem, b-corps. The lists go on and on.
How is it that someone like me, a business person who has been extremely involved in our community, did not get exposed to the “impact space” prior to 2018? When my husband and I registered Creative Vida as a 501(c)3, we did so because it was the only relevant business model we knew at the time. Participating in Impact Hub’s programming over the last few months is allowing the Creative Vida team to think more creatively about our revenue model to scale our impact in the coming years. Exposure and education definitely make a difference!
Houston needs Impact Hub Houston because we need a better support system for problem solvers trying to make a change.
In the short term, my goal through Impact Hub is to connect with individuals who have an idea to solve a local or global problem but are not connected to the community of people ready to help bring those ideas to life. I want to allow everyone an opportunity to find their place within this community of change makers, social entrepreneurs, and supporters. Will you join me? #CambiaElMundo
Now more than ever we are being called to tackle urgent social and environmental issues. At the same time, our governments and economies are facing significant disruption, but this isn’t really a series of problems, this as an opportunity for transformative system change.
We believe that the only way forward is by joining forces to build a future where business and profit work in support of people and planet. That’s why we created the world’s largest acceleration and collaboration platform for positive change — what is now known as the Impact Hub network.
How did it start?
In 2000, a young, idealistic group of graduates from Wales’ Atlantic College decided to test the boundaries of the status quo. Securing London’s Royal Festival Hall for a millenium event, they wanted to initiate debate on the connections between global environmental, social, and political issues, persuading Nobel Prize winners and influential thinkers to speak. Even the Dalai Lama was enlisted for a video address.
Their boldness saw them invited to host an NGO event for the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. But instead of accepting it, they chose to create a more meaningful alternative — a people’s summit. They joined forces with local activists in Soweto who were transforming a township wasteland into the Soweto Mountain of Hope, aka ‘SoMoHo’, an arts, environmental education, and community hub, which outshone the UN summit and touched heads of state, as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Back in the UK, they wondered how they could bring these perspectives into the world of work, and thereby help people consider more purposeful careers that tackle urgent world issues. Looking into it, it hit them: People were already trying to action impactful ideas from their kitchen tables, not reaching their potential in isolation. Their growing group of collaborators changed this in 2005, when they found a space to bring these isolated entrepreneurs and innovators together: a run-down London loft that would house the forerunner of Impact Hub.
Hub Magnetism
The concept of ‘The Hub’ came to life, bringing changemakers together with the shared workspace, community, and events needed to advance their ideas and create new collaborations. Soon transformed with a community-designed interior using recycled and reused materials, The Hub met London impact makers’ needs for a collective action space and quickly filled up.
Months later, The Hub’s rapid growth made its hosts reach out to their networks, keen to discuss how to best support their expanding impact community. To their surprise, the resulting gathering in 2007 had little to do with member support but instead was full of people eager to find out how to open their own local Hubs all over the world.
An Impact Movement Is Born
So the team examined the principles of space co-creation and community building that were born in Soweto and tested in London, curious to see if Hubs might also work elsewhere… By 2008, there were nine Hubs on three continents.
The new spaces became rallying points for people passionate about building a radically better world, and the new Hub founders also connected — seeking inspiration in London and traveling to each other’s spaces to find out how to turn societal challenges into opportunities.
Dozens of would-be Hubs emerged following a centralized body in London, which envisioned the blooming network of Hubs developing as social franchises. But, by 2010, the founding teams came to a realization: Their future had to be a collective one.
Collective Growth
This realization led to the creation of a bottom-up, democratic governance model. It came to life in late 2011, marking the Hubs’ transformation into a genuine collective: one with a co-leadership structure and shared practices to shape a new way of doing business together, in and for the world.
In 2013, the empowered network reinforced its focus on purpose-driven innovation and, with this, chose a more fitting name: Impact Hub. Over the next four years, Impact Hub expanded its global reach and more than doubled its community of entrepreneurs and innovators to over 16,000 members across the globe. Instilling conscious leadership around social and business innovation, Impact Hubs inspire, connect and enable positive change across diverse contexts and economies to prove that the future of business is found in profit that serves people and the planet.
In 2018, as a truly global network, it is now tackling its next challenge: Impact at scale.
This annual week of action, awareness, and accountability for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) takes place alongside the UN General Assembly. Launched in 2016 by Project Everyone, UNDP, and the United Nations Foundation, Global Goals Week brings together governments, businesses, individuals, international organizations and civil society to build momentum to achieve the SDGs and ensure no one is left behind.
Impact Hub will participate by hosting events in New York, across the globe, and by publishing inspiring stories connected to the SDGs. As one of the world’s largest impact accelerators, Impact Hub uses the SDGs as a lens through which to view its impact on the world, and for more than 10 years has empowered locally rooted communities to progress towards them in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
The network’s 2017 Community Impact Report for instance has revealed striking insights into how the SDGs are being addressed worldwide, reporting that SDG 4: Quality Education and 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, are the topics that Impact Hub members are most devoted to overall.
Achieving the SDGs by the year 2030 is a huge challenge for today’s change-makers, but Impact Hub believes that this can be accomplished. Using Global Goals Week to showcase the incredible work that’s already being done by innovators in the network, the organization’s ambition during this week is to inspire others to join forces and do the same.
Accelerate2030 at Global Goals Week
Accelerate2030 is a program designed to scale the impact of entrepreneurial solutions for the SDGs. One of Impact Hub’s 200+ acceleration programs, Accelerate2030 has positively impacted developing economies in 19 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Co-initiated by UNDP, ITC and Impact Hub Geneva – and with two editions of the program implemented so far – the program has enabled 50+ national finalists and 15 global winnersto scale up their ventures towards the SDGs and has so far reached over 2 million people. Accelerate2030 supports the most innovative ventures with tailored support for scaling and developing sustainably, accessing investors, gaining strategic partnerships, and professional leadership coaching.
The 2017 international finalists have been invited to New York for a week-long boot camp, which includes investor meetings and an enterprise ecosystem tour, and will be speaking at the two events hosted by Accelerate2030. The bootcamp in New York will conclude the 12 month support Accelerate2030 has been offering to the international finalists. The next edition, co-created and newly improved by participating Impact Hubs, is already in the making with applications planned to open in early 2019.
During Global Goals Week, Accelerate2030 will come to New York to host the following events:
– Accelerate2030: Entrepreneurial and Innovation Ecosystems for the SDGs, focusing on how to foster entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems for the SDGs. 26 September, 4-5.30pm, Conference Room B, UN Headquarters, New York.
– A2030: Scaling the Impact of Entrepreneurial Solutions for the SDGs, exploring examples of collaboration between ‘Unlikely Allies’ for SDGs, including startup-corporate partnerships, and the need to focus on creating tangible impact through collaborative approaches. 27 September, 6-8pm, Scandinavia House, 58 Park Ave, New York.
As promised in our 
As we shared in our 
